Wait times for city approvals holding back homebuilding efforts, builders’ study finds

Applications to the Committee of Adjustment have doubled, the study found, with no new resources added. But the city says it’s on track to meet its housing goals.

Thestar.com
Sept. 20, 2023
Clarrie Feinstein

Lengthy waits for City of Toronto approvals is slowing down efforts to add much-needed housing supply, such as converting a single-family home into a duplex, says the building industry.

From 2015 to 2022, the number of building applications heading to the City of Toronto’s Committee of Adjustment have doubled, resulting in lengthy delays, according to Wednesday’s study commissioned from the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) and conducted by Altus Group Economic Consulting.

The committee holds public hearings to consider building applications that range from extending a deck to tearing down an existing property to build a new home.

The approval delays can add 8 to 14 per cent in additional construction-related costs annually, amounting to between $9 and $19 per square foot, or roughly $21,000 to $58,000, the study said.

Due to the significant delays in approving these applications and associated building costs, the study said the “system must be overhauled” if the city wants to reach its goal of building 285,000 homes by 2031.

“Toronto is a rapidly growing city, and the building of infill homes and renewal of existing housing stock add much-needed housing supply for current and future residents,” said Justin Sherwood, BILD’s senior vice-president.

“With the city recently adopting various zoning reforms such as four units per lot as of right, and looking to make additional changes in the near future, the need for a more efficient process that reduces strain on city resources has never been greater.”

The reason applications have doubled in the last decade is due to more developers and builders erecting new homes on old lots and repurposing housing stock to accommodate more units in a home, he said.

“What has happened is there’s greater volume of applications going to the city, but they haven’t added a significant amount of new resources,” Sherwood said.

Notably, the study found the average decision timelines for these types of building applications took 95 days-- 65 days longer than the 30-day service standard required by the provincial Planning Act, which sets the ground rules for land use planning.

In a statement to the Star, a spokesperson from the city’s planning division said lead times to a hearing “have improved significantly in the past two years.”

“However, the study reflects some of the challenges with application timelines since 2015. City staff agree the Committee of Adjustment is an important service and that long timelines to get to a hearing have impacted many residents and builders,” the spokesperson said.

“That’s why staff have made concerted efforts to reduce the time it takes for a minor variance application to receive a hearing before the committee.”

In 2022, the Committee of Adjustment received just over 3,350 new applications. In the same year, 3,965 applications proceeded to a hearing, reducing the number of applications in the queue by more than 600, the spokesperson said.

An application for minor variance submitted today will be scheduled to be heard by the committee by the middle of November-- less than eight weeks from when the application is submitted, they added.

BILD’s study noted that application volumes increased from 2,000 to 3,000 applications around 2010, to around 4,000 applications or more in recent years.

“Once interest rates come down, we’ll see more applications moving forward. The number has been increasingly solidly for over a decade,” he said.

“Around 95 per cent of those applications get approved.”

Because the vast majority of applications are approved it indicates the building applications aren’t contentious and should have a quicker approval process, Sherwood added.

City staff should be able to approve minor variance applications in some cases, instead of going through the formal public hearing process, he said, which could drastically cut wait times.

However, the city rebutted this recommendation. “This can only be done through changes to provincial legislation, which would require a comprehensive review of the legislative framework, and we do not know if this would lead to a more efficient and effective approvals process,” they said.

The city said it is adopting broader zoning permissions and reducing the need to seek Committee of Adjustment approval for some building projects.

“While the city agrees with some of the findings in the study, it is on track to meet its housing goal with the number of units that are approved and built every year,” a spokesperson said.

“The city is confident that planning approvals and the amount of land available for residential development will allow it to reach the housing goal of 285,000 new units by 2031."