Tally of housing development charges hits 5-year high in York Region

Residential development, mostly in Richmond Hill, Markham and Vaughan, is growing with 21,715 units applications in 2022, up by 7,000 from the previous year

Newmarkettoday.ca
March 10, 2023
Joseph Quigley

York Region residential development is growing with 21,715 units applications in 2022, up more than 7,000 from the previous year.

The region’s annual development activity report highlighted high-density applications, primarily concentrated in Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan. This also resulted in an increase in development charges by 25 per cent, with $568 million brought in this year versus $457 million in 2021. The $568 million represents the highest total collected in five years.

Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti said the region and other municipalities are making efforts to ramp up residential development.

“Municipalities are doing their part and we’re getting there,” Scarpitti said. “This always gets back to the same underlying factor, which is process.”

The province seeks to build 1.5 million homes within 10 years and has passed Bill 23, aimed at speeding up housing development.

Although many units were applied for in the year, 4,766 units received draft approval. The number of development applications only went up by two per cent to 2,092, but those developments had a higher density than last year.

Newmarket represents a relatively small percentage of units applied for, with 528 units proposed in the municipality in 2022. That primarily includes apartments (307 units), townhouses (148 units in site plan applications and 72 in subdivision applications), The town had 102 development applications, representing 4.2 per cent of the region’s applications on the whole.

In total, the region has 65,900 units in housing supply at the end of 2022, with 9,000 registered unbuilt units, 35,600 draft-approved units and 20,300 units under construction.

Chairman Wayne Emmerson said the region is doing what it can to get these homes built, especially rentals and affordable housing.

But he said some issues come up with development applications that developers have to work through with staff.

“There’s always some little things that go that way, but we’re all trying to do what we can to get them in the ground as soon as we can and get these houses built,” Emmerson said.