A new report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) says new home builds are falling below projections.
According to the CMHC, in June 2023 there were only 56 new homes started, compared to 179 last year.
The City of Windsor alone has committed to building 13,000 homes in the next eight years. That breaks down to 1,625 homes every year or 135 per month.
Vince Lapico, president of the Windsor-Essex Home Builders' Association says the sudden rise in interest rates put a hamper on building projects.
"A lot of building has to be done on credit. When people buy property and when people build homes, there's a lot credit that's involved in it, I think that's really affecting people's ability to build."
He says with the current financial situation, unfortunately it's caused a perfect storm.
"Land costs are extremely high. Labour costs are very high. Material costs are very high. When COVID happened a lot of the material costs went up and the market saw that it will sustain those prices so they kind of stayed there. Same thing with labour. I mean labour has gone up on price and has not come down. It's one of those things where we've had a lot of external factors that caused the situation that we're in currently and now we're having to kind of pay the piper."
He says construction has stalled everywhere in Windsor-Essex.
"Everybody that I've talked to, all of the building officials from all the different municipalities, there's a significant decrease in applications for new construction. I don't think it's an issue of location. I just think it's an issue of appetite at the moment."
Lapico says consumers need to accept this as "the new normal".
-With files from AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides and CTV Windsor