Doug Ford’s housing bill will make parks more crowded, Toronto and Mississauga warn

Thestar.com
Dec. 12, 2022

Torontonians have always gloried in their green spaces, no more so than during the pandemic when the city hit peak park appreciation. But as grateful as many residents were to gulp in the fresh air, it was impossible to ignore the crowds flocking to those outdoor spaces.

Think back to the stories about people flocking to Trinity Bellwoods Park in spring 2020 or the fencing off of the cherry blossoms at High Park.

Now city officials in Toronto and around the GTA are warning that residents may need to shrink their picnic blankets in the future for a patch of grass as scarce green spaces become more crowded under Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act. It’s legislation the Progressive Conservative government says is needed to solve the provincial housing crisis, by speeding up building approvals to add 1.5 million more homes to Ontario’s housing stock.

Municipalities say the new planning rules will dramatically reduce the funding they desperately need to build new parks. They also fear that by giving developers more say in the kind of parks that get built, particularly in new neighbourhoods, those communities could be consigned to outdoor spaces the sun can’t penetrate, places where tall trees will never grow and kids won’t have room to play.

“One individual development, with the caps that Bill 23 will enforce, would provide one square metre per person of parkland,” said Paul Farish, Toronto manager of planning parks, forestry and recreation.

That’s about as much ground as a person occupies with their arms stretched out and bent at the elbow. Toronto currently averages nearly nine square metres, not including ravines, according to the 2019 Parkland Strategy.

Despite 3,600 hectares of city-owned parks and another 4,400 hectares of city maintained conservation lands, there are big gaps in Toronto’s supply of green spaces, particularly in dense neighbourhoods, the kind of vertical communities that will house much of the coming population boom.

They are the places where residents are least likely to have a private backyard making them a priority in parkland planning, said Farish.

Bill 23 caps the amount developers are required to pay cities to buy parkland. Toronto expects the new rules will eliminate $300 million in revenue over the next 10 years. Mississauga is forecasting a $560 million impact in the same period. That is on top of millions of dollars in lost development fees that municipalities say will be lost under the new planning rules.

Mississauga currently averages 28 square metres of park space per person. It sounds like a lot. It’s about the width of a medium-sized tree. But it doesn’t reflect the reality of many residents. It also includes ravines, which aren’t necessarily accessible. Take those out, and the 28 square metres shrinks to 8.7 square metres per person.

Downtown, the average park allotment already works out to only about five square metres per person. Four square metres is about the width of a patio umbrella.

Mississauga has 470 municipal parks -- the equivalent of 2.28 hectares of community and destination parks per 1,000 residents, according to its February 2022 Parks Plan.

In dense areas where land is scarce and expensive, cities typically collect cash in lieu of park space from developers. The municipality will then look for parkland nearby that will serve residents in the surrounding area.

Toronto has budgeted $250 million over 10 years to buy parkland. It’s an acquisition process driven by real estate prices and opportunities, so it’s likely the city would spend more than that over the decade, said Farish.

Because the new parkland dedication rules under Bill 23 are capped based on the size of the development property, the green space requirement remains the same whether it’s a five-storey development or a 50-storey building, he said.

A Toronto city staff report says the developer’s parkland requirement will be capped at 10 per cent of the land or the value of the land on sites less than five hectares, reducing that revenue by 33 per cent. Larger sites will be capped at a 15 per cent, a 25 per cent hit to city revenues.

“What Bill 23 really does is pretty much eliminates our ability to use cash in lieu (of park space),” said Mississauga commissioner of community services Jodi Robillos.

She said the city’s consultants have identified an 80 per cent reduction in the city’s parkland cash in lieu going forward.

“In addition to capping the amount of parkland provided by developers, Bill 23 limits our ability to purchase land to make up the difference,” said Robillos.

Not only will cities have less to spend on parkland under Bill 23, but they will also have less control over the parks that get built in cases where developers directly allocate a share of land to green space, say parks experts.

“It changes the discretion and authority that city council has over deciding where parkland is provided on a building site,” said Farish. “(Developers) could give a four-metre strip along the front of a property with some trees and that would be the park.”

Developers will also be able to use privately owned publicly accessible spaces, known as POPS, toward their parkland dedication requirements. POPS are increasingly common, especially downtown where developers incorporate publicly accessible walkways, greenspaces or common areas into office and mixed use properties. CIBC Square has incorporated a park over the rail corridor near Union Station.

