Mississauga’s unique housing needs poorly served by plans from all three major federal political parties

Municipalities across Canada have for two decades been caught between two extremes in the housing market, with powerful developers exerting their influence to build pricey supply that has fueled handsome profits, while a lack of low cost options has left millions of residents reliant on local supports including subsidized housing that cities cannot afford to deliver.

Mississauga officials have for a decade called for missing middle housing: three-to-five storey buildings in complete communities featuring a range of sizes, all the local services and amenities nearby and transit at the doorstep.

The sprawling subdivision housing built across Mississauga in the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s, is too expensive, too big and too carbon intensive for many younger buyers in today’s market. Many high rises are too small and don’t offer what young families need. Mississauga has for a decade pushed for missing middle housing. 

(Image Daniel Parolek, with additions by Tuf Lab, Michael Piper)
 

To create the 3.5 million homes young families and recent graduates need, Liberal leader Mark Carney is promising a GST cut on new homes up to a million dollars and a federal housing corporation to spark a housing boom that Canada has not seen since the end of the Second World War. 

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, is vowing a similar tax cut on new homes, scrapping the GST on those up to $1.3 million. During an announcement Thursday he promised the Conservatives will incentivize municipalities to cut development charges. 

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has outlined a plan to build three million homes by 2030 by speeding up construction, protecting existing rentals and training workers in the industry. If elected, Singh has promised to replace the Liberal’s Housing Accelerator Fund with a permanent $16 billion national housing strategy that will give provinces and municipalities the tools to build homes faster, protect affordable rentals and lower costs.

None of the major parties have offered voters detailed plans around their vague housing proposals: how would the Liberal federal housing corporation work with developers, or municipalities; how would any of the parties' plans cover hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure costs to support up to 3.5 million new homes; and beyond a GST cut that would do little to help low-and-middle-income earners, how will the Conservatives get houses built?

Mississauga has outgrown its past as neighbourhoods are now stretched right to the city’s boundary. No more room for the old sprawling subdivisions. Not much appetite for massive executive houses. Little desire for carbon burning spaces that need constant heating or cooling. And most of all, a dwindling ability to pay for the multi-million-dollar homes built over the past few decades.
 

When Mississauga became a city in 1974, there wasn’t much of an urban footprint; Square One Mall, top, was surrounded by farm fields. But developers quickly filled the city in with large subdivision houses, which few want or can afford today.

(Top, City of Mississauga; bottom The Pointer files)

Across Ontario, Mississauga has seen the second highest number of single family homes shift from what was already considered “deeply unaffordable” two decades ago, to “completely unattainable,” according to a recent report from the Missing Middle Initiative. It is also among the most glaring examples in Ontario of municipalities that have “become completely out of reach for middle-income families… while house prices have more than doubled since 2005” despite inflation-adjusted wages in Ontario only rising by 16 percent since the same year. 

Traditionally built on the dream of single family homes, the City of Mississauga is shifting to diversify its housing stock.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files) 

According to the City’s housing task force report, Partners in Homebuilding, the average price of a detached home in Mississauga is now $1.4 million while a condo costs $600,000 on average. Rent for a one-bedroom condo is about $2,500 and an average two-bedroom is around $3,000 monthly.

Compounding the affordability problem, the city’s lack of recent supply has led to a dearth of affordable, missing middle housing, while a high-rise boom over the last 15 years has completely redefined the once flattened cityscape. 

The explosion of verticality has been dominated by one-bedroom units that don’t meet the needs of young families in Mississauga, while the price tag of many condo units makes them unaffordable for most young buyers.

(The Pointer files)

Ontario’s PC government told Mississauga officials that 120,000 new housing units need to be built by 2031, as part of Doug Ford’s housing plan, which has been heavily criticized for promoting sprawl and failing to ensure affordable housing.

Peel Region data shows 97,000 households are living in core housing need (1 in 5 families), with 32,329 households now on the centralized waiting list for financial support, a 32 percent increase since 2020. United Way Peel has reported that 80 percent of the region’s residents can not afford current market-rate prices.

Voters in the city desperately need solutions, but federal leaders have offered few details to explain how affordable, missing middle housing with immediate access to transit–what Mississauga residents have been calling for–would be built under their government.

Carney has pledged to “get the government back into the business of homebuilding” with a federal development corporation that would build low-cost, pre-fabricated homes — a strategy he likened to federal efforts after the Second World War when the government of the day established a regulated agency that built tens of thousands of affordable starter homes for returning veterans.

He has not explained how Ottawa would work with municipalities, that have the legislated jurisdiction to oversee all aspects of housing development, from zoning, to the approval of plans and the issuance of permits, under an official plan established by locally elected municipal council members.  

