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Ontario's 1.5 million homes target: the government's own numbers say it won't happen

Ontario's own internal notes and its most recent budget projections both point to the same conclusion — the province's 1.5 million new homes by 2031 target is not on track, and the gap has widened rather than narrowed in the government's own most recent forecasts.

The finding

Ontario recorded 89,000 housing starts in 2023, against the roughly 150,000 per year pace the 1.5 million target requires CSRL2-057. Bill 23 (the More Homes Built Faster Act) reduced development charge revenue available to municipalities — AMO's preliminary analysis put total losses at $5.1 billion over nine years, later restated by AMO after the bill passed as approximately $1 billion annually CSRL2-064.

Internal Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing notes from October-December 2024, obtained by Global News, state plainly that Ontario "will not reach" its 1.5 million homes by 2031 target. Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy — not Housing Minister Rob Flack, to whom the quote had previously been misattributed — stated "I'm not focused on the target" CSRL2-203. A fresh S1 discovery confirms the trend has continued: Ontario's 2026 Budget projects only 64,800 housing starts for 2026 (down from a prior 74,800 projection), 70,300 for 2027, and 76,800 for 2028 — a combined 2025-2028 total of 276,900 units, more than 10% below the Fall 2025 Economic Statement's own 315,000-unit projection. The government's own annual blueprint attributes this to construction activity remaining "subdued in 2026" due to "the negative effects of uncertainty on homebuilding." At roughly 175,000 annual starts needed to reach 1.5 million homes by 2031, these figures make the original target mathematically unachievable, not just behind schedule [CL-90667].

Why it matters

This is not an outside critique of the government's housing record — it is the government's own internal notes and its own most recent budget documents reaching the same conclusion, each time with the shortfall larger than the last. Bill 23's development-charge reduction is directly relevant context: a policy intended to accelerate housing construction by lowering municipal fees also reduced the funding municipalities use for the infrastructure that supports new housing, a real tension in the policy's own design. Tracking the year-over-year revisions (74,800 down to 64,800 for 2026 alone) shows the gap between actual and required pace widening in the government's own most recent forecasts, not narrowing.

What this page does not cover

This page does not evaluate whether Bill 23's development-charge changes had a net positive or negative effect on housing construction pace overall, since the sources reviewed document the funding-loss figure without a corresponding causal analysis. It does not track housing starts figures beyond the 2026 Budget's own 2028 projection. It does not carry a "case against" the government's housing policy beyond citing its own internal notes and budget documents, which speak for themselves.

Sources

Jurisdiction: Ontario · Topics: housing-starts, development-charges, bill-23, provincial-targets · status: working draft · review: pending (the library’s own tags, kept visible) · published 2026-08-17 · corrections welcome.