Ottawa has heard no shortage of housing targets over the past few years, from city hall's own intensification goals to federal promises about millions of new units nationwide. But a new piece from Ottawa Life Magazine makes the case that all this focus on unit counts is aiming at the wrong target altogether.
The argument is simple but pointed: Canada's housing crisis will not be solved by announcing ever-larger construction numbers. Instead, the piece calls for making homes economically viable to build, giving Canadians far more choice in how and where they live, and remembering that the ultimate goal of housing policy isn't producing units, it's creating communities.
Why This Matters for Ottawa
Ottawa residents don't need to look far to see this tension play out. The city has approved intensification along transit corridors, greenlit infill development in mature neighbourhoods, and pushed for more density near LRT stations, all in the name of hitting housing supply targets. Yet longtime residents in neighbourhoods like Old Ottawa South, Hintonburg, and Alta Vista have raised concerns that new builds sometimes prioritize speed and volume over liveability, whether that's parking, green space, school capacity, or simply the character of a street.
The report's core point, that housing policy should be judged by whether it builds functioning communities and not just by a scoreboard of completed units, lands directly in Ottawa's ongoing debates over zoning reform, the city's new Official Plan, and battles over projects like those proposed for Vanier, Westboro, and the Greenbelt-adjacent suburbs.
Choice and Viability, Not Just Volume
One of the report's key ideas, that Canadians need more choice in how and where they live, resonates with Ottawa's own housing mix problem. The city has plenty of high-rise condo towers downtown and in Kanata, but a persistent shortage of missing middle housing, think triplexes, stacked townhomes, and low-rise walk-ups, the kind of housing that lets families stay in a neighbourhood as their needs change without jumping straight from a starter condo to a detached house in the suburbs.
Making that middle housing economically viable to build is exactly the kind of shift the report calls for. Ottawa builders have long pointed to development charges, lengthy approval timelines, and site plan control requirements as barriers that make smaller-scale, community-oriented projects harder to pencil out than large towers or big-box suburban subdivisions.
The Bigger Picture
As Ottawa city council continues to wrestle with its housing strategy heading into 2027 budget talks, this piece is a useful reminder that hitting a unit target on paper doesn't guarantee the kind of neighbourhoods residents actually want to live in. Whether that message shapes how Ottawa approaches its next wave of development approvals remains to be seen, but it's a conversation worth having as the city keeps growing.
Source: Ottawa Life Magazine