Some housing advocates believe big developers and the municipalities they have grown cozy with have failed to build the type of housing people need.

Michelle Bilek, founder of the Peel Alliance to End Homelessness, told The Pointer she welcomes Carney’s vow to “get back into the ball game of building.”

“What has gotten us to this place… is almost 50 years now of really bad policy, and all governments handing over this portfolio. We have education in our tax base, we have health care in our tax base, but housing, no, and we've handed it over to the private sector,” she said. “Basically we've handed over housing to the private sector and to the corporate elites.”

“We shouldn't be beholden to the private sector and expect them to deliver what we want. We’ve got to start stepping up to the plate, using our own tax bases, using ingenious, innovative ways of getting back into developing and getting back into developing for people who need it.”

The Liberal Party has proposed a post-war strategy of getting back to building, but will it work for a City like Mississauga that can only build up?

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files)

Through a renewed post-war plan, the Liberal Party says it will double the pace of construction to almost 500,000 new homes a year by providing over $25 billion in financing to innovative prefabricated home builders; investing $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital to affordable home builders; reducing red tape; and cutting municipal development charges in half for multi-unit residential housing while working with provinces “to keep municipalities whole.” 

The plan does not explain how Ottawa would cut municipalities and the powerful developers many continue to work with, out of the Liberal housing plan. 

Ford has learned the hard way that it’s not easy for a higher level of government to impose its authority over the housing sector and the municipal system developers have spent decades working with. Housing starts declined in cities like Mississauga after Ford pushed through his suite of housing legislation that aimed to take control from municipalities. It hasn’t worked.

The Liberal plan revisits the use of tax incentives to spur construction of rental housing (it’s unclear how the private sector would be enticed, even with tax breaks, to create units outside the business model that currently works for major builders). It also  includes vague ideas to convert public structures into affordable housing units, while eliminating the GST for first-time homebuyers on homes up to $1 million.

“Go back to the 40s, 50s, 60s and even 70s. It was a no brainer, we had a robust housing system. Homelessness was almost non-existent,” Bilek told The Pointer. She said affordable housing, social housing and cooperative housing need to be the “priority, because that's what the need is right now.”

If a Carney government tried to wedge itself into the middle of the planning process and the housing market, experts worry the negative consequences of such a disruption could outweigh the benefits.

“If the federal government continues to encroach into provincial jurisdictions it's going to create confusion in the market, it will definitely confuse builders, because they will have to now keep up with this federal policy… and it just becomes much more convoluted and in an environment where everyone seems to agree we should be cutting red tape, this is going to do the opposite,” Scott Andison, CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, told The Pointer. 

Recognizing Mississauga “is at a critical juncture,” Charles Sousa, Liberal candidate and incumbent for Mississauga — Lakeshore, said the “path forward must prioritize smart, sustainable growth — focused on infill, gentle density, and complete communities,” which requires coordination at all levels of government. 

Both Sousa and Liberal candidate and incumbent for Mississauga — East Cooksville Peter Fonseca said one of the biggest challenges facing Mississauga is high development costs, bureaucratic delays and the lack of available land for new development. To address these challenges the Liberal candidates said they will work to tie federal housing investments to faster approvals and zoning reforms. They said funding would also incentivize critical local infrastructure such as transit, parks and the creation of other community spaces.

Liberal candidate for Mississauga — Streetsville Rechie Valdez  and Mississauga Centre candidate Fares Al Soud said they would build on progress made on programs initiated by the previous Liberal government, such as the Housing Accelerator Fund and Canada Public Transit Fund which have provided billions of dollars to towns and cities across the country, if their housing and transit plans conformed to Liberal criteria for dense, complete community design with transit incorporated into future housing approvals. 

Liberal candidates in Mississauga said the federal government needs to work closer with municipalities to streamline approvals by eliminating barriers and providing more funding incentives.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files) 

Conservative candidates in Mississauga did not respond to questions about their housing plans. 

Bushra Asghar, the NDP candidate for Mississauga — Streetsville, said that “to build new housing units, particularly affordable ones, it's not enough to have a design or a plan — there needs to be significant upfront funding for the ideas, architecture, and land acquisition.” The next federal government, she said, must work to incentivize homeowners and developers to build multiplexes and mid-rise structures along with establishing a federal builder. 

NDP candidate for Mississauga — Lakeshore, Evelyn Butler and  Ehab Mustapha, NDP candidate for Mississauga — Erin Mills, highlighted several initiatives already outlined by the party including funding to help first-time buyers, a ban on investment firms that buy up residential properties, using public land to build affordable housing and investing in co-op and non-market housing. 

