Infrastructure funds continue to be a sticking point, suggest reports
A meeting between Ontario and federal housing ministers appears to have improved the prospects of agreeing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for affordable housing, although charging homebuilders for new infrastructure seems to remain a key disagreement.
According to reports, the federal government told local lawmakers to stop implementing the charges if they wanted to get a share of its $6-billion infrastructure fund, with Ontario’s proposed allocation potentially totalling around $357 million.
However, this directive by federal housing minister Sean Fraser was not welcomed by some provincial officials, particularly in Ottawa, which has decided to increase its infrastructure charges to 11% – the first of a series of increases to be implemented by the city government.
Ontario’s minister of municipal affairs and housing Paul Calandra visited the capital last week, where he announced a $9.5-billion investment in supportive housing units and met Fraser to discuss local infrastructure fees and other problems faced by homebuilders. "Without sewer and water, we can't build you anything," he said in a media interview.
Meanwhile, according to Calandra, municipalities in Ontario have been able to convince the provincial government to ease restrictions on the per-unit charges in its soon-to-be-implemented Bill 185.
“I'm optimistic that they will understand the challenges that we're all facing — not just Ontario, frankly. I think across Canada, provincial premiers are very unified in how important it is to get infrastructure in the ground," he said.
Still, federal housing spokesperson Micaal Ahmed told CBC that while Fraser understood the province’s position, he also “cannot ignore that development charges make building homes significantly more expensive and that raising them during a housing crisis is counterproductive.”
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