Ottawa city council approved a “bold” housing strategy aimed at cutting red tape, simplifying rules to speed up approvals while deferring development fees to spur housing construction in the capital. Read MoreAbout 40 per cent of the recommendations from the city’s housing innovation task force will take immediate effect.
About 40 per cent of the recommendations from the city’s housing innovation task force will take immediate effect.
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Ottawa city council approved a “bold” housing strategy aimed at cutting red tape, simplifying rules to speed up approvals while deferring development fees to spur housing construction in the capital.
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Council adopted a series of recommendations from the city’s housing innovation task force, with about 40 per cent of the recommendations taking immediate effect and another 40 per cent to be implemented by the spring of 2026.
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Mayor Mark Sutcliffe read a sampling of the praise the plan had earned from multiple sectors of the housing industry after councillors voted in favour of the strategy, along with several amendments, during the Oct. 8 council session.
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The Evening Citizen
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“It’s not very often we see that kind of support from across the spectrum, from people who are working on homelessness in our community to people working on affordable housing to people building market homes,” Sutcliffe said.
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“This is a very positive step, and I’ve heard very encouraging and positive feedback from across party lines, from across the spectrum in the community, since the (planning and housing) committee meeting last week.”
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Jason Burggraaf, president of the Greater Ottawa Homebuilders’ Association, said he was optimistic the strategy’s immediate changes would help stimulate construction with developers now revisiting stalled projects under a new fee structure.
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“You can pencil in all the input costs — the land, construction, labour — and then we know that potential projects can’t come to market at a price that people will be willing to pay, so it’s really exciting to see council addressing this issue with this first tranche of changes,” Burggraaf said.
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“I’m optimistic that everyone is going to sit down and recalculate those projects now, given these new inputs, and I’m hoping we can see more projects moving forward. And not only projects moving forward, but they will have more units in them.”
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Some of the immediate measures contained in the 53 recommendations in the housing action plan involve deferring fees, aiming to “ease cash flow and enable projects to stay viable during costly construction phases,” according to the memo this week from Debbie Stewart, general manager of the city’s strategic initiatives department.
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