The chair of the City of Ottawa’s planning and development committee flatly “rejects” comments made by Mattamy Homes Ltd. chief operating officer Brian Johnston that suggest there is too much red tape enforced on developers in the nation’s capital, which is causing the price of new homes to rise.
Johnston made his comments in an article in the Globe and Mail Friday saying the firm is growing frustrated with municipalities like Ottawa and Toronto and their efforts to control urban sprawl.
“Buying land is very difficult. If it’s got approvals, it’s incredibly expensive,” Johnston told the Globe and Mail. “We’ve created such an onerous planning system in this country, and I would argue that’s one of the reasons that we see such significant house price inflation. We’ve made it difficult for ourselves to get land through the planning system, and that’s creating this supply constraint. So you’re seeing much higher (house) prices, and a lot more highrise condominiums.”
Johnston said Mattamy has cut back its Canadian development plans and instead is focusing on areas in the United States where it can buy massive swaths of suburban land on the cheap and then spend decades developing the area. Last month, the company announced an $86.25-million deal for 9,600 acres of land near Sarasota, Florida. The company plans to build as many as 11,000 homes on the land in the next 20-25 years. Late last year it announced another Florida deal, near Jacksonville, for a large plot of property that will allow it to build 4,500 homes.
Calls to Mattamy at their head offices in Oakville went unanswered Friday afternoon.
Coun. Peter Hume, chair of Ottawa’s planning and development committee, says that not only is Ottawa’s planning and development system far more efficient that those at municipalities in the United States, but the city has always been clear with developers when it comes to how it plans to permit development. The city has always said it isn’t about to open massive new areas of farmland or protected lands in the Greenbelt. He also said that there is nothing difficult about buying land or having it zoned in Ottawa. The city actively works with developers to make sure that their concerns are being heard, but the reality of containing costs in an ever-expanding urban centre means that growth must be contained. It also has a 20-year-plan which spells out where development can take place within the city’s limits.
“I’m exasperated. I’d reject the claims that red tape is an issue,” said Hume. “In Ottawa, as well as other municipalities, we are trying to control growth and stop sprawl. It’s not sustainable. It’s the residents that will suffer.”
Hume pointed to transit woes plaguing residents of the city’s east end as one of the issues caused by sprawl. He said the city regularly reviews and opens parcels of land to developers, who then compete to grab a piece of those new lands to build on.
“We’ve got land, but it’s not all under one ownership. Competition is fierce,” he said, using new developments such as Arcadia and Kanata West in the city’s west end as examples where multiple builders are competing to put houses in one development.
As for high housing prices, Hume says that has more to do with the housing market crash that hit the U.S. in 2007, from which the United States still has not recovered. Florida, Michigan and Ohio were hit particularly hard by the fallout. Hume said comparing new housing prices in Canada to those seen in the U.S. today is not a fair exercise.
“A lot of the pricing (in the U.S.) has to do with the economic situation they see themselves in,” said Hume.
