Ontario developers have launched a legal challenge against the City of Toronto, questioning its authority to impose construction “green standards”— rules to ensure new buildings are energy efficient, minimize emissions and accomodate pedestrians and bikes.
At the risk of looking like a corporate shill, I going to say the new green building standards are painfully strict. And while yes, that’s ultimately a good thing for the environment, it is a stick in the wheel to fixing the housing crisis.
I don’t have the numbers for all of Canada, but in Quebec the private sector supposedly builds about 50 000 to 60 000 homes per year, and to “stabilize prices” - not sure what that means, but I know it doesn’t mean reducing prices - would involve building about 150 000 units per year, FOR TEN YEARS. The govt usually pats itself on the back for building a few thousand units in a year, so we’re still basically short a hundred thousand units. I get that the govt should just step in a build, but let’s be real, it’s not going to happen. Even if it wanted to, the workforce would have to be about 3 times the size it currently is, which is another nightmare to deal with.
On a personal level, as a person who works in the industry, I’m not looking forward to the new standards. The new energy-saving stuff often require solutions that involve proprietary systems from large companies that are a pain to work with. Developers aren’t really going to be taking a cut anyway, they’ll just charge more, or starve the market until it’s profitable enough to build again. And then those propriety systems corpos are going to cash in, too.
I wish the govt would just put its pants on and build tons of affordable housing.