The Mayor’s Speech Today On Homelessness

These are Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s speaking notes on homeless released by the office of the mayor:

—

Good morning; thank you for being here today. Bonjour, merci d’être ici aujourd’hui.

We all know that like many cities across Canada, Ottawa is experiencing a housing crisis. Housing has become too expensive for too many families. Le logement est devenu trop coûteux pour trop de familles.

I speak to residents all the time about their struggles and their anxieties. I know many people are astonished at rising rent prices. I know many parents worry their children will never be able to afford a home. The rising cost of housing is one of the reasons that the demand on food banks is higher than ever before.

The numbers are clear. In just six years, the average resale price of a home in Ottawa has gone up by more than 50 percent. Average rent has risen by 30 percent. These costs are rising faster than incomes, and it’s unsustainable. Ces coûts augmentent plus vite que les revenus des gens, et ce n’est pas viable

That’s why housing has been a top priority for me and for my colleagues on city council. C’est pourquoi le logement est une priorité pour moi et pour mes collègues du Conseil municipal.

Since the start of this term, we’ve approved more than 60,000 new homes.

But an approval isn’t everything. Too many of those projects aren’t getting built, or they aren’t getting built fast enough. There are many reasons. High interest rates, a slow economy, and rising construction costs are huge factors.

And those factors are beyond our control at city hall. We don’t set interest rates. We don’t control market forces.

Nous ne décidons pas des taux d’intérêt. Nous ne contrôlons pas les forces du marché.

But there’s no question that city hall has played a role. We have to own our part of the problem. Nous devons assumer notre part du problème.

We hear all the time from homebuilders about just how hard it can be to get to a “yes” on a responsible housing proposal. They talk about how information is asked of them too early in the process for them to have answers, how it takes multiple rounds of comments back and forth to move a file forward, and how disagreements between city departments leave them stuck and feeling like there’s no way forward.

A recent application to build hundreds of units of missing middle homes was delayed for months because of a disagreement about a zoning interpretation.

When months and months are added to the process, that increases costs substantially. And that sometimes makes it unaffordable for the project to move forward.

The Auditor General recently released a report that found that “bottlenecks and inconsistent expectations across City departments remain and have resulted in increasing overall development review timelines.”

I want to thank the Auditor General for her work and for making her findings so explicit. We need to be accountable for our role in the housing crisis. And we need to fix it.

It’s not easy, because there are good reasons why we have rules. Our professional city staff do their utmost to make sure new homes are safe, that they fit within their communities, and that any development prioritizes the public over developers.

Nevertheless, we need to do our part. We have to own our part of the problem, and we have to own our part of the solution. We don’t control every part of the housing process. But it’s time for us to do a lot better in the parts we DO control. Il est temps que nous fassions beaucoup mieux dans les aspects du processus de logement que NOUS contrôlons.

It’s time for us to start saying “yes” to housing.

That’s why today I’m introducing my Housing Action Plan. Aujourd’hui, je présente mon plan d’action pour le logement.

This plan sets a new ambition for city hall: to be a much more housing-friendly city. In fact, I think we should strive to make Ottawa the most housing-friendly city in Canada.

What does it mean to be housing-friendly? It means we’re making it easier to build homes, not harder. It means we’re focused on how to build more homes in Ottawa, instead of letting unnecessary procedural hurdles get in the way. It means we’re saying no to unnecessary delays, and we’re saying yes to housing. Cela signifie que nous disons non aux retards inutiles et que nous disons oui au logement.

Earlier this year, with the support of city council, I asked a group of housing experts, including homebuilders, to tell us what needs to change. I asked staff to work with them and conduct deep research into options for solutions, including by looking at what’s happening in other cities.

I asked these experts and staff to present me with bold and innovative ideas that would make the City of Ottawa a partner, rather than an impediment, to building more homes, to building homes faster, and to building homes cheaper.

The Housing Innovation Task Force has been working since April, and today, we’ve received their report. I want to thank Debbie Stewart, our general manager of strategic initiatives, for co-chairing the task force.

And I’d like to thank all the members of the Task Force who lent us their time and expertise to help us shape our ambitious plan.

The recommendations of the Housing Innovation Task Force are a cornerstone of the new Housing Action Plan.

The Task Force’s message was clear: building homes has become too slow, too expensive, and too complicated.

We’re going to take their advice and change the system. Nous allons suivre leurs conseils et changer le système. And through the Housing Action Plan, we’re going to go even further. We’re going to remove barriers. We’re going to speed up approvals. We’re going to make it easier to get shovels in the ground.

In fact, we’re going to take more than 50 different actions to make our process more efficient, lower costs, and change our culture.

This is, quite simply, the most ambitious housing plan in our city’s history. It’s the biggest overhaul of our planning process ever. C’est la plus grande refonte de notre processus de planification jamais réalisée.

The Housing Action Plan is built around five key themes:

One: Simplify and speed up approvals. Simplifier et accélérer les approbations.

We’ll cut red tape, end unnecessary rules and studies, and standardize agreements so we can move shovel-ready projects forward faster.

