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A Crown mortgage agency says it knows Windsor only had 346 housing starts last year — despite the city’s assertion it could be close to triple that — because it hires people to go count them.
“We employ field enumerators and they verify housing starts using building permits provided to us by municipality planning departments,” said David Harris, a spokesperson with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
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The City of Windsor said it issued permits for 1,154 new housing units last year, but it’s not clear how many of those units construction has started on. Local officials this week said construction likely began on “most” of those units, but the city does not track housing starts.
Controversy over housing starts and housing units erupted this week when federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser informed Mayor Drew Dilkens that the government was denying the city up to $70 million in federal money through its Housing Accelerator Fund.
The federal government launched the $4-billion fund in March 2023 to help cut red tape and fast-track construction of at least 100,000 new homes across Canada by 2025.
The cities that successfully applied to the fund did one thing Windsor city council would not: change its zoning bylaw to allow fourplexes on any residential lot. Dilkens said the refusal was about protecting and maintaining the character of neighbourhoods, and housing values for people who already live in them.
Windsor’s application included a proposal for densification along 47 km of transit corridors and more than 1,000 acres of land.
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On Thursday, MP Irek Kusmierczyk (L — Windsor-Tecumseh) took to Facebook to express his disappointment about the city’s stance.
“As a former city councillor, I appreciate the concern residents have over maintaining the character of their neighbourhood,” he wrote. “It is not that the other 30 cities and towns didn’t recognize and acknowledge the fear that residents have about fourplexes and about intensification.
“It is that the other communities chose to talk about it differently: to lead with facts and not with fear.”
He also argued that making fourplexes legal does not mean Windsor would have to brace for a “wave” of them. He notes that out of 90,000 residential lots in the city, only 26 permits for triplexes — currently allowed as-of-right — were issued in Windsor in 2023, and the majority of them were built around the university.
Fraser said in his letter to Dilkens on Wednesday that Windsor had stopped short of “best practices.”
He also stated that Windsor “only permitted” 346 new housing units last year, though that number actually refers to construction starts.
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“We don’t know if it weighed into their decision or not,” said Jelena Payne, the city’s commissioner of economic development and innovation. “But I will say I was little surprised to see it referenced.”
Fraser was referencing Ontario’s online housing tracker, which uses data collected by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
According to the CMHC, the City of Windsor had 346 housing starts in 2023, far short of its provincially set target of 953.
Payne said the city has reached out to provincial officials to address what it believes are delays in updates to the tracker.
Ontario set targets for dozens of municipalities to be eligible for funding through its strategy to increase housing stocks, called the Building Faster Fund.
The Windsor Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), which includes Windsor, Tecumseh, LaSalle, Lakeshore and Amherstburg, recorded 1,208 housing starts in 2023. If 346 housing starts for Windsor is correct, that means the county portion of the CMA would have had twice as many as the city last year.
The CMHC defines a housing start as the “beginning of construction work” on a building where a housing unit will be located. That means the concrete foundation has been poured or the construction equivalent for a building without a basement.
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The CMHC said it collects housing start data through monthly visits to sites for which permits have been issued.
“The Starts and Completions Survey is conducted through site visits,” the CMHC states on its website. “These visits are used to confirm that new residential units have reached set stages in the construction process.
“Since most municipalities issue building permits, they are used as an indication of where construction is likely to take place.”
In a media release Thursday, the City of Windsor differentiated between “housing starts” and “housing units,” which it is focussing on.
A single-family home is one housing unit. An apartment building has multiple housing units.
Payne said Thursday the city issued 482 permits last year for a total of 1,154 units. With that number of units, the city said it has exceeded its housing target by 21 per cent, or 201 units.
But given the demolition of 60 houses last year, the permits would actually amount to a net increase of 1,094 housing units.
“We’ve only seen a loss of approximately 60 units in our municipality, so it’s not a lot compared to the growth,” said Payne.
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While touting the number of permits it has issued, the city has not said exactly how many of those units have seen the start of construction.
Payne and John Revell, the city’s chief building official, both said Thursday “it would be most of them,” but they did not have the actual number.
Revell said the city doesn’t specifically track housing starts, but the number could be determined by manually going through the city’s inspection reports. He said that could not be done Thursday.
“There is a series of inspections during construction, so we know what’s happening from the inspection records,” said Revell.
He added it’s likely work has begun on most of the 1,154 units because most contractors don’t pull a building permit unless they’re ready to go.
“They don’t hand us a cheque for $40,000 or more just to sit on it,” said Revell. “So they’re going to start construction ASAP.”
— with files from Taylor Campbell
twilhelm@postmedia.com
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