The Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe ("Growth Plan") cleverly provides a planning roadmap addressing housing affordability, including ground-related homes, and environmental concerns like greenhouse gas reductions. It does this by instructing municipalities to base long-term land requirements on market-based needs subject to minimum targets for: (a) the proportion of new housing built in existing urbanized areas (intensification), and (b) the number of people and jobs accommodated per hectare of greenfield land (densification).

Municipalities in the GGH are busily preparing forecasts of additional housing needs over 2021-2051 as input into determining future residential land requirements applying a methodology given to them by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

This paper assesses the housing needs forecasts prepared by two municipalities - the City of Hamilton and the Region of York. These forecasts are examined for conformity with the Province's land needs assessment methodology and the extent to which staff recommendations to their respective Councils are consistent with the market-based land supply test required by the Growth Plan.

The bottom line is that York's forecast of future greenfield land needs during 2021-2051 is more reasonable than Hamilton's, with Hamilton significantly understating its greenfield land needs.

Frank Clayton is a Senior Research Fellow with CUR. He is also a consultant to a landowners' group seeking to bring greenfield lands into Hamilton's urban area.

Read our report here