The Green Party pledges to establish clear rules to define what is “affordable” while strengthening housing market regulations. It also wants to get the federal government back in the business of building homes. Echoing the strategies laid out by his party, Mississauga — Streetsville candidate Chris Hill, said he would help implement agreements to ensure housing built with public money stays affordable longterm. He would push for the elimination of unfair tax advantages enjoyed by Real Estate Investment Trusts and would stop corporations from buying up single family homes. Mary Kidnew, said that as the Green Party candidate for Mississauga — Lakeshore, she would fight to bring funding for supportive housing and purpose built rental, specifically for two and three-bedroom units that can accommodate families. 

Kelly Singh of the housing advocacy group More Homes Mississauga, emphasized that “if the city removes its built in barriers to building housing writ large, no exceptions, just eliminate them, then we can solve the housing crisis, or at least start the path to solving the housing crisis in Mississauga.” 

She’s happy with the Liberal housing platform because it might sideline “the stakeholder most in the way of building housing… the city”. There needs to be fewer barriers in the municipal approval process, she said, welcoming the quietly unfolding narrative this federal election, agreeing the national leaders need to take control over responsibilities municipalities and powerful developers have failed on. 

More Homes Mississauga member Kelly Singh says one of the biggest barriers to getting housing built is red tape at the municipal level.

(Paige Peacock/The Pointer) 

Poilievre said Thursday that a Conservative government would “start by firing the gatekeepers who block housing construction instead of giving them massive bonuses.” His Party will require cities to free up land, speed up permits and cut development charges to build 15 percent more homes each year. For municipalities that miss their target, the federal government will withhold federal funding, “equal to how much they miss their target by.” Municipalities that fail to meet their target will also be required to build even more homes the following year. 

None of the leaders talking about expanding Ottawa’s role in housing have explained how they would pay for the hundreds of billions needed to build all the infrastructure to support as many as 3.5 million new homes – from policing and fire, to roads and sewers, to transit and community services. Currently, these costs are covered by the builders who pay development fees, which Carney would curtail while simultaneously doubling the current rate of housing construction. He has not provided a detailed costing for the infrastructure that would be needed to support the homes he pledges to build. 

To offset his promise to reduce development charges, Poilievre has pledged to reimburse 50 percent of the development fees a municipality eliminates. He has not explained who would cover the rest. Mississauga would not be able to afford this, as City Hall is already facing an infrastructure deficit of almost half a billion dollars over the next decade, which would skyrocket if it lost developer charge revenues, which are collected for every single new unit constructed. 

Carney has pledged to make provinces and municipalities “whole” under its housing plan. This has not been explained and it remains unclear how he would pay for all the lost revenues from development fees, which cover billions of dollars across Mississauga for new infrastructure that new residents need. 

Cutting the fees associated with housing construction and removing red tape at the municipal level is a strategy Andison says will help builders get shovels in the ground and ultimately boost supply, particularly in Ontario, which he describes as “the most heavily regulated” province. The high cost of land in places like Mississauga make additional fees difficult for developers, he said. 

Critics have pushed back, pointing out that builders often make handsome profits and are just looking for taxpayer handouts to cover their costs so they can make even more money. 

Mississauga Councillor Alvin Tedjo agrees the federal government should take control of housing from developers to “ensure that those affordable units get built and stay affordable”. He said the lack of access to investments and “red tape or bureaucracy that exists” for municipalities are the biggest barriers to new affordable housing. The federal government as a developer is a “positive step in the right direction” he says, which will “result in more housing being built”. The City of Mississauga, he said, would like to see more direct funding to municipalities and to non-profit or affordable housing developers to reduce financial burdens — something the previous Liberal government had begun to do. 

Tedjo said while reducing fees like development charges is “certainly part of the solution,” acknowledging it as a “great step” that the City of Mississauga has taken, he cautioned that any reduction in development fees should benefit buyers, not builders. “We want to see those cost savings passed on to the consumer as well so that people can rent and afford to buy housing in the city of Mississauga and in the region of Peel.”

Sandra Longden, who sits on the government relations committee for the Cornerstone Association of Realtors, told The Pointer that even if municipalities and upper levels of government eliminate development charges, “it doesn't necessarily mean it will automatically ensure lower prices”. 

The only big move that will truly help bring housing prices down dramatically, she said, is to “increase supply for housing that people actually want”.

Canada, she said, does not need more McMansions, more sprawl and more high-rises to the sky.

“We can't just be building shoe boxes. We have to be building things that actually support what people are looking for and how they can live, but keeping it affordable – lower interest rate loans, grants, tax breaks, even if they are on a limited basis. Just something to help people get into the market and boost affordability.”

The Pointer's 2025 federal election coverage is partly supported by the Covering Canada: Election 2025 Fund. 

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Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock 

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