Greater Toronto Area, April 2, 2024 – The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) applauds the federal government for their housing supportive announcement earlier today and notes that the top up of $400 million to the Housing Accelerate Fund and $6 billion for a new Housing Infrastructure Fund is exactly what is needed to support housing all Canadians.
“Challenges surrounding existing infrastructure and building new infrastructure, particularly water and waste-water, have created significant development bottlenecks in the Greater Toronto Area,” said Dave Wilkes, President and CEO of BILD. “This commitment by the federal government to invest in critical infrastructure is vital to unlocking housing supply to meet Canada’s rapidly growing population, enabling more homes to be built and will help address the housing affordability crisis.”
The conditions in the federal government’s announcement that municipalities must commit to implementing a three-year freeze on increasing development charges will also assist in further addressing affordability. For years, BILD had been signaling that increasing development charges are contributing significantly to affordability challenges for new owners. Added costs from fees, taxes and charges from all levels of government, add 25% to the cost of an average single-family home in the GTA and are therefore driving up housing costs. Freezing development charges will stop the upward trajectory of these costs and provide relief to new home buyers.
BILD has urged all levels of government to prioritize investing the critical infrastructure that is needed to get shovels in the ground to build new homes to meet the ever-increasing demand. Coupled with the provincial government’s housing infrastructure investment announcement in late March, BILD acknowledges the tremendous commitment from the federal and provincial governments to enhancing housing-supportive infrastructure, particularly water and wastewater. It is exactly this type of support and this type of infrastructure that is needed to meet Ontario’s housing objective of building 1.5 million homes by 2031.
BILD looks forward to learning about additional measures to address housing supply and affordability, as further details of the federal government’s Housing Plan are released in the coming days.
With 1,200 member companies, BILD is the voice of the home building, residential and non-residential land development and professional renovation industries in the Greater Toronto Area. The building and renovation industry provides 256,000 jobs in the region and $39.3 billion in investment value. BILD is affiliated with the Ontario and Canadian Home Builders’ Associations.
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For additional information or to schedule an interview, contact Janis McCulloch at jmcculloch@bildgta.ca or
416-617-7994.
