By Staff
April 7th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Check out these announcements from the province:
$600,000 to Sault St Marie for reaching their housing targets.
$37.5 million to Ottawa for Progress Toward 2023 Housing Target
Greater Sudbury with $1.52 Million for Exceeding 2023 Housing Targets
Ontario Rewards Hamilton with More Than $17.5 Million for Exceeding 2023 Housing Targets
Ontario Rewards Peterborough $1.88 Million for Exceeding 2023 Housing Target
How come no check like this for Burlington?
There were others.
You don’t see Burlington on that list do you?
All Burlington got from the Premier was a public spanking he gave the Mayor for not meeting the pledge to build 29,000 new residential units by 2031.
It seems obvious that the target just can’t be met.
Oh – and the head of the planning department no longer works for the city.
The Mayor will of course refer to what we report as “misinformation”.
Just the facts folks.
Our Mayor specifically, only seems to be interested in photops and spreading information on her social media about herself! How many hours in a week does she actually spend at City Hall doing actual City Hall work?
Time to change the channel.
Four of the five cities highlighted above are in significant economic decline, and have suffered (or are projected to experience) significant population decline in the coming years. They also have an aging housing supply. As for Ottawa, it needs the money to provide housing for the ever-increasing numbers of public servants the federal Liberals keep hiring.
Always fascinating how discussions on housing affordability never focus on things like: 1) actually changing the income tax structure to allow more young people to increase their disposable income so they can buy a home; 2) population decentralization, and incentivizing the shift of population to economically depressed areas outside the GTA; 3) directly mandating the type of housing that can be constructed by developers; 4) allowing mortgage interest deductibility as is done in the U.S. (remember Joe Clark’s proposal back in 1979?).
No…it’s much easier to keep repeating the intensification mantra and dreaming up ways to shoe-horn millions more people into the GTA, thereby creating all sorts of ancillary problems like environmental degradation, congestion, etc. Doug Ford doesn’t need to worry though. Given his track record it’s highly unlikely he’ll be around after 2026. Leave it to someone else to clean up the mess!
Well said! Your points make it more obvious that Ford is simply helping his developer donors – and various of his cronies – get rich, using the housing crisis as a great excuse to do it. Imagine if our so-called leaders actually accomplished something, anything, even one or two of your suggestions!!
Stephen has written so often and so well about the need to decentralize intensification away from the GTA in order to relieve pressures here and revitalize cities that are declining and could happily accept more population growth, yet I’ve never seen a federal or provincial government member or leader acknowledge this obvious solution to overcrowding the GTA.
The question is why is there silence? We all expect a degree of government ineptitude during their reigns, no matter which party is in power. But when there is a way that is well-presented to help both the GTA and the rest of Ontario, why is there not a groundswell of support? Is it just too hard to get our minds around, or is it simply the usual result of entrenched powerful development interests and their political friends liking the status quo and too lazy to even consider doing something that would benefit all Ontarians? Shame on them all.