Those spaces are complementary to parks but they’re not the same. There is no way for the city to ensure the spaces are maintained over the long-term, said Farish.

Also under Bill 23, developers will get parkland credit for dedicating encumbered land as park space. Typically, that might be space above an underground parking garage such as the recently opened Dr. Lillian McGregor Park on Wellesley Street between Yonge and Bay Streets.

Every parking garage needs its membrane replacing about every 20 or 30 years. That will require tearing out the plants and playground equipment installed there.

“They’re not going to get long-term tree growth and the features will be forced to change over time,” he said.

Mississauga has always required unencumbered parkland in its dense, transit centred communities, said Robillos.

“That’s because we can get mature tree canopy and we can get great amenities in that space. We don’t take parkland that’s completely in shadow. We don’t take parkland that’s in a wind tunnel because it’s not going to be usable or enjoyable for the public,” she said.

“This bill basically puts it in the developer’s hands to say they can put parkland anywhere they want. The city has to take it or go to the Ontario Land Tribunal to fight it,” she said.

On Wednesday, Ford lashed out at Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie for refusing to co-operate with the goals of Bill 23.

The city is mailing postcards to residents telling them, “Ontario’s new More Homes Built Faster Act will take a big bite out of your quality of life,” including a five to 10 per cent property tax increase.

Ford said Bill 23 aims to build 1.5 million homes in Ontario in the next decade. The province has set Mississauga’s target at 120,000 but Ford said it only builds about 1,200 a year. The city told the Toronto Star that 4,154 homes were added to its housing stock this year, although it issued 6,449 building permits.

The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) that represents homebuilders acknowledged Bill 23 is a lot of changes for municipalities to digest.

But CEO David Wilkes said many of the measures in Bill 23 are already in practice in parts of the GTA.

Vaughan, he said, has long allowed encumbered land to count toward parkland dedication requirements and the cash-in-lieu provisions of the bill acknowledge that there are many highrise communities where there is no land on the building site for parks.

But Wilkes said cities probably have in excess of $2 billion in reserves of parkland fees -- money developers paid in lieu of contributing land -- that are earmarked for land acquisition and park development.

“That’s money that isn’t being spent for parks and has been designated to do so. We’re saying, ‘Get on with the job.’ It’s clear there’s a lot of opportunity to build the spaces that people need to have complete communities,” he said.

Newly elected Toronto City Councillor Alejandra Bravo called Bill 23’s parkland dedication provisions “a complete betrayal of people.”

Her Davenport ward has been historically short on park space. Schools that used to provide play areas and public meeting spaces have been closed as demographics shifted. The ward also has its share of vertical growth.

“We expected that with this new development there would be an opportunity to correct that (shortage) because it’s an absolutely essential amenity,” she said.

Bravo acknowledged the huge need for more housing and more affordable housing.

But, she said, “All development activity needs to contemplate building a community and not just an individual development that has housing in it.”

Fierce competition for play space is a long-standing problem, according to those who run organized sports in the city.

“Everybody in organizations that uses field space in Toronto knows that there is a shortage to begin with,” said Dana Bookman of Canadian Girls Baseball.

“I don’t see them building parks anywhere, other than in the outskirts,” she said.

In denser parts of Toronto there’s no space to expand parks and in areas where there is land there’s no money for programming activities for kids, said Bookman.

When Kristi Herold founded JAM Toronto in 1996 there were a few thousand adults interested in what she was offering -- a roster of sporting activities that would get armchair athletes up and on a playing field for the fun and exercise. Today, JAM has about 150,000 participants in 12 cities. But in all that time, Herold says she’s only seen two soccer pitches added to Toronto’s playing facilities. Both are covered in snow all winter.

The situation is only going to get worse, she said, as big development eats up more outdoor play spaces. JAM has lost permits at Trinity Bellwoods because the park is now too busy with so many new developments nearby. A west-end ball diamond was lost to development and another permit was denied because the playing field was considered dangerously close to a new condo.

JAM is even talking to the city about helping to fund lighting on fields so people can play into the evening, put up domes so there’s space in the winter, add volleyball courts.

“So you’re building more buildings,” said Herold. “But then we’re not creating space to go along with it. For the people that are coming into the city to be able to be active and healthy and playing.”

There’s no time to waste in coming up with creative solutions, she said.

“We’ve got to get some action here to get people physically active and playing. Obesity is on the rise. Depression is on the rise. Loneliness is its own epidemic.”