More Homes Built Faster Act will have detrimental financial, heritage, and environmental impacts

The More Homes Built Faster Act (Bill 23) will have significant detrimental financial, heritage, and environmental impacts on Canada’s fastest growing community

East Gwillimbury Council says that the More Homes Built Faster Act is “egregious and insulting”

(East Gwillimbury, ON) December 7, 2022 – Canada’s fastest growing municipality today has concerns that the More Homes Built Faster Act will have a significant financial, heritage, and environmental impacts on the municipality.

East Gwillimbury anticipates that the Act could require the municipality to more than double property taxes to account for the decrease in development charges revenue that the legislation enables. As a result, the Town projects a reduction in revenue from development charges of between $40M and $70M over the next 10 years. This represents an overall decrease in revenues of about 30-40%.

East Gwillimbury supports the increase in housing supply and clearly met this goal as the community grew by 44% from 2016 to 2021, with over 3,000 building permits issued - it also adheres to the principle that growth pays for growth. Development charges that accompanied the housing supply during the municipality’s fastest growth period, pay for the roads, sidewalks, water and wastewater infrastructure, parks, trails, and other community amenities needed for families to thrive.

Among these amenities is the 85,000 sq. ft. Health and Active Living Plaza which is under construction and is slated to open in 2025. The More Homes Built Faster Act will result in a projected funding shortfall of 10% for facility construction costs because of the retroactive effect of the Act.

“It was only in September that we proudly announced that the Health and Active Living Plaza will be constructed at no cost to the taxpayer,” said Mayor Virginia Hackson. “Today we are facing the possibility of changing our zero-debt status and placing a greater financial burden on East Gwillimbury residents because of the Act and its efforts to transfer the cost of growth from developers to residents. We urge the province to repeal all provisions of the Act pertaining to development charges.”

While East Gwillimbury supports efforts to increase housing supply, reducing development charges will only transfer the cost of infrastructure from builders to homeowners and will further impact housing affordability and the municipality’s ability to afford the much-needed infrastructure to support growing communities.

A copy of the letter from East Gwillimbury to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is in the backgrounder. 

Review the background here

The Town of East Gwillimbury is Canada’s fastest growing municipality (with more than 5,000 residents) according to 2021 Census Canada data. The Town provides several programs and services to approximately 36,000 residents while maintaining more than 80 percent of its green space. To learn more about the Town, visit www.eastgwillimbury.ca

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For more information:

Meeta Gandhi, Director of Communications, Customer Service, and Diversity and Inclusion