Join hundreds of fellow Ontarians committed to solving the housing supply crisis.
Join today and you could also win a $50 Gift Card.
Finding a home or apartment in a community you want to live in can be challenging. It can be even more challenging to furnish it and keep it up to date! That’s why we’re offering a chance to win a $50 Gift Card to help you to create your home in a community you love.
Learn more today:
Getting through 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t create the housing crisis, but it exposed a big problem brewing for years. An economic shock far smaller than the current situation would have upended Ontario’s rental housing market, and while the current situation persists, the effects will be harmful for everyone.
Learn more below about how to navigate the pandemic as a tenant or rental housing provider.
Why we’re in this spot.
A Supply Shortage
It’s a generally held position by economists that the most substantial way to lower or level-off rental prices is to increase the supply of housing. Any approach that ignores increasing supply creates a game of musical chairs–if there are not enough homes to go around, someone has to lose out.
Bureaucracy
Before shovels hit the ground, it can take years to get approval to build new rental housing in Ontario. It not only slows down the development of desperately needed housing, it also adds extra costs. Fees and delays can add up to $66,000 to the price of a new home, in a high-density building, which translates to higher rent too.
Our Zoning Rules
Across Ontario, zoning and land use rules determine the quantity, type and size of new developments urban planners and municipalities are allowed to approve in Ontario. These rules are often a complicated mixture of provincial and municipal policies, which make it difficult to build more, higher-density housing.
What’s at stake
A lot, for both renters and rental housing providers. Municipal and provincial governments are finding it hard to agree on effective housing policies and how to tackle the housing crisis. But, something we can all agree upon, is we must increase our housing supply in the province and find ways to help everyone thrown into a difficult position by the pandemic. There’s one thing we can all get behind. Everyone deserves an affordable, quality place to live.
Are you ready to be an advocate for more housing?
Stories & Solutions
Learn more about innovative, equitable approaches being used around the globe to keep rental rates in check abroad and what rental housing providers are doing right here in our home province to do the same.
About our campaign.
Let’s Build Ontario is a campaign, which promotes innovative and equitable solutions to Ontario’s housing crisis. We need to find ways to ensure everyone has a safe affordable place to live, while maintaining the economic diversity and historical significance of our neighbourhoods; for the sake of everyone, both tenants and rental housing providers.