The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Do Ontario's New Housing Incentives Go Far Enough?

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Ontario and the federal government are rolling out new housing measures, including HST rebates on new homes and billions in infrastructure funding to cut development charges. Will these moves actually bring down prices and speed up construction, or are deeper structural fixes still missing?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and series that made navigating life in Ontario a little easier, TVO's commitment to lifelong learning has stood the test of time. Renew your support now and help preserve this legacy. Visit TVO.com.me slash 2026 renewal to make your donation today. Ontario has a housing crisis. Look, that probably doesn't come as a shock to you. We've been hearing it for years now. And the province has vowed to tackle it.

Back in 2022, it said it was aiming to get 1.5 million homes built by 2031. If you do the quick math, that would have meant 175,000 housing starts a year. So how's that going? Well, according to the 2026 budget released last month, We're not going to hit this year's target, which was already far lower than 175,000. Last year, the province predicted almost 75,000 housing starts for 2026. Now, Ontario is gunning for around 65,000. The government says it isn't all that concerned. Here's Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Rob Flack.

As long as we sell more homes than we did the month before than we did the year before and we see a progressive change upwards, I'm happy. And the government also says it's taking steps to support more housing. The province and the feds recently announced a new $8.8 billion agreement that would, quote, reduce and maintain low development charges and introduce a, quote, harmonized sales tax rebate. According to the housing minister, this will make a big difference. Reduced HST, lower DCs, that's transformative. So just how transformative will this be?

We look at whether these new moves will be enough to get more homes built and make them more affordable. This is the rundown. There's one thing everyone seems to agree on. Ontario needs more homes, but will lower development charges and an HST rebate jumpstart home starts. Mike Moffitt is the founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative and co-host of the Missing Middle podcast. Ian Underwood is the CEO of Habitat for Humanity GTA. Mike Collins-Williams is the CEO of the West End Home Builders Association. Annalise Cuglieria Allegrelli is vice president of research and communications at Royal LePage.

Great to have you all three in our studio. Great to have Mike Moffitt on the line from Ottawa. Now, there is a lot happening on the housing file. So we are going to start with the first announcement of the HST rebate. Mike, I want to start with you. What would an HST rebate be trying to accomplish in today's housing market? Well, we're in a situation right now where the price of resale homes has reduced significantly, and that's a good thing for affordability, but the costs of building a new home hasn't.

So we're in this kind of weird equilibrium where the cost to build a home is too high relative to prices. Because the HST only applies to new homes, it acts as a construction tax. So this move reduces anywhere from about 10 to 13% on the price of building a new home in Ontario. So it makes those homes cheaper and hopefully makes them cost competitive against resale so we can start building some more homes. Annalise, we know buyers have been cooling off ever since, you know, the Bank of Canada, increased interest rates post-COVID. are there buyers in this market? And if there are, where are they? There are absolutely buyers in this market.

And where they are is they're the sellers, actually. So we know that a vast majority of sellers are also trying to buy in the market. What's happened recently, which is very different for the Ontario market, is that they are waiting to sell their homes before they buy. Whereas in a typical market where things move a little bit more at a normal pace, sellers would have no problem purchasing a home. closing in 30, 60, 90 days, and knowing that they're going to have enough time and enough buyers to come and take their home off their hands in the meantime.

Today there's a lot more anxiety and what's really causing a sort of cog in that wheel is first-time buyers are not entering the market at the same pace. And so that's sort of slowing down what would typically be the normal transition of housing. Does this incentive do anything for that? We believe that it will. For some, we know that the fundamental. of the housing market have been very much in the favor of buyers. As Mike pointed out, housing prices have come down significantly over the last couple of years.

Interest rates have also stabilized dramatically, so that's not the barrier anymore for first-time buyers. What's really holding them back is uncertainty about the future, about the economy, possibly about their jobs, depending what sector they're in. And something that the market can't really factor in is emotions and worry. But for those that have been, you know, ready to enter, just haven't necessarily felt. the pressure, an incentive like this, could certainly help them enter the market if it's the right kind of housing that they're looking for. All right. Ene, you work in the affordable home space.

