Doug Ford, he is the Premier of Ontario, he stopped by in Brampton; this Friday! The reason for his visit? Announcing a whopping $25.5 million funding from the provincial government in appreciation of the city’s commendable housing performance, in 2023.
In 2023, the Brampton city got a pretty large chunk of change from the province for its star performance in regards to housing – we’re talking multi millions here!
This Friday, Doug Ford, Premier made it all official. He announced that Brampton! Yes, Brampton, will be getting its hands on a cool $25.5 million from the province. This lucrative amount is a reward for achieving 7,028 dwelling units, hitting a cool 85 per cent of the city’s housing target for 2023. Quite a feat!
Brampton’s progress in building new homes is absolutely mind-blowing,” said Ford at the announcement on Friday morning, adding that other municipalities should “follow suit.” I mean, he’s kind right, why not?
Mayor of Brampton Patrick Brown excitedly stated, “We’ll do everything, like, we possibly can to speed things up, cutting through the red tape and we’re so eager to keep doing whatever it takes to meet the provincial targets,”
Brampton could have aimed for a target of 8,287 units in 2023. This total combines new home starts, additional residential units like garden and basement suites, and also new and upgraded beds in long-term care homes, according to province’s releases. With 7,028 units, the city did fall short,, by over 1,200 units of this target. But hey, it’s still a lot!
The housing start data and information about additional rental units come from nowhere else but the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), while the long-term care bed numbers directly come from the Ministry of Long-Term Care.
Annual housing starts in Brampton have seen a great increase! According to the CMHC figures, we’ve seen the numbers double from 1,450 in 2019 to a whopping 2,903 in 2023.
So where does Brampton’s share of $25.5 million come from: well, it’s all thanks to the province’s fantastic $1.2 billion Building Faster Fund. This fund can also be used for housing-related infrastructure and other measures to support community expansion stuff.
The funt was announced by the province in August last year, after they altered the formula that determined how cities collected development charges and cash-in lieu of parkland from builders. Some municipalities, however, did express concern that such changes might cost them millions in anticipated revenue that they had earmarked for building housing and community infrastructure.
Brampton may not had not met the neat 8,287-unit target – but that’s no problem! The province was generous enough to note that any city that managed to achieve at least 80 per cent of their housing target would still be considered for funding.
In another news, Toronto did particularly well; on Thursday, the city received a massive $114-million cheque from the province for going above and beyond their housing targets.
Apparently, Toronto managed to kick start a total of 31,656 housing in 2023 – according to a media release directly from the city. This exceeds their initial target of 20,900 for the previous year by quite a lot!
Looking ahead, Brampton has an ambitious housing target of 113,000 units for the next decade. That’s roughly equal to spawning a gargantuan figure of around 11,300 per year!
