Ford government to count long-term care beds toward housing construction goal

In a letter to municipalities in Ontario, the province's housing minister has suggested the government will count long-term care beds toward its goal of building 1.5 million homes.

Ontario’s housing minister is raising eyebrows after telling municipalities that long-term care beds could count toward the province’s signature promise of building 1.5 million homes by 2031, raising concerns that the Ford government is “watering down” the pledge.

On Monday, Housing Minister Paul Calandra sent a letter to Ontario cities laying out the specifics of a new $1.2-billion fund to entice municipalities to speed up housing development that included yearly provincial building targets as well as how the government’s success would be measured.

The letter states that in addition to newly built housing, the province would also start counting rental units, basement suites and long-term care beds toward the government’s adopted goal of building 1.5 million homes during this decade.

“Performance against these targets will be evaluated based on housing starts, as defined by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Starts and Completions survey, as well as additional residential units (for example, basement units) and other institutional housing types (such as long-term care bed) created in a given calendar year,” the letter said.

While the Ford government has pledged to build 30,000 long-term care beds by 2028, the beds were never attached to the province’s housing promise.

Mike Moffatt, with the Smart Prosperity Institute, told Global News the province is taking a “broad view” of what it counts as housing.

“Including long-term care beds in the housing start numbers basically waters down the targets somewhat. It makes the target less ambitious than it otherwise would be because you’re including this whole separate category.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford ran the Progressive Conservative re-election campaign in 2022 with housing targets at the heart of his promise. The PC leader pushed the construction of massive infrastructure projects and new homes as the issues that would define his party.