What makes Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver so expensive to live in? Analysts and pundits point to issues such as foreign investment and speculation, as well as housing supply restrictions. But, recent findings from a British Columbia-based expert panel show that the housing supply in Vancouver is uniquely less responsive to changes in demand than other places in North America.

It’s a characteristic that the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) shares, says David Amborski and Frank Clayton, researchers at the Ryerson University Centre for Urban Research and guests on a recent episode of the Ready to Real Estate podcast. They joined host and TRREB Chief Market Analyst Jason Mercer to talk through their report “The Holy Grail: Accelerating Housing Supply and Affordability by Improving the Land-use Planning System,” which examines the findings of the BC expert panel through a GTHA lens. Read on to see their recommendations for improving a system that can better answer the housing supply needs of our region.

Part of the lack of responsiveness by current land-use planning systems is quantitative: there is a dearth of quality, frequent, and fulsome data coming from Ontario municipalities. While the province requires cities to report on available land for housing development annually – and has since 1993 – only three municipalities do so with any regularity. And the data they provide is unique to each city, meaning that the datasets are hard to compare. Amborski and Clayton stress the need for standardized collection and reporting of available development land so that the region as a whole has a better picture of what is needed to bridge any shortfalls in supply.

Ottawa is a great example of seeing the holistic view in practice. While housing prices have gone up in Ottawa as well, they’ve done so at a much more sustainable level than other regions in Canada. Amborski and Clayton point to the fact that their municipal council is responsible for both the existing metropolitan area as well as the surrounding greenbelt, meaning that they have an overview of all of the land available for development and can more nimbly respond to increased demand for housing.

It’s not enough to report on what’s already available

Amborski and Clayton also recommend that demand projections need to change to reflect market realities. Forecasting in the GTHA currently posits that we’ll need 50,000 new units a year in the next decade. However, this would just be meeting future growth; it doesn’t address the backlog of demand that already exists in Ontario. It’s likely that 25 percent more, over and above that projected number, is needed to stabilize housing prices relative to inflation and increase competition for buyers. This is called an affordability adjustment: increasing the supply beyond the bare minimum needed so that there are vacancies – and choices – in housing for buyers and renters alike.

In addition to updating how planners measure and forecast, qualitative methods of land-use planning also need to be overhauled to suit current realities. NIMBYism, or resistance to development in certain neighbourhoods that are frequently (but not always) dominated by single-detached housing, is allowed to flourish in part because of a flawed consultation process that is project-specific and seeks community engagement too late. Often, it’s only the people living close to the project that respond, negatively, and not the people who might benefit from the new development. Amborski and Clayton note that consulting the public at early stages of rezoning on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis allows for more voices to be represented and the increased likelihood for the needs of all people in the city to be addressed.

For a deep dive into “The Holy Grail” report, don’t miss this episode of Ready to Real Estate.