On April 28, 2022, the provincial government announced details of the 2022 Ontario Budget. The proposed budget makes housing issues a priority. Housing affordability challenges are top-of-mind for Ontarians as we head into the upcoming provincial election campaign.
Details
The following real estate-related initiatives were included in the budget:
- To support long-term solutions to address the housing crisis, the budget commits to delivering a housing supply action plan every year for the next four years with policies and tools that support multigenerational homes and missing middle housing.
- The government is planning to introduce a new tool to help municipalities accelerate planning processes. The Community Infrastructure and Housing Accelerator would streamline approvals that regulate the use of land and the location, use, height, size and spacing of buildings and structures to permit certain types of development. The intended result of this initiative is to help municipalities speed up approvals for housing and community infrastructure, such as hospitals and community centres, while increasing transparency and accountability. The Community Infrastructure and Housing Accelerator would not be used in the Greenbelt.
- The government is investing more than $45 million for a new Streamline Development Approval Fund to help Ontario’s 39 largest municipalities modernize, streamline and accelerate processes for managing and approving housing applications in order to increase housing supply.
- The budget commits to working with the municipal sector on developing a data standard for planning and development applications to help reduce approval timelines. Creating the Development Approvals and Data Standard for the province is a critical step in facilitating the digitization of land approval processes, helping to reduce timelines and allowing for data to be collected consistently over time. This would make the housing development approvals process faster and less costly for government.
- Ontario is investing $19.2 million over three years to help reduce backlogs at the Ontario Land Tribunal, as well as the Landlord and Tenant Board. This funding will increase the number of full-time adjudicators, increase resources for mediation, and resolve land use planning and tenant and landlord disputes more quickly. This will also allow the OLT to expand their digital offerings to further enhance efficiency and provide more e-services.
- The budget reaffirms the previously announced increase to the Non-Resident Speculation Tax rate to 20 per cent, and expansion of the tax beyond the Greater Golden Horseshoe Region to apply provincewide, and closed loopholes to fight tax avoidance, effective March 30, 2022. The tax applies to homes purchased anywhere in Ontario by foreign nationals, foreign corporations or taxable trustees.
- The budget commits to collaborating with municipalities to maximize the impacts of potential vacant home taxes on the supply of housing. The government will also work with municipalities to identify potential measures to discourage land speculation involving projects that are approved by the municipality but remain unbuilt by the developer.
- The budget announced the government’s plan to better protect consumers when they buy a new home by holding new home builders and vendors to professional standards; increasing fines to address unethical behaviour; and enabling Tarion to extend the warranties on unfinished items in a new home. In addition, the government is consulting on proposals to better inform and protect purchasers of new condominium homes by:
- Requiring key information to be provided, through a mandatory Condominium Information Sheet, to buyers of pre-construction condominium units as part of a purchase agreement;
- Increasing the amount of interest payable on deposits for the purchase of a new or pre-construction unit from a developer in certain circumstances, such as in case a project is cancelled; and
- Providing additional information about condo projects and cancellations to the Home Construction Regulatory Authority to post on the Ontario Builder Directory.