On Friday, the Premier said that fourplexes are “off the table” because he is concerned about nearby neighbours shouting and screaming about traffic and shade. The Conservatives have spent the last six years accusing everyone in this room of being NIMBYs when the real NIMBY is sitting right there in that chair. The Premier is sending a very clear message—a very clear message—that first-time homebuyers don’t deserve to live in certain neighbourhoods.

So my question is to the Premier: Can this government reverse course and allow fourplexes, as-of-right, in their upcoming housing bill?

My question is to the Premier. Desjardins Credit Union just released a report showing short-term rentals are having a negative impact on housing affordability. The report found that neighbourhoods with a lot of short-term rental listings see their rents rise faster, have lower vacancy rates and higher home sale prices.

To increase the number of homes available for long-term rentals, Desjardins is calling for governments to crack down on short-term rentals in investment properties.

My question is this: Can you move forward on this simple request?

Back to the Premier: Justin is a University of Toronto student living in downtown Toronto. When his apartment was bought by a US investor landlord, he became a victim of illegal harassment to drive himself and his neighbours out of their homes. When his neighbours had given up and moved out, their landlord turned their homes into pricey short-term rentals where you can rent out one bedroom in an apartment by the week. That is the new reality for students in Toronto today.

Justin and his neighbours have called provincial bylaw officers begging for help, and no one has returned their calls. Can this government work with these tenants to enforce our rental laws?

My question is to the Premier. This month, the government doubled down on expensive sprawl. They’ve forced municipalities to open thousands of more hectares of farmland to development. They’ve eliminated density requirements in new subdivisions. And they’ve eliminated targets to build more housing in areas already zoned for development.

My question is this: Why is this minister doubling down on sprawl when there are better ways to build more housing?

Across Ontario, homeowners are seeing their property taxes go up and their services get cut. These tax hikes are going to continue if this government continues to build spawl, because sprawl is much more expensive for municipalities to service than building more homes in existing neighbourhoods.

My question is to the Premier: Why double down on sprawl when there are cheaper and more affordable ways to build the housing that we need?

The government’s Housing Affordability Task Force was unequivocal that access to land is not the reason why we are having difficulty meeting our housing supply targets. Southern Ontario has more than enough land available to build the housing that we need for current and future Ontarians in land already zoned for development.

Environmental Defence has done a study looking at people’s enthusiasm for increasing density, so building more townhomes, duplexes and triplexes in existing neighbourhoods, and mid-rise buildings across transit corridors, and their polling clearly shows that people are pretty in support of that. I also find that in my riding: People want their children to move out of their basement and live in the neighbourhood that they grew up in, and they understand that we have a housing affordability crisis.

When we’re talking about building permits, in the city of Toronto, they approve about 30,000 building permits a year, and about 15,000 are done, so there is a discrepancy there that I think needs to be addressed, at least in the riding that I represent.

Thank you to the member for Oshawa—

Interjection.

I move that, whereas all Ontarians have the right to adequate housing; and

Whereas to ensure an adequate supply of housing, Ontario must build 1.5 million new market and non-market homes over the next decade; and

Whereas the for-profit private market by itself will not, and cannot, deliver enough homes that are affordable and meet the needs of Ontarians of all incomes, ages, family sizes, abilities and cultures; and

Whereas the housing policies of successive PC and Liberal provincial governments have relied almost entirely on the for-profit private market to deliver new housing; and

Whereas these housing policies have focused on delivering profits for investors, rather than homes for people, and thus have failed to ensure that newly built homes are actually affordable and meet the needs of all Ontarians; and

Whereas these housing policies have failed to end exclusionary zoning, and have blocked access to affordable and adequate housing options in the neighbourhoods where people want to live; and

Whereas these policies have encouraged more speculative and market bubbles, and have driven up the costs of housing beyond the reach of ordinary Ontarians; and

Whereas these failed housing policies have put tenants at increased risk of rent gouging, eviction and displacement, and have threatened the inclusivity and vibrancy of growing neighbourhoods; and

Whereas these failed housing policies will sacrifice more irreplaceable farmland, natural heritage and greenbelt lands to costly and unsustainable urban sprawl, putting Ontario’s food security at risk;

Therefore, the Legislative Assembly calls on the Ontario government to implement a comprehensive housing plan that ensures the right of all Ontarians to adequate housing, including ending exclusionary zoning and enabling access to affordable and adequate housing options in all neighbourhoods; stabilizing housing markets and stopping harmful speculation; establishing a strong public role in the funding, delivery, acquisition and protection of an adequate supply of affordable and non-market homes; protecting tenants from rent gouging and displacement, and ensuring the inclusivity of growing neighbourhoods; and focusing growth efficiently and sustainably within existing urban boundaries, while protecting irreplaceable farmland, wetlands, the greenbelt and other natural heritage from costly and unsustainable urban sprawl.

