The development industry is urging voters to judge municipal candidates by how willing they are to accommodate housing growth. In Richmond Hill, that raises another question: who should pay for the infrastructure that growth requires?
By City Desk
With Ontario’s municipal elections approaching, the head of the Greater Toronto Area’s development industry association is urging voters to make housing a central consideration when choosing their next mayor and councillors.
In a Toronto Star column published Saturday, titled “Why voters must think beyond housing promises,” Dave Wilkes, president and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), argues that voters should elect candidates who bring what he calls a “pro-housing mentality” to municipal government.
For Wilkes, that means more than candidates simply promising to build housing.
He argues municipalities should treat population forecasts as minimums rather than limits, plan infrastructure to accommodate more ambitious levels of growth, scrutinize bylaws and requirements that increase housing costs or slow construction, and avoid responding to infrastructure constraints by stopping development.
His clearest example involves sewers.
When sewer capacity limits development, Wilkes argues the solution should be expanding the sewer rather than halting housing construction for an extended period.
That presents Richmond Hill voters with a useful election question: if new development requires a major expansion of water, sewer, road or other infrastructure, who should pay for it?
The other side of ‘pro-housing’
BILD has also been a prominent advocate for reducing development charges, arguing that the fees governments place on new construction contribute to high housing costs and make projects harder to build.
There is a legitimate housing question here. Excessive fees and unnecessary regulations can prevent housing from being built.
But there is also a municipal finance question.
Development charges help pay for infrastructure associated with growth. Roads, water systems, sewers, community facilities and other infrastructure do not become cheaper simply because municipalities reduce the charges collected from new development.
If development contributes less, governments must either find another source of money, reduce or delay infrastructure spending, or shift more of the cost elsewhere.
That makes the debate more complicated than simply asking whether a candidate is “pro-housing” or “anti-housing.”
How much growth should Richmond Hill prepare for?
Wilkes also argues municipalities should be prepared to accommodate the highest reasonable population projections rather than treating official forecasts as limits.
For a growing municipality such as Richmond Hill, that could have significant consequences.
Planning for considerably more residents can mean increasing the capacity of water and sewer systems, roads, transit and other public infrastructure before all of that growth has actually occurred.
The question for candidates is not simply whether Richmond Hill should grow. Provincial planning policies already make substantial growth inevitable.
The more difficult questions are where that growth should happen, what infrastructure it will require, how quickly the city should build that infrastructure and whether the resulting tax base will be able to support its long-term maintenance and eventual replacement.
Is there another way to add housing?
Large developments are not the only way municipalities can accommodate additional residents.
Another approach is to allow more housing gradually throughout neighbourhoods that already have streets, pipes and public services.
That can include additional residential units, duplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, small apartment buildings and the gradual redevelopment of existing properties.
Incremental housing does not eliminate infrastructure constraints. Enough additional homes can eventually require upgrades too.
But it can allow municipalities to make greater use of infrastructure they already have, while adding capacity gradually as actual demand emerges.
For Richmond Hill, that raises another election question: should more of the city’s future housing growth be distributed incrementally across existing neighbourhoods, rather than concentrated primarily in large development projects and designated growth areas?
Questions Richmond Hill candidates should answer
Wilkes is right about one thing: housing should be an important issue in this municipal election.
But Richmond Hill voters may want a broader definition of what being “pro-housing” means.
Candidates could be asked whether they support faster housing approvals and fewer unnecessary barriers, but also how they would determine when infrastructure expansion is financially justified, how much new development should contribute toward those costs, and whether they support allowing more small-scale housing throughout existing neighbourhoods.
The important distinction may not be between candidates who support housing and those who oppose it.
It may be between different ideas about how Richmond Hill should grow, who should pay for that growth, and whether the decisions made today leave the city financially stronger decades from now.
Strong Richmond Hill organizer Saeed Vahid has also submitted a letter to the Toronto Star responding to Wilkes’s column, arguing that making a development project financially viable is not necessarily the same as making housing affordable or making growth financially sustainable for a municipality.
With BILD now explicitly asking GTA residents to consider housing when they vote, those questions belong in Richmond Hill’s election debate too.