Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM)<\/a>.<\/p>\nFONOM is reacting to the recent Ontario and Ottawa housing partnership, announced March 30, where each order of government will commit $4.4 million over 10 years to fund municipalities that cut development charges by up to 50 per cent for three years.<\/p>\n
The program is designed to accelerate housing and infrastructure construction across Ontario.<\/p>\n
FONOM said the program places Northern communities at a disadvantage since many municipalities here don\u2019t apply development charges and likely won\u2019t see any of that funding.<\/p>\n
The northeastern Ontario municipal group is calling on Ottawa and Queen\u2019s Park to draw up housing and infrastructure programs that can be applied equitably across all regions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are asking for fairness in how these programs are delivered,\u201d said Kapuskasing mayor and FONOM president Dave\u00a0Plourde in a statement.\u00a0\u201cMunicipalities that do not levy development charges should not be excluded from accessing housing-enabling infrastructure funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, many Northern municipalities simply do not have development charges to reduce, and at the same time face some of the highest costs in the province to build homes and infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those municipalities, FONOM said, experience significantly higher per-kilometre costs for essential infrastructure on water, wastewater, and roads, while drawing from smaller tax bases and dealing with greater geographic challenges.<\/p>\n
Over the years, many Northern municipalities often avoided development charges in order to stimulate economic growth, attract investment, and to maintain a competitive advantage over southern regions.<\/p>\n
For forgoing these fees, municipalities sought to encourage construction in areas with slow population growth and higher construction costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowth still requires infrastructure \u2014 whether or not a municipality charges development fees,\u201d said Plourde. \u201cWithout access to comparable funding tools, Northern communities risk being left behind in their ability to support new housing and attract investment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kapuskasing mayor says North faces higher building costs but few tools to access funds A federal and provincial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,223719,20739],"class_list":["post-585696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-northern-ontario-constructiondevelopment-chargeshome-constructionfederation-of-northern-ontario-municipalities-fonom","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}