The city is looking to see how much funding can be unlocked for Windsor from a new federal and provincial funding program designed to spur more home construction.
The province released more details earlier this week on an $8.8 billion partnership with the federal government that was announced at the end of March.
The Development Charge Reduction Program (DCRP) aims to deliver federal and provincial funding over 10 years for housing-enabling infrastructure projects, with funding prioritized for municipalities that reduce development charges for all residential types by 30 per cent to 50 per cent or greater and maintain the reductions for at least three years.
Eligible projects include roads, water and wastewater, and transit, but municipalities will be required to fund at least 10 per cent of project costs.
Applications will be assessed on the size of the municipal contribution along with the level of DC reduction and the number of housing units that will be enabled.
Eligible municipalities have until June 19 to apply to the fund.
Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens says there are a lot of nuances to this program, and the city’s finance team is going over the details to make sure they don’t leave money on the table, as waiving development charges is the final step municipalities have to deal with the price of housing.
Dilkens says they want to go all in on this and will present a very ambitious and aggressive proposal for city council’s consideration at the June 8 meeting.
“This is a competitive process, and we know that there will be other municipalities who file applications by June 19 that are also going to be equally or more aggressive,” he says. “So, we want to go all in to help unlock as much housing as we can for our community, recognizing that this program will rebate us 90 per cent of the development charges costs that we forgo.”
Dilkens says there are a lot of projects in the queue that have received their rezoning, and the developers are simply waiting ‘for the math to make sense’ to unlock funding from lenders.
“I think the waiver of development charges will actually help those pro formas make sense to the banks; those projects will then be financed, and we’ll see more housing built in the city,” he says. “What we’re trying to figure out is the 10 per cent of the development charges that will not be rebated through this program. Can we make up for that, and how long would it take for us to make up for that through the property taxes we generate?”
Dilkens says at the end of the day, they want to stick to the model that growth pays for growth while unlocking housing to help support the demand that’s in the community today.
“If you live anywhere in Windsor on a street that’s already developed, you’ve already paid for the infrastructure that supports your home. We don’t want to put the burden of new housing on the backs of people who’ve already paid once,” he says. “We’re just making sure that with any additional revenue that’s created through property tax dollars, we make sure that that money goes in to make the development charge account whole.”
The timeline for the DCRP is intended to coincide with the enhanced HST rebate to maximize relief for home builders and home buyers.
In late March, the province announced it would temporarily expand HST rebates on the purchase of new homes in a bid to boost a struggling home construction sector.
In early March, Dilkens had directed city administration to explore options on a partial or full exemption from development charges for multi-unit, purpose-built development projects in Windsor that receive building permits in 2026, but that direction was paused following the provincial-federal program announcement.