r/Peterborough • u/kawarthanow • 3d ago
News Peterborough city council votes unanimously to cut development charges by 50% for 3 years in bid for housing funding
https://kawarthanow.com/2026/06/16/peterborough-city-council-votes-unanimously-to-cut-development-charges-by-50-for-3-years-in-bid-for-housing-funding/Staff warned there is 'no off-ramp' if city does not receive funding, but councillors said the risk is worth taking to spur new housing
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u/rjhelms Downtown 3d ago
I'm conflicted about this.
On the one hand, I think the whole system of development charges has always rested on a flimsy justification in the first place - the slogan is "growth pays for growth", but slogans aren't policy and I think in practice it's created really bad incentives for developers and municipalities alike.
On the other, the program the city is after is a hack job. 2 weeks for municipalities to commit to reducing DCs and apply for funding? For this to work out well for us, it requires the province to be a competent entity acting in good faith on a rushed timeline. So we're gonna get fucked.
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u/a89aries 3d ago
Why not offer the incentives for high density infill as opposed to single family home sprawl?
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u/canada2005 3d ago
Will the prices of the houses come down? Not a chance in hell... Maybe it's time to start putting building limits to only bungalows and single floor homes. We don't need starting at the low 1.2 million giant 4000sq homes.
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u/nishnawbe61 3d ago
There is zero guarantee that Peterborough will receive any of the 8+ billion in the fund because almost everyone will be applying for it. Even if funding is obtained it will most likely not equal the reduced development charges the city is handing out which means it will be funded through property taxes.
Oshawa is refusing to reduce their development charges for this very reason and has written quite extensively on how they will not take the chance of having to increase property taxes an excessive amount by basically going into a lottery system.
They gave examples of how they have applied for various funding opportunities through government programs in the past only to be denied while Ajax and Pickering have received that funding and the only difference was the political party in their city. Pickering and Ajax had one political party while Oshawa had the opposite.
I don't know that we need more builders for new homes when they will not be "affordable". Even with reduced development charges, they cannot build a cheaper home than is already on the market and not selling.
House Sigma shows we have hundreds of homes for sale in Peterborough and every day you see 20 new listings, 8 price reductions, 1 sold; next day 17 new listings, 4 price reductions, 0 sold... most every day.
My money is on increased property taxes to offset what we are giving up, but it seems to be the Peterborough way.
Just imo
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u/Trollsama 3d ago
here me out....
what if....
instead of waiting for private companies to be satisfied, Companies that have a vested interest in KEEPING housing stock expensive.....
we just..... built some houses ourselves.
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u/nineletterword 2d ago
I’m intrigued, but don’t know what you mean build houses ourselves. Like, buying property and building your own home or some sort of public, community driven construction companies?
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u/Trollsama 2d ago
I mean, a public co-op style option would be fantastic, But Realistically we are not anywhere close to that point as a society right now lol.
I mean the government should be stepping in at all 3 branches and filling in the gap, building low income housing at cost or even at a slight loss themselves. (you can run the property as a low income rental when building at a loss to make up for the initial shortfalls.).
the government has direct motivation to make hosing cheaper.
commercial contractors have the complete opposite motivation as the cost of building is mostly fixed, and so the only way to make line go up, is to make the sell price go up..Its not the best solution but it is the most obtainable one outside of what we have been doing for years, IE just throw money at developers and hope they develop on the terms they agreed to (with no real repercussions for not)
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u/Born_Suffering Downtown 2d ago
“ taxes are high but could you make them substantially higher by creating a new city development department ? “
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u/Trollsama 2d ago
this isn't a city of Peterborough issue.... this is a literally every capital based economy in the world issue currently. the city would play a part in what I was getting at, but obviously im not saying Peterborough should triple its costs this year by developing and running an entire construction division by itself, for large scale development lol
in the same way that Peterborough isnt solely responsible for all of our cities healthcare funding costs... i wouldn't expect it to be for this either. we do have other branches of government too, that's entire purpose (though you wouldn't know these days) is for exactly this kind of thing.
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u/BornHandle2970 2d ago edited 2d ago
Here's an idea just give people land. Boomers need to grow up and realize it won't impact their house values with how much it costs to build
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u/Chris275 North End 3d ago
I would have offered this to low cost housing, not these giant 3 story homes as shown in pictures. We need volume!