So I need to ask, does this 13% discount, we'll call it, on a new home being built in these days, make it more affordable in your view? Well, I think, so starting from our perspective, we're trying to deliver assisted homeownership for a step up to people who aren't able to have the down payment or the income to get that the combination of things they need to buy a home. So we, Habitat for Humaneity has been advocating for a number of years about HST because we are paying that HST. It's not our buyers.

We as a housing charity have been paying that HST. So when that came on for us, that was, we got that relief last fall when the first time home buyer relief came in because that means all of our buyers are host first time home buyer so that drops our prices and enables us to build more homes. But this broadening of HST for all homes is from our perspective very positive because it means that some households who might look to Habitat for Humanity for Help are now closer to being able to buy a market home. It also means households who may be in a habitat for Humaneity Home or maybe in a more affordable rental home that weren't able to make that leap before.

are one step closer to making that leap. And when they move or when a Habitat family moves out of a Habitat home, it means we're freeing up homes all the way down that spectrum of affordability for people who really need it. Before I get to Mike, I want to look at a graph from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. It shows Ontario Housing starts from 2015 to 2025. The black line here represents units intended for homeowners such as freehold, and the blue line shows condo starts, both bouncing up. and down throughout the decade. And at the bottom, you can see rental starts in red, steadily

climbing over the decade. And for the first time, you can see just to the far right in 2025, rental construction actually surpassed both homeowners and condos. So Mike, I got to ask, we're seeing this dive here, a bit of a dire situation when we look at condos and sort of home starts here. Does the HS rebate, HST rebate, do something for that? It's really a game-changing tax change. You know, I've been in this industry for nearly a quarter century, and this is the most significant tax cut on new housing in that last quarter century. And I really do believe that this is going to shift the market this spring and later into the year. And, you know, we have conversations around housing and focus on the end user, as we normally should. But I think that it's also

important to recognize the economic driver of the industry. It's a very important. It's a about half a million jobs, both direct and indirect, across Ontario. And as you see that chart with the housing starts dropping, those housing starts translate into jobs. You know, people that are trying to put food on the table, be it a skilled tradesperson, be it an engineer, a planner, folks in the financial sector. And unfortunately, the last couple of years, our sector's been just hemorrhaging jobs. So this is a signal from the federal and provincial governments that we've really starting to shift and hopefully we've now hit bottom and that graph is going to start curving in the right direction. Builders and developers need to

hit a certain threshold when it comes to pre-sell, 60, 70% before they can start actually building. If buyers don't start showing interest, what happens? We need the buyers to start showing interest and this really is that moment. I think government's the last number of years as we've sort of been navigating this housing crisis. They've done a few things, but it's really been tinkering around the edges. This move on the HST, it's up to $130,000. For a lot of families and folks trying to get into the housing sector, into that market, that is a life-changing amount of money because it's not just the $130,000. It's a 25-year mortgage with that amortized over a long period of time. So this really is that signal that if you

been sitting at the sidelines if you're wanting to get in, but you just haven't quite been able to make that gap. This is the most significant tax change, as I said, in the last quarter century, and it's also time limited. So there's a period of time over the next year to sort of jump in, hopefully get onto that housing ladder, or for move up or move down buyers, this is that opportunity to buy a new home, and ultimately we want to get shovels in the ground and keep people employed. All right. I want to change gears a little bit. Let's talk about development charges. Mike Moffitt, we are hearing that development charges will be sliced in half for developers in certain municipalities. Can you do some math for us? With the HST rebate and the

charges being halped, how much cheaper could a new home be in this province? It could be up to $200,000 by our calculations and even kind of more modest homes. So we We were looking at a town home, a new town home in Oshawa, a place where you might want to raise a couple of kids. Our calculations are that we could reduce the price of that from about $730,000 down to about $615,000. So that's a 16% reduction. And that's a combination of DCs. That's about 50,000 taken off of DCs. The rest comes from HST.

