Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in town Friday to announce a formal three-year, $21.4 million agreement between the federal government and the city, which is meant to fast-track the building of 750 homes.
The announcement was made Friday morning at the Kindle Communities’ supportive housing building under construction on Shelldale Crescent.
That project, which will see 32 bachelor units available for previously unhoused people, is expected to open in a few weeks.
The money comes from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund – which was launched the last time Trudeau was in Guelph in March 2023. The fund will address a number of things.
Guelph staff told council in October that the city's application for Housing Accelerator Fund cash could result in up to $24 million.
They include looking at streamlining zoning bylaw approvals, launching more residential housing programs and as Mayor Cam Guthrie stated, "get to yes faster" when it comes to housing approvals.
Guelph will also work toward looking at surplus city-owned land for more development, and allow for the building of multiplexes higher than four storeys.
“There was a greater need for densification, there’s a need to shift zoning more rapidly,” Trudeau said.
“There is a need to look at red tape, and how we can accelerate processes within municipal structures. All that needed investments and support, so that municipalities and councils could actually tackle the big changes, the structural changes in processes and zoning and densification that would lead to unlocking the housing needs that we have to meet in the coming years.”
Guthrie said the agreement will not only help accelerate housing growth in the short term. He said it will have far-reaching impacts and the thousands of other homes the city wants to build long-term, meeting the city's pledge of building 18,000 homes by 2031.
“This is a true testament to how you have a local government, you have the federal government, and we need the provincial government as well, trying to help with the housing crisis,” he said.
Guthrie didn’t have the exact percentage of affordable homes coming among the 750 units, but did say “there is a portion that is dedicated to making sure that there is true affordable housing out of these additional units.”
The three-year deal does have some caveats. Guthrie said the city needs to meet certain criteria and goals throughout, an accountability factor he is embracing.
“You cannot manage what you cannot measure,” he said. “There is a lot of measurables around the funding that’s coming from the federal government, but the fact that our application was done so well, and presented so well, is one of the reasons why we’re one of the top cities in Canada getting the money.”
Over time, the goal with is to hit nearly 10,000 new units over the next decade.
And while there are bureaucratic and policy type challenges, another has been looming its head throughout: labour.
Trudeau admits there is no one thing that will be the “magic solution” to housing, and knows it will take a multi-layered approach.
He said Canada will look at all aspects of the barriers slowing or interfering with achieving those targets in communities like Guelph, and that includes addressing the labour shortage in the construction sector.
“Yes, construction workers and availability of labour is a challenge we’re facing, which is why we’re continuing to have ambitious immigration targets, why we continue to make sure that we see the growth of Canada as a good thing, as we welcome people around the world,” Trudeau said.
“But we need to do it in such ways that we’re able to get them into the kinds of jobs where things are needed and solving the challenges that we’re facing.”
Guthrie said there are some issues with labour, but added he is hearing from the development community that the bigger issue is around the financial climate, one he believes is moving in a better direction compared to a year ago.
“Developers that were pausing projects are now looking to unlock those themselves because of the financial certainty that is coming back to the housing market,” he said. “I think it will be a bit more around that as being an issue than so much the labour, although labour is an issue.”
“We have to continue to do more things,” he later added.
“It does not end today. This announcement is fantastic for today. It’s going to play its part in unlocking more housing, but we still always have more to do.”
