The need to cut red tape when it comes to building homes will help address the housing crisis in Ontario, but Chatham-Kent is already ahead of the curve.
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The need to cut red tape when it comes to building homes will help address the housing crisis in Ontario, but Chatham-Kent is already ahead of the curve.
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The issue was raised during a virtual housing summit attended by several Ontario mayors Wednesday, including Chatham-Kent’s mayor, Darrin Canniff.
He said the municipality spent a considerable time a few years back working to eliminate as much municipal red tape as possible, “knowing that the province provides a lot of red tape in that as well.”
“We’ve been working very hard to ensure that we’re not the bottleneck,” Canniff said.
The effort can be seen in the timely fashion a home-building permit can be obtained in Chatham-Kent, the mayor said.
“We have been looking at 20 days or less for our building permits, and there are very few places in the province where you can actually get an approval any faster than that,” said Don Shropshire, Chatham-Kent’s top administrator.
When it comes to large subdivisions, Shropshire noted that approval times can vary, citing the fact these developments can require building new roads and installing water, sewer and natural gas infrastructure.
However, Canniff noted the example of the 200-plus condo-style apartment development by the Piroli Development Group beginning very quickly thanks to efforts to cut red tape. The project on Chatham’s Park Avenue West broke ground in September 2020, and the second of two apartment complexes in nearing completion.
“We spoke with them about the idea and, six months later, they’re putting a shovel in the ground,” the mayor said.
He added the developer had commented that no municipality had come close to meeting the timeline that Chatham-Kent provided.
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Canniff said there are times when applications take longer than the municipality would like but, in most cases he’s seen, it’s due to the builder not agreeing with something that needs to happen or there is an incomplete application.
The mayor recently noted that 1,000 living units, including new homes and apartments, were built in Chatham-Kent last year and it looks like a similar amount will be built this year.
Canniff said he wants developers coming to the community “because it’s easy to do business here.”
Prior to the summit, Premier Doug Ford announced a $45-million fund to help municipalities streamline their development approval process in a bid to increase the housing supply throughout the province.
“We need to ensure unnecessary delays and red tape that have kept housing from getting built is a thing of the past,” he said later.
Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark said Ontario has the lowest number of homes per capita in the country. To bring it up to the average, 1.2 million more homes would need to be built. This scarcity of housing contributes to rapidly rising house prices, provincial officials said.
Ford’s government has created a housing affordability task force to look into solutions, with a report expected in the coming months.
“The key to building more homes is building more homes faster,” Clark said.
With files from Brian Cross, Windsor Star