Ontario to count student residences as homes to attain housing target

(Aanchal Nigam / Red Maple)


Image: Unsplash/ Representative

The Ontario Government has expressed its interest in counting student residences and retirement spaces in order to attain the 10-year housing target of building 1.5 million homes.

The government expressed its interest in a letter sent to the City of Mississauga in March-end after it received the request to change the manner in which the housing in municipalities are counted, CTV News reported citing the letter.

Housing Minister Paul Calandra said in the letter that his office is looking at ways to track “other institutional types of housing” as it directs all resources to achieve the housing goal.

Calandra wrote in the letter, “We will continue to explore data sources for tracking the numbers of other institutional types of housing such as student residences and retirement homes for future program years and commit to engaging municipalities on the same.”

Under the 2021 pledge made by Progressive Conservatives to build 1.5 million homes, the province has been using housing starts to calculate the progress.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has defined a housing start as the “beginning of construction work on a building where the dwelling unit will be located.”

Ontario’s own count suggests that 109.011 new homes were built in the province last year including 9,835 long-term care home beds, which the government is choosing to count as housing. However, this move has drawn criticism from the opposition which says that the measurements would be flawed.