Been reading through the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, 2024 summaries for a few hours. OK time for a thread. I give it an overall YIMBY Score of 3.5/5. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, some we shall see stuff. As always, thank you sources.
In no particular order. Using jargon and acronyms, so if you need anything explained, ask. 1) The Bill 23 removal of third party appeals for OP/OPA/ZB/ZBA is back. For the most part, this is good when it comes to amendment applications and will speed things up a lot.
But it seems to also lump in with it parent OPs and ZBs. These are typically subject to hundreds of appeals when passed and take years/decade to resolve. However, it means that a NIMBY town could seriously downzone everything and the only backstop is the Minister.
2) Bill 109 refunds for too slow processing of applications is gone for ZBA and SPC applications. Still around for OPAs. The timing requirement remains, but the penalty is gone. Bye bye incentive to be fast (sorry, Toronto and Markham).
Also gone will be the trickery that many municipalities did in response to 109 wherein they trap applicants in an endless cycle of preapplication consultations with no clock ticking... pre-application will be voluntary.
Now, as part of the preapplication process you'd get the complete application checklist.. so I'm not sure how it being voluntary works.
3) Very bad: back are appeals for privately initiated urban boundary expansions. Sprawl appeals, basically. This is shit and hopefully gets struck.
4) There is a bunch of stuff around development charges. Removing the phase in for DCs (good), adding back in studies as something that can be charged for (fine I guess)... I'm not a DC guy, so the impact of all this isn't my specialty and I'll let others talk about it more.
5) Universities are being exempted from the Planning Act is huge. They already have expropriation powers (not sure how many people know that) and this basically gives them a hell of a lot of power. Need to see the details still.
6) Use it or Lose it for Draft Plan of Subdivision/Condominiums Approvals. This is huge. It requires approval authorities to provide for the lapsing of such approvals. And it allows for the servicing capacity that is reserved for those projects to be reallocated.