Mayor Mark Sutcliffe to make housing announcement for Ottawa this week

Construction workers build new homes in a development in Ottawa on Monday, July 6, 2015. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is promising to make an announcement this week to build more homes and address homelessness in Ottawa.

“We all agree, we need to build more homes, we need to build more affordable homes,” Sutcliffe told CTV Your Morning Ottawa on Monday. “We need to build homes faster.”

The mayor said that an announcement will be made in the coming days based on the recommendations from Ottawa’s Housing Innovation Task Force.

“Within the days ahead, I’ll be announcing some of the recommendations of that Housing Innovation Task Force on how we’re going to build more homes, streamline the processes, eliminate red tape, reduce fees and build homes faster in Ottawa.”

The City of Ottawa says the mayor will be making an announcement regarding actions to address homelessness Tuesday morning.

The Housing Innovation Task Force first met in April.

“The purpose of the Housing Innovation Task Force is to provide input to staff on actions that the City can take to reduce barriers and support the delivery of more housing,” according to the City of Ottawa.

In 2024, Ottawa failed to meet its housing targets. The city aimed to break ground on 12,583 homes, but only broke ground on 7,871 new homes, or 62.5 per cent of its target.

This year, the number of housing starts has outpaced those of 2024. Between January and July, there were 6,314 housing starts in Ottawa.

On Sunday, the mayor was in attendance for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “Build Canada Homes” announcement. The $13 billion initiative will see the federal government build new homes on federal lands across Canada, including in Ottawa.

“I’m very encouraged by what the prime minister announced yesterday, along with the Housing Minister,” Sutcliffe told Your Morning Ottawa.

“I had a one-on-one with the prime minister for about half an hour after the announcement took place, and we had a great discussion about Ottawa’s priorities and we are in complete alignment about what we need to do in the city of Ottawa.”

As part of the plan, homes will be built in Ottawa, Dartmouth, N.S., Longueuil, Que., Toronto, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

While Carney did not release details about where the homes from this project will be built, Sutcliffe says he was pleased to see Ottawa included in the initial investment.

“I was very pleased about that, there’s only six cities in Canada that are going to be part of the initial round of investment and Ottawa is one of them.”

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