Based on original post on Steve’s Councillor Ward 2 Facebook page, Sept 6, 2025
When I was first elected almost 8 years ago, I attended a meeting where the head of Planning reported to our new Council that there were 5400 new dwellings in the pipeline just for Paris (at various stages of review, approval or appeal). At the time, I raised my hand and asked how many dwellings Paris had now. Someone had to look it up, but they came back with 5377.
Shortly after that meeting, Council voted to ‘Tap The Brakes’ on new applications entering the pipeline, but that only lasted temporarily. (I also touched on this in an earlier post in 2022, Controlling Residential Growth). Since then, we have learned that anytime a Municipality tries to slow a developer down, they end up in “Court” with the Ontario Land Tribunal and that process can eat up Millions of taxpayer dollars (and the Municipality almost never wins—at best a settlement is negotiated).
At the September 9, 2025 Council Meeting, we received a Staff presentation and report Growth Management Data and Tracking, RPT-319-25. The full report is posted below, and well worth reading, but this chart from the report caught my attention.
Compare the data in Total Housing column: County Total Housing Need to 2035 is 2,455; County Total Development Pipeline Units to be built is 8,279. To me, these numbers highlight what many of us have been deeply concerned about: Residential growth projections for housing to be built are significantly higher than our needs – and higher than the goals mandated by the Province.
I was interested in getting an answer to my question: What options are available to this Council to slow down what is in the pipeline already and restrict new applications? There was a robust discussion at the meeting, and many members of Council shared similar concerns to mine. (We also need a deep dive into what strategies and tactics we can consider to motivate the developers to build at least some of the type of housing that we need, rather than just what is most profitable for them.)
Watch the presentation of the report and the discussion in the meeting (It is item 12 on the agenda, the presentation for the report begins at about 45 minutes in):
Read the Staff Report: Growth Management and Data Tracking, RPT-319-25
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