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Ottawa received more than $37 million in provincial funding last year for making a strong start on new homes — but this year, the city won’t get a penny.
In an email to CBC News, the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing confirmed that Ottawa will not receive its allocation through the Building Faster Fund due to missing its 2024 target for housing starts. The lost funding was first reported by Le Droit newspaper.
The fund is meant to reward municipalities that get homes built. Ottawa’s target for last year was 12,583 housing starts. But according to the provincial progress tracker, developers started construction on 7,871 homes in 2024, just 63 per cent of the target.
The city also missed its 2023 target. But the province allows municipalities to get a share of the money so long as they reach at least 80 per cent. Ottawa surpassed 93 per cent for that year and got a payout in April 2024.
Ottawa is hardly alone in missing the mark for 2024 housing starts. Of 50 municipalities listed on the progress tracker, 27 were below 80 per cent of their target.
Glen Gower, vice chair of Ottawa City Council’s planning and housing committee, noted that the city has no direct control over housing starts, instead relying on private developers. The city is doing its part, he said.
“Since January 2023, the City of Ottawa has approved around 55,000 new homes for construction, but that next step of getting shovels in the ground, that’s up to the development industry and they’ve moved slower than we would have anticipated,” Gower said.
He said the Building Faster Fund money is important because it helps fund the infrastructure Ottawa needs to support housing growth.
So far, Ottawa’s 2025 stats look more promising. There were 5,716 housing starts within city limits up to July of this year, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, compared with 3,243 during the same period in 2024.
Earlier this week, Rob Flack, the minister of municipal affairs and housing, signalled that changes could be coming to the program.
“As we move forward, we are going to be considering new ways to extend and improve the Building Faster Fund,” he told delegates to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario convention in Ottawa. “That includes ensuring the fund reflects the new market we are in.”
Flack said Ontario is facing a “very different” housing market compared to a few years ago, and blamed uncertainty for pushing buyers to stay on the sidelines.
Source: cbc
