The City of Windsor has exceeded the target set out under Ontario's Build Faster Fund.
A record 482 residential building permits were issued by the city in 2023 that resulted in 1,154 residential housing units.
The city says figure will make Windsor eligible for more money from Ontario's Build Faster Fund, which assigned the city a target of 953 units in 2023.
The Build Faster Fund is a three-year, $1.2 billion province-wide program designed to support community efforts to increase the number of homes in Ontario.
The province calculated targets based on the number of housing starts in each community, which are residential development sites that have started construction.
Comissioner of Economic Development Jelana Payne says the target under the Build Faster Fund go up to 1,083 units in 2024 and 1,300 new starts in 2025.
"The applications, whether it's zoning applications or site plan applications that are in the pipeline, we are looking at almost 3,500 additional units that are in the hopper, that will hopefully be coming forward in 2024 or 2025, requesting building permits," she says.
Payne says the city's finance department has put together some preliminary numbers on how much money Windsor could potentially receive from the fund.
"The city could be eligible for up to about $10-million divided over three years," she says. "Please note that is just if we come within 80 per cent. There is a bonus if you exceed your housing targets, which we have done."
The figures released by the city Thursday come shortly after the federal government rejected Windsor's application to access millions of dollars from the Housing Accelarator Fund.
In the letter annoucing the decision, Housing Minister Sean Fraser mentions that the city only permitted the construction of 346 units last year, representing only 36 per cent of the city’s target.
The release from the city Thursday showed its own numbers for housing starts show Windsor exceeded its housing target to the Ontario government by 21 per cent last year in an effort to build 13,000 housing units by 2031.
John Revell, Windsor's Chief Building Official, says the majority of the units are the result of a number of apartment building projects, with many located in the east end of the city and along the Lauzon Parkway-Tecumseh Road East corridor.