Ontario hit 58% of 2025 housing goal, even after adding long-term care, student beds

Ontario fell well short of its self-imposed target of 150,000 new homes last year, according to internal data, which shows just 13 municipalities met targets set by the Ford government.

A briefing note obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws shows that, even by its own modified definition of new housing, the province only achieved 58 per cent of its 2025 target.

Since the 2022 election, Ontario has been aiming to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031, an objective described last year by the finance minister as a “soft target.”

As part of that goal, the government introduced the Building Faster Fund, offering rewards for municipalities that built a certain number of new homes.

The province-wide target for 2025 was 150,000 new homes, with the definition stretching to include basement units, long-term care beds, retirement homes and student housing.

According to the documents obtained by Global News, towns and cities with housing targets in Ontario managed 65,476 housing starts, as measured by the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation.

They also added:

• 13,693 basement units and laneway suites
• 4,522 long-term care beds
• 1,102 retirement homes
• 1,967 student housing units.

Overall, Ontario recorded 86,760 housing starts against a target of 150,000.

Ontario Liberal MPP Adil Shamji said the government is failing to deliver a promise, even after changing the criteria for success.

“We’ve now seen successive years of failures, and frankly, we’ve seen successively that the government seems to be falling farther and farther from its targets and being forced to revise targets, revise definitions of what even counts as housing starts,” he told Global News.

“It speaks to a systemic issue, a lack of leadership at the provincial level that is the root cause of why we’re seeing entirely failed housing starts.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing highlighted a series of programs designed to boost housing starts.

“Our government has taken action to give municipalities the tools they need to build more homes, faster,” they wrote in a statement sent to Global News.

“Since 2023, we have invested more than $14 billion through the Development Charge Reduction Program, the Building Faster Fund, and the Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program, helping municipalities lower costs, cut red tape, and get shovels in the ground sooner.”

They also pointed to the recent elimination of HST on new homes.

In recent years, Ontario’s housing starts have fallen while its targets have ramped up.

In the summer of 2023, as it looked to fulfil its promise of 1.5 million homes in a decade, Ontario introduced the Building Faster Fund to increase the number of new homes being built.

The fund came with individual targets for municipalities, as well as for the province overall.

The annual goal for the province itself was staggered, beginning at 110,000 for 2023 and climbing every year. The goal for 2024 was 125,000; it was 150,000 in 2025 and is 175,000 in 2026 and beyond.

But as the targets increased, the number of new homes being built declined.

In 2023, once it included long-term care beds and other dwellings in its statistics, Ontario exceeded its 110,000 target by just under 600 new units.

The province managed just under 95,000 of its 125,000 target in 2024.

The figure dropped last year to 86,760.

The number of municipalities hitting their targets also fell again last year, continuing a steady decline.

In 2025, just 13 cities and towns hit targets set for them by Queen’s Park, while four got within 80 per cent or higher. That’s a drop from 15 hitting their targets in 2024, with eight at 80 per cent or above.

In 2023, there were 20 municipalities that exceeded their targets and 12 which managed more than 80 per cent.

“It speaks to the scale of the crisis when a Building Faster Fund that is trying to entice 50 municipalities to build more homes faces a situation in which 37 of them, almost 75 per cent, fall short of the target,” Shamji added.

“Of the 13 that did hit the target, seven of them have embarrassingly low thresholds to pass.”

Out of the 13 successful municipalities, nine were set targets of 500 new homes or fewer.

Sarnia, for example, exceeded its goal of 100 new homes by building 654, although almost half were new student housing. North Bay passed its target of 100 by building 113.

According to last year’s data, many of Ontario’s largest cities failed to get close to their targets.

The City of Mississauga achieved just 24 per cent of its target, while Vaughan managed 26 per cent. Windsor notched 47 per cent of its target and both Toronto and Markham managed 49 per cent.

Some municipalities on the list — including Markham, Vaughan, Mississauga and Halton Hills– have not received any funding from the program since it launched.

“I just don’t think it’s effective; the municipalities that got the money had projects that were in place, that were underway,” Halton Hills Mayor Ann Lawlor told Global News.

“So, there was opportunity for an immediate impact.”

Lawlor suggested the fund had been designed with the wrong priorities — rewarding towns and cities for something they don’t directly control.

“Municipalities don’t build housing,” she said.

“We can have all kinds of plans in place. We can roll out the welcome mat. We can be ready with our building permit capacity. But it is ultimately the builders who are the ones who decide and they are driven by market forces.”