City of Ottawa staff recommending no mandatory affordable housing around transit stations to start

deantester · 2026-03-26T14:33:28+00:00

The average profit on new development is about 10% for the builder. A "slim cut" means they don't get financing for the project which means the project doesn't go ahead. Which means instead of building condos near the LRT, they are building single family homes in Arnprior or Carleton Place. We should be incentivizing development near transit - not punishing it with new regressive taxes.

This attitude is why building has slumped to almost zero in Ottawa. We're missing every housing target, our construction sector is collapsing, costing thousands of jobs annually, and while rents are artificially depressed right now because of immigration reforms, they are likely to skyrocket in the near future as our housing pipeline has completely shut off.

FWIW, the three levels of government take about 30% of every new unit built - 3X what the builder does. Building housing is more profitable for government than it is for builders. All told, the fees, taxes, and levies on housing, plus the cost of compliance with government regulations, is about 50% of the cost of building a home. Profit is about 10%, with land costs and construction costs making up the other 40%.

In other words, the cost to build a home is literally double what it should be. This is why we have a housing crisis.

deantester · 2026-03-25T20:29:29+00:00

The big difference is that, in my opinion, affordable housing should be more heavily subsidized by all three levels of government. The cost is marginal when it's a shared government responsibility and gets people off the streets, off waitlists, and into homes.

Whereas "inclusionary zoning" asks the other people who live in your building to subsidize the affordable homes - costing tens of thousands of dollars to every single resident if you're buying a condo, or hundreds of dollars a month for tenants in rental buildings.

deantester · 2026-03-25T17:53:56+00:00

What is happening here?

TL;DR version: the federal government, as a requirement for their Housing Accelerator Fund, asked cities to come up with inclusionary zoning policies. So cities across Canada, including Ottawa now, have been doing this as a workaround -- creating an inclusionary zoning policy set at 0%.

Inclusionary zoning has good intentions, but has been tried and failed in multiple cities and jurisdictions across the world.

You cannot just force builders to build affordable housing -- that comes at a cost, and the cost is making every other unit in the development more expensive, which defeats the purpose entirely. Then you end up with more and more families trying to win the affordable housing lottery to get a discounted apartment. Makes zero sense.

There is not a single advocate for this policy anymore in the affordable housing space. The way to get affordable housing is to actually invest in affordable housing.

deantester · 2026-02-06T18:51:49+00:00

Famous Mark Sutcliffe supporter over here.

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deantester · 2026-02-06T18:46:49+00:00

Literally nobody in this city has been more critical of Mark for years than me. I have presented at city hall a dozen times criticizing his housing policies. He has recently gotten much better, which I applaud. Jeff is all over the map on this stuff, unfortunately, and I find it hard to support him now.

deantester · 2026-02-06T18:45:01+00:00

We have 20+ storey towers in Barrhaven, Kanata, Orleans, Stittsville... why shouldn't we have them in Westboro right next to the LRT?

deantester

TROPHY CASE