Working with Municipalities to Build Ontario

At this year’s 2023 AMO conference in London, our government announced new investments and tools for municipalities to get shovels in the ground on priority projects, connect more people to jobs and homes, while enhancing critical public services to better serve Ontario’s growing population.

The Building Faster Fund will provide up to $1.2 billion over three years for municipalities that meet or exceed the housing targets they have pledged to achieve by 2031.

Our government is expanding strong mayor powers to 21 additional municipalities, provided their heads of council commit to a municipal housing target as part of our work to build at least 1.5 million homes by 2031.

The expansion will offer municipalities the tools to help cut red tape and speed up the delivery of key shared municipal-provincial priorities such as housing, transit and infrastructure.  

We are moving forward with a proposed definition of affordable housing for the purpose of development charge discounts and exemptions. The definition would take local households into account in determining which units should be eligible for development charge discounts and exemptions.

Our government will also be naming regional facilitators in Durham, Halton, Niagara, Simcoe County, Waterloo and York no later than September 18, 2023. The regional facilitators will make recommendations to the province on what locally-supported governance models would best support Ontario’s fastest growing municipalities in moving forward on shared priorities to help municipalities meet their housing targets and build housing-enabling infrastructure.

Lastly, we are hosting a Housing Forum in Toronto in November 2023 to engage municipal partners and other key stakeholders on the province’s Housing Supply Action Plan and next steps in our work to tackle the housing supply crisis. As we work towards that goal, we continue to look to our partners for their advice on the implementation of our Housing Supply Action Plans and insights on potential opportunities to get more homes built.

Municipalities are critical partners for our government and we’re committed to making sure they have the tools they need to succeed.

Learn more: https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1003407/working-with-municipalities-to-build-ontario