Yes. It is necessary—non-market and market homes. Thank you.

What is also important is that we need to make sure that the homes that we are building are the kinds of homes that people can afford and the kinds of homes that Ontarians want to live in. So we’re not just building homes for investors; we’re also building homes—we are prioritizing building homes for people who live in Ontario and for people who are planning on moving to Ontario.

The federal government has made the decision to increase immigration rates. That is a good thing. And we need homes for people who are moving to Toronto and moving to Ontario so they can rebuild and build their lives here. It’s extremely important.

We called for in our election platform a commitment to engage in ending exclusionary zoning and moving forward on zoning reform to encourage the construction of missing-middle homes—those duplexes, those triplexes and those townhomes—in existing neighbourhoods.

We call, and we continue to call for, more family-friendly rent-controlled purpose-built rental. When you go to Toronto today and you look at what homes are available, you increasingly see homes that are 600 square feet in size. That’s the average size for a condo in Toronto today. You cannot raise a family and stay sane raising a family in a 600-square-foot condo. It’s not a sustainable or healthy way to live. We need to be building bigger purpose-built rentals and bigger condos—family-friendly apartments—in order to have homes for people that work for families as well. And we have excellent examples of that in University–Rosedale. The Manulife building on Charles Street is an excellent example of a well-made building with purpose-built rentals that families live in because they are larger in size—two-, three-, sometimes even four-bedroom apartments. These are the kinds of measures that will require government regulation to ensure that those kinds of homes are built.

We are also in support of opening up public land to build non-market affordable homes. Ontario has over 6,000 properties that have been identified as being available and worthwhile—like, you could actually build non-market housing on them, and the land is serviceable.

We’re also calling for a public builder to build homes for Ontarians at cost. It makes a lot of sense. It’s been done in other countries. It should be done here.

But it cannot just be about supply. It also needs to be about bringing in better protections for renters and clamping down on speculation.

This government’s track record on improving protections for the 1.4 million households in Ontario that rent has not been strong. This government has made a decision with Bill 184 to make it easier to evict tenants that have fallen behind on their rent, often through no fault of their own. They’ve made it so that they lose their right to return to the Landlord and Tenant Board if they’ve already had a hearing.

This government has also made the awful decision to end rent control on new buildings. The reason why that is very concerning is that it means that when a new renter—maybe they’re new to Ontario or they’ve just moved out of their home—they found a place, they move in and then very quickly they discover that they’re not protected by rent control, which means that they’re not going to have steady, small increases year in and year out of 1.2%—or in this case, for 2023, 2.5%. Their landlord could turn around and raise the rent to however much they want. The challenge with that is that renters cannot prepare for a $500- or $1,000-a-month rent increase, and that is extremely concerning. What it does also mean is that renters can be economically evicted, because they cannot afford the rent increase that could come at any time. That is deeply concerning. It certainly benefits investor landlords, but who it doesn’t benefit—who it hurts—are renters, many of them working Ontarians who are running our cities: our paramedics, our students, our paralegals, the people who work in our supermarkets, our child care workers, our teachers. They’re the people that struggle as a result of that.

It’s been very concerning over the last four years to see this government’s moves to make it even harder to rent in Ontario.

So what we have been calling for, and what we are urging this government to do—and the MPP for Parkdale–High Park introduced a measure today which is related to that—is, instead of allowing rent to exponentially increase, to move forward with rent stabilization, move forward with a plan to bring in vacancy control, so there is a cap on how much rent can be increased when a tenant leaves and a new tenant comes in, and also to bring in better protections for renters so that their home is properly maintained. This government has shown no interest in moving forward with measures that would allow renters to live in safe and affordable homes.

The other measure that we have called for, which this government has been very reluctant to do, is to improve the functioning of the Landlord and Tenant Board.

Interjection.