Ontario cities fall behind housing targets

August 1, 2023



Most Ontario cities are falling far behind the housing construction targets set by the provincial government, new housing starts date shows.
In January 2022, Ontario Progressive Conservatives set the goal of 1.5 million new homes to be built in Ontario over the course of a decade, and specified targets for 29 of the province’s biggest and fastest-growing municipalities to reach by 2031
Comparing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) statistics on new home construction starts from January 2022 to June 2023 against the province's 10-year targets for each city provides a measure of how close each city is to its needed pace. 
Among Ontario's largest cities, Toronto leads with new home starts since January 2022 running at about 90 per cent of the pace needed to reach the goal of 285,000 new homes in 10 years. Vaughan has the next best score among big cities at 84 per cent. 
Most other large cities—including Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Kitchener and Markham—are proceeding at roughly 50 to 65 per cent of their target pace. 
By contrast, Mississauga and Brampton, at 29 per cent and 23 per cent respectively, are so far behind that the two Peel Region cities will need to roughly quadruple the rate of new construction to get on track.
At the very bottom of the list is Burlington which has seen just 208 housing starts in the past year and a half—roughly 5 per cent of what would be needed to hit its target of 2,900 new homes per year. CMHC figures show 44,002 new housing starts in Ontario from January to June 2023—up nearly 10 per cent over the same period in 2022. There were 96,080 new housing units started in all of 2022 which was the first year of the PC government's 10-year time frame for its home construction target.