Two: Build a pro-housing culture at City Hall. Favoriser une culture pro-logement à l’hôtel de ville.

This means moving from a process-oriented approach to a results-oriented approach. We’ll resolve conflicting policy priorities and give staff every tool and authority necessary to say “yes” to responsible development.

Three: Lower costs and fees. Réduire les coûts et les frais.

We will pause, reduce, or be more flexible on fees and charges.

We’ll pause fees like community benefit charges for the next five years, immediately reducing costs on multi-residential units by 4% of their land value.

We’ll also allow development charges and other upfront costs to be deferred, interest-free, until much later in the building process. And we’ll keep working with our federal and provincial partners to find ways to reduce development fees by funding infrastructure in other ways.

We’ll waive some fees for non-profit affordable housing projects. And we’ll handle legal agreements with more speed and flexibility.

Four: Strengthen Affordable Housing Development. Renforcer le développement de logements abordables.

We are already making historic investments into affordable, supportive, and transitional housing.

Earlier this week, we set an ambitious goal: to eliminate youth homelessness in Ottawa by 2030. But we’re going further than that. We will work with the affordable housing sector to rapidly scale up development of purpose-built affordable units.

Ottawa will also make strategic use of public lands for responsible affordable and supportive housing development, just like we are doing at 1245 Kilborn Place.

And we will work with our federal partners to scale up the number of affordable homes being built on federal land. I discussed this with the Prime Minister on Sunday and we agreed to work together on this important priority through Build Canada Homes.

Finally, five: Unlock urban intensification?and Transit Oriented Development.  Favoriser l’intensification urbaine et le développement axé sur le transport en commun.

We will take big steps to encourage more residential development downtown. This includes improving our approach to conversions and immediately waiving some of the fees to make conversions more viable.

These are just some of the substantial moves that will make a real difference for getting more homes built faster.

And let me be clear: we intend to move quickly. If the recommendations are approved by city council on October 8, we’ll implement 40% of the recommendations effective immediately. Si les recommandations sont approuvées par le Conseil municipal le 8 octobre, nous mettrons en œuvre 40 % d’entre elles immédiatement.

Another 40% of the recommendations will be considered by city council over the next year.

This includes:

Updating outdated secondary plans

Reviewing the entire development approvals process to make it faster and simpler

Creating accelerator programs for office-to-residential conversions, missing middle housing development, and additional residential units, and

Taking a full look at municipal costs and fees, including development charges and park-related costs, to get homes built at lower costs, improve supply, and ultimately, make the market more accessible.

The remaining recommendations will follow, including exploring how we can use AI to speed up the development process.

So that’s the plan. But here’s some good news. The team at the city has already been making changes and improvements while the plan was being developed.

And we’re already starting to see progress.

From 2022 to 2024, there have been more than 28,000 housing starts in Ottawa. That’s 95 per cent of our target for that period. Housing starts have jumped more than 50 per cent this year compared to the same period last year.

That’s the highest increase of any major Canadian city.

And remember that example I gave earlier about the disagreement over a zoning definition? I’m pleased to say that development was recently approved at Council, enabling hundreds of new homes to be built.

We still have a lot to do. But these quick wins represent momentum that we can build on.

And there are other big steps ahead of us.

In January, Council will consider the most ambitious and pro-housing Zoning By-law in the City’s history. En janvier, le Conseil examinera le règlement de zonage le plus ambitieux et favorable au logement de l’histoire de la Ville.

The new by-law will enable substantially more housing per hectare, particularly near transit.

And it will be dramatically less complex. The new by-law moves from 600 different development standards in residential zones across Ottawa down to 30, making it easier and more permissive to build.

That means more homes being built in the missing middle. That means a wider range of housing that fits comfortably into existing neighbourhoods. That means encouraging more density near transit. Cela signifie encourager une plus grande densité près du transport en commun.

In addition to the new zoning by-law, we’ll continue to work with the federal government to unlock public land for housing.

The Housing Action Plan is a generational effort to fundamentally change our approach to housing.

It’s the most ambitious municipal housing plan in Canada.

It’s how we move from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.

It’s how we do our part.

With the Housing Action Plan, we are saying yes to housing. Avec le Plan d’action de logement, nous disons oui au logement.

We’re saying yes to housing for families. We’re saying yes to housing for seniors. We’re saying yes to housing for young people. We’re saying yes to affordable housing.

As long as I’m Mayor, I will keep fighting for more homes, for faster approvals, for less process and red tape, for stronger communities, and for more affordable housing.

Tant que je serai maire, je continuerai de me battre pour plus de logements, pour des approbations plus rapides, pour moins de démarches et de bureaucratie, pour des communautés plus solides et pour un logement plus abordable.

Thank you. Merci

For You:

Another First From Mayor Mark Sutcliffe

Suspend E-Bus Purchase, Lo Says

Our New Road Paint Doesn’t Work: PATTON

Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Kanata Lands Case

It’s Not My Transit System … It’s You

Bookmark The Bulldog, click here