And there are a lot of families out there who wouldn't qualify for a mortgage at 730, but might be able to in that 615 to 620 range. So this should help those families. Obviously, I think there's more to do because there's a lot of middle class families who still can't qualify at 615, but this could be a very transformative change. Do you think this is what's been holding up when we talk about supply? Well, yeah, absolutely. I think the taxes on a new home absolutely have a big role. to play in a reduction in supply. The city of Toronto, for instance, development charges on some types of homes have increased by about 5,000 percent in the last 25 years. So, you know, you go to Timmy's,

you buy a coffee in 2000. If those coffee prices had gone up the same ratio, you'd be paying about $66 bucks for Timis today. You'd be paying like $1.3 million for an entry-sized family sedan. So absolutely, you can't have taxes and other fees go up, you know, 50-fold at a time where, you know, wages aren't really increasing all that much. And Elise, from what you see, from buyers, sellers, is there interest right now for homes in that $1.5 million minus the $200,000 that Mike had done for us in that math there? Is there a demand there? There's demand for homes at every price point in every segment of the market, for sure. We know that first-time buyers are struggling to get into the market into the size of home that matches their lifestyle.

So if we look back a couple of decades ago, the first-time buyer was, you know, average age was in their mid-20s. Today it's 36, 37 years old. So chances are they're part of a couple. Maybe they have a kid. Maybe they have a dog. Maybe they work from home a couple days a week. The specs of a starter home have changed today. So to Mike's point, it becomes more costly to even enter the market because you're not necessarily looking at that point in your life for a 500-square-foot condo.

You're looking for something a little bit larger. So it's really important as developers take advantage of these incentives that they're not only building more supply, which we desperately need, but that they're building the right kind of housing that end users can grow into. All right, Ian, there was a lot there. Let's get your two. Yeah, well, I was going to say a couple things. So just picking up where Annalisa's left off about building the right kind of homes. these, the HST exemption is only for owner occupied homes.

So that also will get at, so developers can only build things that they know families and households will want to buy. So that's an important nuance. The second thing going back to the numbers, Mike was talking about, is there's a tendency among some members of public when they hear about this, HST, they hear about the development charges to say it's just a giveaway to developers. But it's really important to understand here. Developers cannot afford to build homes at the price that families can afford to buy them. And those big increases that Mike talked about, the problem was, as a society, we allowed our governments to increase those two particular charges well beyond inflation. And so more than anything, that was us saying, we're okay with saddling first-time home buyers who are predominantly the next generation.

young families with the cost of a whole lot of things we need in society. So we got this wrong over the years, and now it's taking kind of big moves on the part of government, big courageous moves on the part of government to fix it. And I think that's what's really being encouraging about these last two weeks with these two big announcements that will not fix everything because the gap between what most households can afford and what developers or a nonprofit like us can afford to build is still very significant for many households. But these are good, big moves. All right. With that, I feel like I have to come to you, Mike. Can we build homes that are affordable? With these moves, I think yes. You know,

it's really become a crisis of a cost to build and to the points that Inge just made earlier. right now or up until these announcements, about 25 to 30% of the cost of a new home was just straight up taxes from all three levels of government, whereas 10 to 15 years ago, it was closer to 15%. So we've had a run-up in development charges, as Mike Moffitt illustrated before, you know, where I'm from in Hamilton,

even just in the last five years, they've increased 87% or across the GTA over the last 10 or so years, it's up around 300%. So there's been a run-up, and then the HST, if you're taking the HST, that 13% or so 15 years ago on a $400,000 home, it's still 13%.

But the total quantum is very different than when you're talking an $900,000 home. So what this does is it lowers the price floor of what builders or developers need to charge, essentially to be able to produce that home. You know, you think of a factory creating widgets. Ultimately, what new housing is is where we're assembling homes for people on a piece of land.

And if the cost to actually produce that product exceeds what people are able to afford, able to pay, that's sort of the crisis that we're in right now. And what this will do is ultimately reduce that floor and allow more supply to be built. that people can afford. And hopefully we're going to build a lot more housing in the next couple of years and get people back to work.

