Ontario Liberal housing plan puts land speculators on notice

Plan will target underused lands like stripmalls and government properties

Nickel Belt – The Ontario Liberals have announced their plan to make housing more affordable and available to both renters and homebuyers – a key component of the party’s bold vision for Ontario, A Place to Grow. The comprehensive plan includes nearly forty policies that will make buying, renting, and living in a home easier and more affordable.

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The Ontario Liberal plan will build 1.5 million homes, including truly affordable homes like new social and supportive housing for people who need it. To help double the pace of homebuilding, the Liberal plan will create a new Ontario Home Building Corporation (OHBC) to finance and build new, affordable homes.

This OHBC will work with local communities, as well as not-for-profit and private housing partners to build and maintain affordable homes of all types, either as a primary financing source or builder. Any homes sold by the OHBC will be available only to first-time home buyers, and any proceeds will go directly back into creating more affordable homes.

The OHBC will have a mandate to immediately address the housing affordability crisis, cooling the market by ensuring homes – including affordable public homes – are built rapidly.

Ontario Liberals’ comprehensive housing plan to double the pace of homebuilding will also empower local governments to build more homes. As an important step toward zoning reform, an Ontario Liberal government will work quickly, together with municipal partners to allow homes with up to three units and two storey's to be built as-of-right across our province – with this permission also extending to secondary and laneway suites.

The Liberal plan for housing affordability will also:

• Ban new non-resident ownership and put a tax on empty homes;
• Introduce “use it or lose it” levies on speculators sitting on serviced land who have approved building permits, and use the funds generated to get more
  affordable housing built;
• Bring back rent control to all homes across Ontario;
• Enforce larger fines for persistently negligent landlords;
• Regulate home inspectors and make home inspections a legal right;
• Ensure buyers are refunded sooner for canceled housing projects, with significantly higher interest rates on lost deposits.