Weekend Update: Ontarians Want Lower Development Charges

And other things we're learning this week

We know that many of you, like us, like to get up early on a weekend morning and read about or listen to content about Canada’s missing middle class.

What we’re reading and listening to this weekend

• Toronto Today details a new Pallas poll that surveys Ontarians on various issues. What caught our eye is the polling data showing that “lowering development charges” is the most commonly cited answer to the provincial government’s top housing priority. Despite both the Liberals and Greens include eliminating most forms of development charges in their platforms, Conservative voters are most likely to cite this as a priority. The Tories have not made any campaign promises to lower DCs, which have skyrocketed since the government was first elected in 2018.

  

• Also, on Ontario housing, the Globe and Mail analyzes the Ford Government’s record on homebuilding and finds it to be (mostly) lacking. Like our piece at The Hub, they wonder what happened to all of those $500,000 single-family homes the Premier promised back at Ford Fest in 2023.

• Friend of Missing Middle, Vass Bednar, can be found over at the CBC’s Front Burner podcast, talking about “Buy Canadian”.

• We’re admirers of both Michael Fenn and Tony Haddad, who discuss the financial stability of Ontario municipalities on the StrategyCorp podcast.  We would, however, question some of the assertions made on the podcast, including that Development Charges are about ensuring that “growth pays for growth”. In theory, yes, but in practice, not so much. They rightly point out that existing residents should not be subsidizing new builds. We would add to this that new homes (and their residents) should not be subsidizing existing residents; particularly when those new residents are more likely to be younger and less wealthy than existing residents. If the system is going to be redistributive, it should be from rich to poor, and not the other way around.

Where we made appearances last week

• We’re on the CBC podcast and radio show Day 6, talking about housing affordability and the WHAM Housing Metric.

• The Toronto Sun has a piece on missing middle housing, so who better to discuss that with than the Missing Middle team?

• Dale Smith, over at Routine Proceedings, gives a housing policy round-up.

• We made an appearance on the Ben Mulroney show, talking about Development Charges.

Missing Middle content you may have missed

• We E-mailed 224 Municipalities Asking For Data

• In 2005, There Were 41 Communities Where a Middle-Class Family Could Afford to Buy a Home. Today, There's Only Nine

• Are We in a Relationship Recession?

• Renaming Dundas Square Isn’t Housing Infrastructure

Milestones and a Thank You

We hit three milestones this week:

• 350,000 views of the podcast on YouTube.

• 100,000 podcast downloads on Buzzsprout.

• And at some point today, this Substack will hit 35,000 views in less than four weeks.

We want to thank all of you who have watched, read, and listened to our content, our project partners for making this possible, the University of Ottawa’s Institute of the Environment, which graciously hosts this small band of weirdos and misfits, and our policy cousins at the Smart Prosperity Institute, who share space with us in both the physical and virtual worlds. We’re a small team with a tiny budget trying to change the world (or at least our little corner of it), so we need all the support (and love) we can get.