St. Catharines secures year-two funding from the Housing Accelerator Fund

The City of St. Catharines recently received its second Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) installment from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), reflecting the strong progress it’s made so far to address housing needs in the community.

Upon reviewing the City’s year-one report on how funds were used to create units, the CMHC confirmed the City would receive it’s second instalment of about $6.42 million, 25 per cent of the total investment from the HAF. The funding will support a range of initiatives to continue the City’s efforts to get more homes built in St. Catharines.

“Thank you to the Federal Ministry of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities and the CMHC for its ongoing commitment for housing in our community,” said St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe. “The City of St. Catharines is proud to be a Housing Accelerator Fund recipient, and this continued investment shows the Government of Canada’s confidence in our ambitious approach to addressing housing challenges in our community.”

Building a strong foundation: year-one lays groundwork for growth

The City announced in January 2024 it would receive $25.7 million over four years to boost the housing supply in St. Catharines. The federal program offers financial support to local governments for expediting the development of new homes. St. Catharines received $6.42 million in 2024.

“We are working hard to enhance the way we support homes get built, including offering fresh incentives and processes to streamline housing approvals,” said CAO David Oakes. “We made great progress in 2024 in building a strong foundation, and we’re looking forward to unlocking even more opportunities in our second year through these transformational initiatives.”

About $4 million of the City’s year-one funding was used for financial incentives, such as doubling City grants for creating interior accessory dwelling units (ADU) and quadrupling grants for detached ADUs. Forty-one units, and about $2 million in grants, were approved through the program in the first year. The City introduced other incentives, including affordable and accessible housing fee reimbursement policies and a development charge discount program for purpose-built rental units, and expanded its flood alleviation grants to help cover costs for installing preventative devices.

One of the City’s cornerstone initiatives was creating a municipal development corporation (MDC) to take the lead in bringing municipal properties to market to support new housing opportunities and in establishing partnerships with the development community. In 2024, the City’s incorporated the MDC, established a board of directors and hired a general manager. With its business plan and budget approved, the transfer of several City-owned sites to the MDC is underway and sector engagement has begun.  

HAF funding supported City initiatives streamlining approval processes. The City hired more staff to speed up development review processes, launched a one-day permit pilot project for pre-approved detached accessory dwelling units, expanded its online e-permitting portal, BuildSTC, to include planning applications and introduced its CIVIC maps website offering an interactive mapping tool providing real-time access to a wealth of information, including geographic, environmental, zoning and official plan information.

The City also introduced policies that exempted affordable housing development from parking requirements, permitted 4-units as of right and added flexibility to ADU provisions. Infrastructure initiatives and studies, including comprehensive flow monitoring and capacity mapping, are ongoing as well as research and development of best practises and building standards.

The City is also working with external partners, including Niagara District Airport on exploring a review of airport zoning regulations that limit building heights, Niagara Regional Housing on bridge housing construction and Transport Canada regarding federally owned lands that are prime for redevelopment, to ensure maximum development potential.

While the majority of the initiatives completed in year one lay the groundwork for a successful 2025 in terms of permit issuances, the City did issue permits for 409 dwelling units in 2024 under challenging market conditions. During the reporting process, CMHC also invited the City to submit new initiatives and funding requests. The City requested: $10 million to expand the Municipal Development Corporation, $24 million to expand the ADU grant program, $8 million to expand the purpose built rental development charge discount and $400,000 for official plan modernization.