Ontario housing starts tumble, developers warn situation will ‘get worse before it gets better’

globalnews.ca:

Two years and multiple housing laws since the Ford government promised to build 1.5 million new homes in a decade to solve Ontario’s housing crisis, key indicators suggest home construction is grinding to a trickle.

The number of housing starts in the first half of 2024 has lagged behind the previous year, while June saw a 44-per cent drop year-on-year. At the same time, new home sales — which can predict future home construction — are also falling.

Data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shows that, between January and June, 36,371 new homes were started in areas of Ontario with more than 10,000 residents. Those figures were a 14-per cent decrease from the previous year.

Last month, the CMHC reported particularly dire figures. In June 2023, 10,114 new homes were started in Ontario, while this year that plummeted to 5,681.

“Doug Ford may like to wear a hard hat and hold a shovel, but he certainly is no homebuilder,” Ontario Liberal housing critic Adil Shamji said, pointing to a series of housing laws passed by the government in recent years.

“What do we have to show for it? We certainly don’t have more homes. In fact, this data shows that we’re building less — it’s damning.”

Since the 2022 election, the Ford government has focused much of its energy on a plan to solve Ontario’s housing crisis by building 1.5 million new homes by 2031. That relies on an average of 150,000 new housing starts every year, with the government hoping to see higher yields in later years.

Last year, for example, Ontario set itself a target of 110,000 new housing starts. After adding long-term care beds and basement units to CMHC’s data, the province said it had achieved 99 per cent of that goal.

Its hopes of hitting