The City of Peterborough has exceeded its provincial target of annual housing starts for the second year in a row, qualifying it to receive additional funding from the Ontario government.
According to a media release from the city on Thursday (January 9), the city issued permits for 515 housing units to residential construction developers in 2024, exceeding the provincial target of 392 housing starts by 123 units, or 31 per cent.
“Surpassing our targets two years in a row demonstrates real progress, but we know there’s still more work to be done,” Peterborough mayor Jeff Leal says in the release. “It’s vital that we keep up the momentum and continue to work closely with residential construction developers, community partners and other organizations to keep progress on track.”
In August 2023, the Ontario government assigned housing targets to 50 municipalities including Peterborough as part of a provincial plan to build at least 1.5 million homes by 2031. Once the head of councils pledged to achieve their municipalities’ housing targets, they became eligible for funding from the Building Faster Fund.
Announced in 2023, the three-year $1.2 billion Building Faster Fund is designed to encourage municipalities to address the housing supply crisis by providing funding to municipalities that have reached at least 80 per cent of their provincially assigned housing target for the year, with increased funding for municipalities that exceed their target. Municipalities can direct the funding toward housing-enabling infrastructure and other related costs that support community growth.
For the City of Peterborough, the provincial government assigned a total housing target of 4,700 by 2031, including a target of 345 housing starts in 2023, 392 in 2024, and 470 in 2025.
Last January, the city reported it had issued permits to start construction on 435 housing units in 2023, exceeding that year’s provincial target by 90 units, or 26 per cent.
Two months later, the Ontario government announced it was providing the city with $1.88 million in funding from the Building Faster Fund as a reward for exceeding the 2023 housing target.
While the province has not yet announced allocations to municipalities from the Building Faster Fund for 2024 targets, based on the 2023 allocation the city could expect to receive more than $1.88 million.
Of the 515 housing units for which the city issued permits in 2024, 346 were apartment-style units. The city estimates the total value of constructing the 515 housing units at around $101.2 million.
The city’s announcement that it has exceeded its 2024 target comes just over two months after the release of the Mayor’s Task Force for Housing Creation, which included 15 recommendations from a group of local housing sector experts to facilitate residential housing development in the city.
In early December, city council approved seven of the recommendations to be implemented immediately, including a one-year approval timeline for qualifying projects, and directed city staff to return to council in April 2025 with a report on the remaining eight recommendations.
