This article was provided by MPP Mike Schreiner, Guelph
It’s no secret that times are tough right now.
As the housing crisis spirals out of control, life is becoming harder and more expensive for far too many Ontarians.
Parents working full-time jobs can barely afford rent, let alone think about a down payment on a home. Young folks are being forced farther and farther from the people and places they love as they struggle to find an affordable place to start a family.
In Guelph and in communities across Ontario, tents are popping up everywhere.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In fact, there are many tried-and-true solutions proven to increase the supply of homes without increasing expensive urban sprawl. But in order to make them a reality, we need a government that’s willing to lead.
Two years ago, the Ford government’s own housing affordability task force came up with a long list of recommendations to help the province meet its goal of building 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. While I don’t agree with all of them, many of these recommendations focused on building more homes in existing neighbourhoods – allowing us to meet our housing goals without sprawling onto any additional land, keeping our prime forests, farmland and wetlands intact.
But instead of implementing those recommendations, the Ford government spent the past two years rolling out the red carpet for well-connected speculators to cash in billions. While housing costs kept rising, they were busy auctioning off parcels of the Greenbelt, forcing urban boundary expansions onto communities that didn’t want them, steamrolling municipal planning, and then wasting even more time (and money) backtracking on all of it.
Needless to say, that approach hasn’t gotten us any closer to solving the housing crisis.
It’s time to try something else.
That’s why I recently tabled the Homes You Can Afford in Communities You Love Act, which will update outdated planning laws that prevent us from building new homes by legalizing more types of housing (think apartments, multiplexes, garden suites and midrises) all across the province.
It’s time to say yes to homes that ordinary people can afford. Homes that work with the communities we already spend our time in, close to all the things we love. It’s time to legalize housing. As your MPP, I don’t want to see any more time or money wasted ignoring solutions to address the housing crisis. And I know that every day we fail to act is another dollar out of Ontarians’ pockets and another day the problem worsens.
The Homes You Can Afford in Communities You Love Act is just one of many plans I’ve put forward designed to get us back to building homes for people, not speculators.
Over the past year, I’ve tabled solutions to protect renters, get speculation out of the housing market, and get the government back into the business of building deeply affordable co-op, non-profit and supportive housing.
Supportive housing projects with wrap-around care like the Kindle Community and Stepping Stone right here in Guelph. Because while increasing market-based supply is fundamental to solving the housing crisis, we also need to invest in permanently affordable, below-market homes that offer folks on fixed incomes, including social assistance, a safe place to call home.
These are the kinds of practical solutions that it’s going to take to get more homes built quickly and bring down soaring housing costs – and if you support this approach, I hope you’ll encourage the Premier and his caucus to support the Homes You Can Afford in Communities You Love Act when it comes up for debate in the Legislature on February 28.
Housing is a human right – and it’s time our government starts treating it like one. Mike Schreiner is the MPP for Guelph. For more information on Mike’s work, visit mikeschreinermpp.ca.
