Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has released a housing plan that he says will make Ottawa the most housing-friendly city in Canada by making it faster and cheaper to build homes.
The plan would waive or pause several fees the city charges developers, while aiming to make regulations more flexible.
Sutcliffe called it “the biggest overhaul of our planning progress ever.”
The centrepiece of his announcement on Friday was a housing acceleration plan with 53 recommendations that will come to council in early October. It stems from the work of a housing innovation task force and staff at city hall.
“The housing acceleration plan is a generational effort to fundamentally change our approach to housing,” Sutcliffe said.
“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.”
‘Time for us to do a lot better’
Sutcliffe acknowledged that interest rates, construction costs and other macroeconomic factors can create headwinds for housing development beyond the city’s control, but said that’s no excuse for inaction.
“We have to own our part of the problem and we have to own our part of the solution,” he said. “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.”
Last year, Ottawa fell behind its provincial housing targets, with just 7,871 housing starts. This year, progress has been faster, with 6,338 up to the end of last month.
One of the biggest moves in the plan is a five-year waiver on community benefit charges that developers pay when building multi-residential projects with at least 10 units or higher than five storeys.
Jason Burggraaf, CEO of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association, said those charges can be significant — at four per cent of the value of the land.
“That’s a big chunk of money in any kind of project, so it’s really inhibiting those projects from moving forward at all,” he said.
But Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper questioned that idea, warning that it could end up being a costly giveaway. He said communities rely on those charges to fund everything from road improvements to recreational amenities and affordable housing.
“These are all the kinds of things that the city doesn’t otherwise have money to do after, frankly, years of austerity budgets, but they’re the kinds of projects that we need to do to offset the effects of gentrification that intensification is having, and just to make living in a denser taller neighbourhood a little more livable,” said Leiper, who is also the planning and housing committee chair.
The housing plan actually authorizes city staff to return community benefit charges the city has already collected.
Leiper said council should either reject the fee waiver or run it over a shorter period as a pilot, not five years.
“Five years from now, we have no idea today whether or not they’ll need that additional help to make projects financially viable. We don’t know what the macroeconomic conditions will be,” he said. It could be that if we do a five-year holiday from community benefit charges, five years from now, that is just gravy that flows to the developers’ bottom line.”
Despite those reservations, Leiper said councillors should pass most other recommendations.
“On a cumulative basis, I think they make a really big difference,” he said.
Under the plan, developers will get breaks from still other fees. They won’t have to pay cash to support parkland when they do office-to-residential conversions for the next 18 months, for example. Non-profit affordable housing projects would escape planning and building permit fees.
The plan also looks to defer development charges until homes are actually occupied, something the provincial government is also pushing forward in its Bill 17. Those charges fund infrastructure. Previously scheduled hikes to building code fees will also be deferred.
‘Move shovel-ready projects forward fast’
But cost isn’t the only factor. The plan also aims to make the approval process easier. It would look at reducing the number of studies required for projects, developing streamlined legal agreements and even piloting the use of artificial intelligence “to expedite approvals.”
“We’ll cut red tape and unnecessary rules and studies and standardize agreements so we can move shovel-ready projects forward fast,” Sutcliffe said.
His plan also calls on the city to change its culture to prioritize housing over other conflicting priorities.
Burggraaf greeted the prospect of that shift. Though the housing market is now in a low, he said the city can build a foundation to help developers build quickly when the upswing comes.
“Getting planning staff, especially, to feel they can say yes or that they do the proper risk management on applications overall so that things can start moving forward in a much speedier manner — that’s really a big cultural change that’s going to be the biggest difference overall,” Burggraaf said.
“When it’s time, and buyers are coming to the door wanting to buy, we can get to 12,000 or 15,000 starts without issue.”