All right, Ian, you provided a graphic of the housing continuum. Let's have a look at that. From left to right, it starts with homelessness, moves through shelters, transitional, social, and affordable rental housing, with people bunching up, as you can see in that graphic. We can see that there is a gap between market rental housing and market home ownership.

home ownership. What is that gap? Well, it's a lot of what we've talked about today. And what we were trying to reflect in that visual is, first of all, we need more of every kind of housing along that total continuum. Specific to the space I occupy, which is the kind of yellow and orange bands on there, we need to double the amount of affordable housing in this country just to be at the G7 average. And so what the graph is trying to visualize is first we get bunched up at every level that people can't move out of supportive housing, then they can't move out of rent geared to income housing because the next level isn't available for them. And then, you know, the big gap that is hurting all of us is that jump between rental and being able to own a home and the stability of homeownership. So the things we've talked about today are, as I said, big steps towards building a bridge in that block.

black space. We need to build a bridge between those pieces. So these get a long way on the bridge. Again, it's important to recognize there's a lot more pieces needed. Someone recently said to me a phrase of a single leaf provides neither shade nor shelter. And so the housing crisis is like that. We need to layer in a lot of leaves. Some of them are very boring and boring to talk about. So the Ontario government last Monday, same day the big announcement of the development charges, had a new bill, Bill 98, lots of technical, boring stuff, but that's all about how do we decrease the red tape and the time to approval, which for people in my world, in Mike's world, is critical of just, of just how do we reduce the cost and time to get a shovel in the ground and start building

the homes that people need. Mike Moffitt, I'm going to get you in on here. when I'm looking at this graph, this glaring black hole, it screams the missing middle to me. Is that what this is? Yeah, absolutely. You know, we can think of the missing middle as a housing type, you know, kind of medium density. But it's also, you know, missing part of this ladder that existed, you know, just 20 years ago when I bought my first home, that we are seeing, you know, parents or kids live with their parents into their 30s, you know, sometimes going on 40, because they can, you know, can't afford to purchase a home on the market or even rent a home on the market. So I completely agree with Ian that we need everything on the spectrum because it does get that bunching up. I think one of the great things around this HST move and the DC move is it's going to help what I call kind of second time home buyers. So there are folks who may have a small condor unit like that but need to

move into something larger to raise kids. They're going to be able to move out of that and then put their existing home up for sale for, you know, that 24, 25 year old coming out of college starting their career. So this really is a spectrum. And, you know, if you've got stuck on one part, you know, that affects the entire chain. All right. Before we shift to the type of homes that we want to build, let's get my... Yeah, if I can jump in there.

I think what Ian and Mike so eloquently described and what this, chart really shows is that housing really is a continuum. And if you think about it as a ladder, people typically move up and down the ladder. You know, you move out of your parents' place and you might be in a cheap basement apartment. You're trying to get into a nicer market rental space and eventually hop into homeownership, maybe a very small condo and move your way up. And you can kind of think about it as climbing a ladder. And what's emerged over the last decade or two, And we didn't get into this housing crisis overnight. It took a couple decades of maybe some poor public planning, public policy decisions in taxation.

But each rung on that ladder started stretching further and further and further away. And essentially the continuum broke down and people got stuck on certain runings of the ladder. And if they're not able to move up, then that means somebody, another step down, can't step into that space either. So what the announcements, whether it's HST, development charges, or Ian mentioned Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, there's a number of elements in there as well, designed to speed up planning approvals. That the hope is, and what all of these announcements that all three levels of the government are doing, is hopefully bringing those rungs a little closer together and helping to unstick where people are. And if we can get a housing continuum that works for everybody, people will be able to move up and down.

All right. Well, let's talk about the types of homes people would like to live in. Annalise, Royal Page did a survey last fall, found that 54% of first-time home buyers in Ontario plan to purchase a single-family detached property as their first home. Do you think buyers would be interested in a different type of housing, something other than a single-family detached home or condo if builders and developers could come up with a different solution? Certainly. I think when we speak to our agents right across the country, not only in Ontario, something that is a common thread is that single family detached are, have always been and probably will continue to be the most desirable type of home. But as first-time buyers, I think this goes back to my earlier point, they're looking at detached homes because they're entering the market that much later in life. So they need more space. And that needs to match where. they're at that moment in their life. But if we build more missing middle home, as Mike Moffat referred to it as sort of that medium density home. So we're looking at row homes, attached homes, even stacked towns, as long as they have enough space where a family can grow into it, have a kid or two, and have some working space, maybe a backyard.

