Report ranks Windsor 88th in Canadian housing performance

A new report puts Windsor’s housing performance near the bottom of the pack among Canada’s largest 100 cities and towns in a review of construction starts over the last six years.

On Monday, the PLACE Centre Smart Prosperity Institute released its study which identifies Ontario communities as falling behind on homebuilding.

“Why we put together this report was not to sort of name and shame the lower performers, but instead to look at who’s doing relatively well and see what lessons we can learn,” said Mike Moffatt, the institute’s founder and Senior Director of Policy and Innovation.

The review takes stock of home construction from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2024.

It shows provinces like Quebec and B.C. leading the way on home construction. La Belle Province tops the list in Canada for housing performance, meeting the G7 average of 47 housing units per 100 persons increase in population. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, sits eighth in the country, at 28.6 units per 100 persons.

Windsor built 15.2 homes per 100 persons over the six years the report tracked.

Moffatt said the lacklustre performance is not entirely City Hall’s fault, noting weaker demand in Windsor compared to its faster growing peers in the Greater Toronto Area contributes to fewer housing starts; however, he argues some of that lacklustre performance is due to homegrown issues — relatively high development charges compared to peer cities and restrictive zoning policies chief among them.

Housing Starts Per 1000 Residents - July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2024, Municipalities With Census 2021 Populations Above 220,000. (Source: PLACE Centre Smart Prosperity Institute).

The city has waived development charges for an area bordered by the Detroit River, Prince Road, Tecumseh Road and Pillette Road.

Elsewhere, fees to build a single-detached home can range from $43,372 to $67,994 per unit. Semi-detached and row housing have charges ranging from $24,387 to $38,231 per unit.

The city also declined to relax its zoning by-laws to allow four-unit-by-right zoning in its application for up to $70 million from Ottawa’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), as the Trudeau government aimed to entice municipalities to ease restrictive zoning.

Moffatt argued Windsor is losing development dollars to neighbouring communities in Essex County, like Amherstburg, which he said has performed comparatively well on housing, although is not represented in the report.

“It’s not good for Windsor’s tax base if folks are moving out to Amherstburg, paying their municipal taxes there, and then driving into Windsor every day for work. That they use Windsor’s roads and municipal services, but aren’t paying municipal taxes,” said Moffatt. “I think those are the things cities have to consider.”

Moffatt, who has become a staunch advocate for housing policy reform to address the ongoing affordability crisis, said “transformative” change and a “war-like” effort are required to course correct homebuilding in the province.

On Tuesday, the PLACE Centre released a secondary report on housing, identifying four keys to improve housing affordability.

A recent report from the Financial Accountability Officer of Ontario (FAO) shows housing construction in the province is well off the pace of meeting the Ford government’s goal of building 1.5 million homes by the end of 2031 — even after the province started counting long-term care beds and Additional Dwelling Units (ADU) toward its target.

The FAO calculates it would require a 74 per cent increase in the pace of housing starts since 2021 to meet the 2031 promise — representing 5,500 starts above the 1973 quarterly housing starts record.

City responds

The City of Windsor argues it has made significant adjustments to its processes for housing construction, pointing to a banner year in 2024 thus far.

The city has achieved 130 per cent of its provincial housing target of 1,083 for 2024 with 1,412 starts completed.

“The City of Windsor has been making incredible strides in our continued efforts to grow housing supply in Windsor,” said Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens, in an email to CTV News. “We have implemented the Housing Solutions Made for Windsor plan — a comprehensive, strategic and balanced approach aimed at increasing the supply of housing at an accelerated pace.”

Dilkens points to a healthy pipeline of future housing construction in Windsor with 1,410 new residential units receiving permits and a further 2,024 units receiving planning approvals as of Oct. 31.

The city values the construction tied to residential permits at $325,877,550.

“The City’s Building and Planning departments have implemented several innovative measures to enhance and streamline the application and permitting process,” said Dilkens.

The city’s overall target toward the province’s 1.5 million housing goal is 13,000 new homes by 2031.