By Staff
August 31st, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
The Alliance for a Liveable Ontario commissioned Environics Research to gauge public perceptions about the cause of the housing crisis facing Ontario, the preferred solution and whose opinion people trust.
The results show there is overwhelming support for governments to be actively involved in getting housing built in existing towns and cities where services already exist. Ontarians do not want housing on the Greenbelt and farmland.
The Key Takeaways were:
Leader of the provincial opposition Marit Stiles does not think a soybean field inside the Greenbelt is the place to build houses when there is already enough land elsewhere.
83% of Ontarians hold the view that there is no need to build housing on the Greenbelt and farmland to solve Ontario’s housing challenges because there is enough land already available in existing towns and cities. This view mirrors the findings of multiple reports (see here) that show more than enough land has been set aside within existing urban boundaries to build over 2 million homes.
88% of Ontarians think the government should get actively involved in housing solutions, focusing on lands where services already exist.
41% of Ontarians either trust no one or are not sure about who to trust when it comes to the housing issue.
Civil society groups are trusted by 33%.
The Premier is trusted by 10%, local Councils by 10%, and housing developers by 6%.
Without trust very little will get done
What he said…
Drip, drip, drip…..That’s the sound of Doug Ford’s credibility and popularity steadily seeping away as an increasingly disillusioned electorate contemplates other options.
When the NDP actually starts to look and sound like a more reasonable alternative to a morally corrupt and incompetent Tory government that’s when it’s time for the backbenches in the PC caucus to finally “grow a spine” and demand the Premier and his feckless Housing Minister both resign. This fiasco has gone on long enough, and Ford’s intensification agenda now has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.
To quote Oliver Cromwell: “Ye have stayed too long in this here place for any little good you have done. Depart I say and be gone, and in the name of God…go!!”