Decay in Ontario: tent cities grow as housing starts drop lower in December
Doug Ford's PCs anxious to use Trump tariff panic as cover to avoid talk about an utter failure to meet their 2022 pledge to "get it done" on housing construction.
As a cold December turned to a colder January, tent encampments in town parks, along highways, under bridges and in the bush continued to grow as the Ontario PC government turned in another month of housing failure, according to data from Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation.
Only 4,945 housing units got started in Ontario during December, 2024. It was the lowest monthly result in nearly two years and the second worst result since Doug Ford’s PCs were re-elected in June 2022 on a pledge to “Get It Done.”
In the last Ontario election, just two years and seven months ago, the PCs promised to implement recommendations from their Housing Affordability Task Force to meet its target of 1.5 million new housing units by 2031, a pace of 12,500 a month.
Ford refused to adopt housing recommendations
But the PCs didn’t implement the recommendation and the housing didn’t get built. The government backed away from a key recommendation to require municipalities to make more efficient use of land around transit hubs, such as TTC and GO Transit rail stations.
Documents obtained through access to information laws by Global News show most of the plan was dropped after the premier was personally briefed on it.
The result is just 39.6 per cent of the province’s December housing target was met, falling 7,500 behind the required pace in just one month.
In 2024, the Ontario PCs intensified the housing crisis by falling 75,000 units off target. In 2023 the PCs missed targets by 64,000 units. Based on three people per unit, homes for nearly 140,000 Ontario residents didn’t get built in 2023 and 2024.
Other premiers “Get it Done,” but not Doug Ford
While Ontario’s housing policies left Ontario 7,500 units starts behind last month, in several other provinces housing construction was strong.
Ontario, at 16.1 million, is about three times larger than both B.C. and Alberta, which have populations of 5.6 and 4.7 million, respectively.
But against Ontario’s 5,000 units in December, British Columbia spurred over 3,700 units last month and almost 3,500 units were started in Alberta. In 2024, B.C. policies spurred over 43,000 housing starts.
And what is this nonsense about calling an early election to get a mandate from the people? Is this some deliberate attempt to bring confusion to the soon to be upon us federal election? Dougue had this election in mind long before Nov 5. He had already started bribing us with our own money and announcing big money tickets like expanding the Northland rail line further north and rushing through opportunities for his developer friends like Highway 413, I hope a bad luck move for him. He saw an opportunity to raise his profile by talking big about tariffs but hedging his bets by an early election just in case it all goes south on him, figuratively and literally. I’m still waiting for him to fix the Long Term Care situation as promised five years ago. Always an opportunist, but lousy on the follow through.
The bigger tragedy is that enough Ontario voters actually perceive Doug Ford and the PC to be for the people like Jagmeet Singh