Opinion: Cutting development charges won't fix Toronto's housing math on its own
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Council keeps treating fee relief as the whole plan. It's one input among several — and the smallest one, if financing costs don't move too.
Every time a housing-starts number disappoints, the same fix gets proposed at City Hall: cut development charges further. It's an easy applause line, and it's not wrong exactly — it's just badly incomplete.
Financing costs, labour availability, and approval timelines all move the needle more than the fee schedule does at this point in the cycle. Treating DC relief as the whole housing plan lets council avoid the harder conversations about all three.
None of this means fee relief is useless. It means it's one lever of four, and council keeps pulling the same one and acting surprised when the number doesn't move much.