I think that's going to allow them to at least enter the market, even if they don't stay in there as their forever home. but I think what Ian said earlier was spot on. We need all kinds of housing types right across the board so that everyone can enter at where they're at in their lives. The key there for a lot of families is it doesn't necessarily matter whether it's a single detached, a townhome, a stacked townhome. For families, sort of the acronym we use is 3BGB, 3 bedroom ground-based,

and that's really what young families are looking for. and it might not be the first home that a first time buyer gets into, but that's sort of that aspirational space that if you're going to have a growing family, you're looking to have those three bedrooms and it doesn't have to be necessarily a big lot, but that little patch of grass

or that little patio that you can put a barbecue, that's ultimately what a lot of folks in Ontario. Are developers going to build those, though? That is what we're trying to do. There's a wide diversity of things that builders and developers build, but I think that is sort of the sweet spot in the market going forward. It's not necessarily all single attached homes,

and it's not necessarily all condos. It's focusing on expanding that area of the market, and that's hopefully what some of these announcements are going to help with. If I can just piggyback on something ENZ earlier, I know you said it's sort of the boring details, but it is so important to outline that it's not only reducing costs for developers, it is reducing timelines, and what that will allow builders to do is react,

quicker to the current needs of buyers, and it will mean that we're not solving today's problems five years from now. If we can solve them within 12 to 24 months, we'll be able to sort of react better to what buyers actually need. Okay. Dean, we've heard that land is not really the issue here.

We've got HST at the moment gone. Development charges for some municipalities will be reduced. What do you think is the solution here? Well, I'm going to stay on land where you started and kind of pick up on what Mike Holly said. Another important dimension of this is, as Canadians, we do need to redefine what home looks, our own image of what home looks like, because land is less of the issue, but is still incredibly expensive and most importantly, incredibly scarce. So denser build forms that may be, you know, a six-story mid-rise.

There's a lot you can do with six-and-eight-story mid-rise to create great family-living experiences. communal spaces, grass. It's not your own, but it's what you're all collectively sharing. And so there's a nuance here that is also part of embracing a different kind of future of what our neighborhoods look like. And that's also for people who have had the privilege of having the big detached home and the grass around them in a neighborhood where every house looks like that, my generation in particular, you know, has to more fully embrace much more diverse neighborhoods in terms of the diversity of housing choices that are there, not just for young families, but so that I can retire in my neighborhood in a smaller, you know, two-bedroom, single-story,

up on the eighth floor somewhere. So we need to do much better than we have done of embracing that. And Mike picked up on multi-level collaboration. We need to enable, empower, encourage, and applaud our three governments or four, when they work together as they have done on these last couple of announcements. All right, Mike, I'm going to get, Mike Moffitt, I'm going to get you in on this. What are the solutions here when we talk about, you know, what sort of eames laid out here? Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, we do need to look at these land use issues. A big one is building code that once a structure gets above a certain size, above about 600 square meters, it goes into a different section of the building code, which has a lot of restrictions and a lot of requirements that we don't see around the world. You know, one of the things I get asked a lot is, you know, well, families in Europe live in apartment buildings. Why, you know, why are we so against that in Canada? I'd like to point out, well, every one of those family-friendly European apartment buildings would be illegal to build in Canada. they would violate the stair, you know, the stair, the building code stair regulations, the elevator

regulations, and so on. So we need to, we need to look at building codes. We need to look at approvals processes. And you mentioned the sort of factory built homes. One of the things that factory built approaches require is standardization across municipalities. And that way, if you are building factory built homes, you'll know, you will know that you can sell them all across the province, if not all across the country. All right. We are going to unfortunately have to leave it there. There is a lot to talk about, but I'm sure this is a story that we will continue to talk about.

We are going to have to leave it there. Mike Moffitt, really, really appreciate your time. Ian Underwood, Mike Collins-Williams and Annalise Cugliera Aligretti. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your insights. Thank you for having. I'm Jan. Thanks for watching The Rundown.

What topics would you like to see us tackle? Send us your suggestions at rundown at tbO.org or leave us a comment on YouTube. Until then, I'll see you tomorrow.