City Badly Misses Housing Targets: STANKOVIC
Ottawa is sorely below its housing targets for new units but nobody at Ottawa City Hall seems to be that worried about it.
Planning committee in February received a staff information report providing an update on the City’s Residential Approval Pipeline. The pipeline was established in response to Ottawa City Council’s directive from 2022 to track residential unit approvals, measured in terms of issued building permits, and to monitor the city’s progress in meeting the targets for new housing units established by the province under its Building Faster Fund announced in 2023. In order for municipalities to secure funding, they must achieve at least 80 per cent of their annual target.
The committee meeting, I was left a little dumbfounded about the presentation and discussion when the item came up on the agenda. There wasn’t any, absolutely nothing. One would expect that, given that the city has a both a housing supply and a housing affordability crisis, there were be discussion around the city’s performance in meeting its target commitments. I went back to the previous pipeline update which was presented at a committee meeting of 2024 and once again, there was zero discussion.
The accompanying staff report didn’t really ease my amazement. It basically provided a description of the trends in housing starts, the number of dwellings approved under various planning applications (permissions) and residential building permits. The report contains no substantial analysis of how the trends were meeting the various targets committed to by the city, what factors were influencing the extent to which the city was meeting or not meeting its targets, how the city compared to other larger Ontario cities or what the implications are if the city does not meet its targets.
The staff report does state that, according to the province’s housing tracker, the City’s total increase in housing units for the first 3 quarters of 2024 was only 44 per cent of the target set for 2024 (the tracker has since been updated to include October showing that the progress indicator now stands at just under 48 per cent. In comparison, Toronto’s percentage was almost 78 per cent.
The city is also participating in CMHC’s Housing Accelerator Fund program that also includes annual housing targets. The city’s pipeline report states that about 68 per cent of the 2024 year-end target total has been achieved for the first three quarters. The housing performance metric used in the CMHC program is building permits issued by the municipality.
To top it all off, the conclusion made in the report was that “staff will continue to track… residential development indicators and report back to the planning and housing committee on a quarterly basis.”
Say what? The real conclusions should have been:
1) The city is will not meet its committed housing targets for 2024 under either the provincial or CMHC funding programs including the 80 per cent requirement established by Ontario; and,
2) The city is at real risk at losing its funding which in turn will significantly reduce the city’s ability to increase housing supply and improve housing affordability.
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“The report contains no substantial analysis of how the trends were meeting the various targets committed to by the city”. It seems the work from home, copy and paste staff are not up to the task!
Building permits are a leading indicator. Occupancy permits indicate how many homes were completed. A meaningful analysis, read something that would provide council with sufficient information to make informed decisions, would involve both elements, with an elapsed time factor built in.
Consideration should be given to generating and maintaining a ‘continuity schedule’. A grid that presents along the columns the number of building permits by type of residential structure (single family, row homes, lower density, higher density) issued by month. For rows, present the number of occupancy permits, again by type of residence. The closing balance would show the ‘inventory’ of building permits issued but not completed.
A second analysis should present the lag time between when a site plan is approved, when the building permit is issued and when the occupancy permit is issued. It matters because the nature of the density of the structure impacts the construction time.
As an example, the property adjacent some friends’ home has a single family dwelling under construction. Less than two months ago, excavation for the foundation/basement started. As of earlier this week, the walls are up, the roof is on, the windows and doors have been installed and the exterior cladding is underway, as is the plumbing, ventilation and electrical work (i.e. the elements that go in before the drywall). Probably faster than tract housing, but the reality is that a single family dwelling can be completed in four months.
In contrast, about three years ago two high rise buildings were started in Centrepointe. It took about a year from when they started digging the hole for the foundation and parking garage to when they reached ground level. It was more than another year to complete the structure and remove the outside crane. It will be at least another year before the interior work is completed. Typical elapsed time is three and a half to four years.
A single report that states the number of building permits issued over a specified time period does not convey sufficient information regarding expected completion. Nor would a report that only presents occupancy permits.
The two reports together, would provide council with far better insight into what is expected to be achieved (occupancy) relative to what has been achieved to date. They would also provide a predictive tool. For example the two high rises I cited above will likely have occupancy permits issued in Q4 of this year or Q1 of next year.
This is not rocket science. It is not leading edge. It is not next generation. Continuity schedules have been around since before I started by career more than four decades ago. The difference is that I spent my career managing businesses where insights into what has happened and is likely to happen was critical. In contrast is the dearth of people within city hall, staff or council, who have any meaningful experience in understanding the fundamental dynamics of what they are supposed to be managing.
I suspect that the staff report complied to the letter with the instructions they were given when they were told to deliver these quarterly updates. If someone doesn’t ask the right questions, they will not get any information from staff other than precisely what was requested. This is particularly the case when the information is not positive.
If, for example, no analysis was asked for, none would be provided. That still doesn’t excuse councillors not questioning staff at the meeting, especially when not meeting certain quotas will mean a loss of funding we desparately need to build housing in this city. Both the staff and the committee members failed their responsibilities.
Bear in mind that the provincial target of 151,000 units is probably double what the Official Plan forecasts would say we need in the target period. And the last I saw, Ottawa’s actual population was less than the Official Plan forecast. In the end, what can the city do other than approve housing proposals and issue permits to build? If the numbers above are correct, perhaps the industry isn’t into building empty units.
John,
I see two issues here.
First, the City looks at total population without seeing how many of those people are housed. If Joe’s bed for tonight is a park bench somewhere within the city, he is part of the ‘population’ figure but not the ‘housed’ figure. I know of one couple with two kids who are ‘living’ in three rooms in her sister’s basement after they returned to Ottawa when the husband got a better job opportunity. Even with a larger income, they can’t afford anything that’s more permanent or suitable.
Second, are the units being approved, and eventually built, the right ones for the residents of the city who need a place to live? A one-bedroom high rise apartment doesn’t meet the needs of a family with three kids. A $400,000 condo isn’t the answer for a single person making minimum wage. This mismatch in both the size and price of the units being built with the actual people who live in the city that need housing means that units sit empty and people live in over-crowded, inappropriate settings or stay with their parents long after they should be independent.
We know what the average and median incomes are in the city. Depending on your family composition, they don’t allow many people to pay the rents or martgage payments that are now the norm. And heaven help you if you’re on a fixed low income such as many of our pensioners, people living with disabilities and those receiving other benefits such as social assistance, EI or Workers’s Comp.