By Pepper Parr
October 24th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
So far she has always stepped right into whatever the problem was and got results.
Marit Stiles: NDP Leader of the Opposition.
It was a letter from NDP Opposition leader at Queen’s Park who wrote the Provincial Auditor General asking for an investigation that resulted in a very damaging report on what the Ford government had done when they took a significant number of properties out of the Greenbelt.
She followed that up with another letter to the Provincial Integrity Commissioner who named names and said it was “a process that was rushed, non-transparent and almost reckless” – words that may have been the beginning of the end for the Ford government.
Today Stiles introduced a solution intended to get the province back in the business of building housing.
The NDP has tabled a motion in the Legislature that would call for the establishment of a new public agency – Homes Ontario – which would build at least 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes over ten years, to be operated and/or constructed by public, non-profit or co-op housing providers.
“With a housing crisis of this scale, we have to find big solutions that can help people find a home they love in the community they want to live in,” said Stiles. “The Ontario NDP are going to get the province back in the business of building housing with Homes Ontario – and we’re going to do it together, so that everyone in Ontario has a place to call home.”
Auditor General Bonnie Lysak with her report – it opened up a huge can of works that resulted in an RCMP investigation.
The Ontario NDP has also been calling for real rent control, an end to exclusionary zoning and clamping down on real estate speculation. Today’s announcement is one more step in the NDP’s plan to solve the housing crisis.
Homes Ontario is just the next piece of the comprehensive plan that the Ontario NDP is assembling with the input from housing researchers, trades, labour, municipalities, non-profits, and other stakeholders.
Don’t expect the government to line up and support the NDP plan – how the government explains that they are working on the problem and will have their own bill ready real soon will be the art of politics at its best.
Yes, some kind of public agency such as Homes Ontario is a definite possibility to address the housing situation. Like many Gazette readers our family spent happy years in public housing in post WW2 “council housing” in the UK, before being able to buy our own house. They were utilitarian and very simple houses, mostly rent geared to income. Times have changed vastly of course – it was another land, another time – but some aspects could be adapted to this province now.