Why Ontario's 1.5M new homes target looks increasingly out of reach

The new Ontario budget foresees a slow pace for housing construction over the next three years, making it increasingly unlikely that Premier Doug Ford's government will achieve its target of 1.5 million new homes by 2031.

The budget forecasts 71,800 housing starts in 2025, followed by 74,800 next year and 82,500 in 2027.

There have been 260,000 actual housing starts in the three years since the target was set. So if you add in the projections for 2025 and 2026, the province would only be about one-quarter of the way toward its goal at the end of next year, the halfway point of the target timeline.

To put it another way: construction in the final five years would need to average about 218,000 homes annually, more than double the pace of the first five years.

"The government should acknowledge that it's clearly not going to make that target," said Eric Lombardi, president of More Neighbours Toronto, a volunteer-run housing advocacy organization. 

Lombardi describes the budget's measures on housing as ineffective and says that suggests the Ford government "has given up on its own housing goals and has no interest in really achieving its prior promises on this file." 

The biggest new measure related to housing in the 2025 budget involves adding $400 million to existing programs that fund municipal infrastructure for housing, such as water mains. 

There's also a commitment of $50 million over five years to boost the province's capacity in modular housing  construction.

The budget includes no changes to the centrepiece of the government's housing plan, what's called the Building Faster Fund. Announced in 2023, it promised to provide $1.2 billion over a three-year period to municipalities that achieve annual targets for new home construction starts. 

The province distributed only $280 million from the fund in 2024, its first year, after more than half of Ontario's municipalities failed to hit the housing start targets in 2023.

The government hasn't updated its housing start tracker since October 2024. As of that point, nine months through the year, only 11 of 50 municipalities had reached their annual benchmark.

CBC News asked a spokesperson for Housing Minister Rob Flack to explain why the tracker does not show the final figures for 2024, and when the numbers will be made public, but did not receive a response.

On budget day, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy said the government remains committed to hitting the 1.5 million new homes target.  

"We're not going to relent on trying to achieve that goal," Bethlenfalvy said at a news conference.