Amid worsening housing crisis Brampton’s addiction to sprawl, failure to hit target, cost city $25M in lost provincial funding

On a weekly basis since the start of summer, Premier Doug Ford’s PC government has been handing out cheques. 

In June, the City of Toronto got $67.1 million; St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland collectively received $6.8 million.

On a tour across parts of northern Ontario, Ford or his housing minister handed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, North Bay and $1.5 million to Greater Sudbury. 

In August, London got $12 million; Windsor $5.2 million. 

This fall, Oakville was handed $13.2 million; Pickering, $5 million; Milton, $8.4 million, Belleville $800,000. 

These cities and towns are on Ford’s Nice List, having either met, or being on track to meet, the aspirational housing targets his PC government set for Ontario municipalities, to help achieve his goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2031, guided by requirements under Bill 23. Their success in meeting annual targets for new home starts qualified some municipalities for funding through the PCs’ Building Faster Fund.

Other municipalities are on the Naughty List. The City of Brampton is one of them. 

After it was in Ford’s good graces last year—for meeting new housing targets in 2023—a splashy announcement and a cheque for $25.5 million followed, with Mayor Patrick Brown bragging about his so-called success on the housing file.

He said, "we are very happy in Brampton today, and even happier with this cheque presentation to help us build more housing,” claiming the city was “making huge strides." 

Despite the reality that Brampton had only hit 85 percent of its target for 2023 when the announcement was made last year, and the city’s terrible track record on approving the types of housing needed as the market moves away from expensive single-family subdivision sprawl, Brown ensured the pace of construction would only get better.  

"Our commitment in this city to build housing is one that is determined and genuine. There will be no red tape,” he claimed.

A year later, Brown was not so excited and his claims were replaced by a much more somber reality two months ago, when Brampton Council acknowledged it had lost $25 million the city was expecting from the same provincial grant this year.

During a September council meeting it was revealed that housing starts slowed considerably across Brampton in 2024, which would ultimately lead to the loss of grant funding under the program in 2025. 

Brampton was given the target of adding 113,000 homes by 2031—approximately 11,000 housing units annually. Last year, it badly missed the target, with only 60 percent of the units it needed.

For a cash-strapped municipality like Brampton—which has suffered under years of Brown’s failed fiscal policies—the millions lost for housing-enabling infrastructure will only slow development while the city’s population continues to explode. 

“It is a challenge this year; we did not get our funding,” Brown said during the September 24 Council meeting. “We lost $25 million just because we didn’t have those building permits. I don’t want us to lose that again.”

Avoiding a future loss of critical funding will require a shift in housing policy in Brampton, a city that for years has allowed developers to dictate planning. It led to an imbalance of sprawling single-family homes and a dearth of purpose-built rental units and other dense housing such as townhomes, condos and mid-rise, or missing-middle units the city has desperately needed for years. 

A report presented at the July 7 Planning and Development Committee meeting highlighted that since 2014, the development of new purpose-built rental housing in Brampton has been minimal. Despite the addition of almost 250,000 residents, alarmingly only 744 new rental units have been created over the last decade, bringing the total to 11,457 purpose-built rental units in the city of almost 800,000, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

During the meeting, Noel Cubacub, a policy planner with the City of Brampton, told the council that a generally “healthy range” for a municipal rental vacancy rate is between 3 and 5 percent, which would show “a good balance between supply and demand." In Brampton, the vacancy rate has been consistently below 3 percent for the past 10 years.

For much of the last decade, housing advocates have warned Mayor Brown that his failure to create rental housing, units for young residents and housing located along transit corridors, would lead to a crisis.

The scarcity of affordable market-rate and rental units led to the proliferation of the illegal real estate market and disturbing stories of renters in illegal suites living in horrific conditions, with as many as two-dozen people staying in one basement.

The deadly fire on Banas Way last week that claimed the lives of four Bramptonians is only the latest tragedy to expose Brampton’s housing policy failures. 

The City is now taking measures to incentivize the development of purpose-built rental apartments buildings, including slashing or deferring development charges (DCs). During the September 24 council meeting, a motion was approved to reduce DCs (the fees paid by builders to create surrounding municipal infrastructure) by 50 percent for one-bedroom apartments, 75 percent for two-bedroom units, and 100 percent for three-bedroom units. The remaining DCs would only be collected upon occupancy of the units.  

It was a long overdue move by Brampton councillors to change a development pattern in the city that has long been dominated by single-family homes.

If Brampton wishes to meet its housing targets in future years, and collect the provincial grant, better planning will be required to ensure dense, affordable housing options. 

Development activity for the last five years shows Brown and other leaders have not come close to the 11,300 annual units needed to meet the 113,000 new homes by 2031, mandated by the PC government. 

Bill 23 mandates Brampton to construct 113,000 housing units by 2031. This equates to approximately 11,300 annually, a number Brampton has not been able to reach over the last five years.

(City of Brampton) 

Between 2006 and 2010, an average of 60 percent of all houses completed in Brampton were single-family homes, according to data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Between 2016 and 2021, an average of 45 percent of all homes completed in Brampton were single-detached units. 

The lack of new units, especially higher density housing, has led to chronically low vacancy rates for rental units, which in turn has caused rental prices in Brampton to skyrocket. In 2024, the average rental price for a 2-bedroom unit was nearly $2,700 a month (about $1,200 more than the average cost across Brampton in 2015, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board), with many of these in condos or other non-purpose-built rental accommodations. For similarly sized purpose-built rentals (which have the benefit of rate stabilization protected by provincial rental laws), the price was considerably lower, at an average of $1,922. The cost of a 3-bedroom unit in purpose-built buildings last year was an average of $2,046—$1,024 cheaper than the condo and house-rental market. 

Purpose-built rentals provide an economical option for low-income households, but are very rare in Brampton, forcing many to seek alternative forms of housing in places like illegal secondary suites often in basements.

(City of Brampton)

This is the opposite of what housing experts across the country have called for in response to the ongoing affordable housing crisis. According to the 2021 Census, in 2020, Brampton’s median after-tax income was $33,600. This means that rent of $2,000 a month would eat up about 72 percent of total median individual income, so a tenant would have $800 a month left over to pay for food, transportation, clothing, all utility bills, telecommunications, health-related costs, education and all other expenses.  

Overflowing driveways are a common sight in Brampton as houses become divided into multiple rental rooms due to the shortage of units.

(The Pointer files)

By 2020, 40,611 purpose-built rental units existed across Peel, with no progress in construction region-wide.

Since his election in 2018, Mayor Brown and others on council have ignored the Brampton 2040 Vision master plan, which was approved by the previous council and prioritized transit-oriented complete communities, urban design and affordable housing. 

In its place, sprawl has continued to define the city. The loss of $25 million was the latest cost.

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