Pot and kettle

In one of its final acts, Council last week directed Mayor Ferguson to submit a list of objections to the More Homes Built Faster legislation proposed by the provincial government. The resolution passed unanimously— by a recorded vote. A signal of virtue.

Bill 23 is a collection of mostly regulatory changes meant to cut through the thicket of brambles that have choked the supply of new homes in Ontario. The bill is bold. It may go too far in correcting a broken regulatory regime. But it is rich, however, for a council in Prince Edward County to be giving advice about housing rules.

For more than a decade, this municipality thwarted new homebuilding. Development charges went from zero to among the highest in the region. The cost of connecting new homes to municipal waterworks skyrocketed. Meanwhile, the regulatory process ground to a crawl.

In 2016, a joint committee of council members, developers, builders and residents produced 32 recommendations to streamline the development process in the County—to break the logjam. The aim was to restore competitiveness to the new homebuilding market in Prince Edward County. Three years later, just seven recommendations had been completed. Twenty-two were in process. Sixteen had not yet been acted upon. (Seven recommendations required multiple responses).

There has been no update since. Perhaps some recommendations have been acted upon since 2019. Maybe all of them. Perhaps none. No one is being held to account for the status of these recommendations. The Development Framework project has gone dark.

Yet we can see from building statistics that the County continues to lag our neighbours— by a wide margin. Quinte West issued permits for 174 new homes in the first three quarters of this year. Belleville issued 348. Prince Edward County just 137—28 per cent fewer than Quinte West, and 154 per cent fewer than Belleville.

It is a decade-and-a-half-old problem. The pace of new homebuilding in these three communities was roughly comparable for the first five years of the 2000s. Some years Quinte West built a few more. Some years the County did. But that pattern was broken in 2005. Since then, these neighbouring communities have built many more homes than Prince Edward County.

The trend has been clear for a while. In a presentation I prepared for council in 2017 and updated in 2019, the data showed that had the County managed to keep pace with our neighbours, we would have seen 1,200 more new homes built by 2019.

Think about what that might have done. Had we built these homes, we would have entirely offset the loss of family homes to short-term accommodation. Had we built these homes, a legion of homebuilding workers and trades would be established now. Had we built these homes, they would have diminished the supply problem in Prince Edward County. It might have eased the rocketing prices for resale homes that have all but eliminated young working families from pursuing a life here—and pushed others to live elsewhere.

A decade-and-a-half of negative trends have failed to ignite a fire under Council. They failed to take the issue seriously. They believed there would be no consequences. They believed things would stay the way they were. Some counted on that.

But it didn’t happen. House prices rose. Sharp and fast. Prices climbed faster than most other communities in this country, including Toronto and Vancouver. Long-time residents cashed in and moved elsewhere. They were replaced by wealthy folks fleeing the city. We woke up one day living in the Hamptons.

Council’s inability to address the challenges in new homebuilding has changed this community. Some good. Some bad. But it can no longer be said there were no consequences.

Successive councils stood by as a broken housing market changed this community. They knew the market was broken, yet they chose not to fix it. Or to take it seriously. They must take some responsibility for the housing crisis in our community.

You will, therefore, pardon my raised eyebrow when the outgoing council musters the audacity to offer housing market advice. Council has lost the ability to feel shame.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca