What to know
- Housing affordability is urgent: Rising costs are pushing families and workers out, requiring strong local leadership.
- New partnerships deliver homes: Brampton is working with unions, investors, and builders to scale up purpose-built rentals.
- Faster, fairer housing supply: Incentives and nonprofit partnerships are accelerating rentals and affordable homeownership.
- City-building unlocks growth: Transit and infrastructure projects are creating space for thousands of new homes.
Families across Canada are feeling the squeeze. Young people wonder if they’ll ever afford a home. Newcomers search endlessly for safe, stable rentals. Working parents juggle longer commutes because the cost of living pushes them farther from where they work.
Housing shouldn’t depend on luck, winning a bidding war, or having parents who can help.
In Brampton, we refuse to accept that housing affordability is out of reach. We’re not waiting for someone else to fix this — we’re leading, building, and using every tool available to deliver real results for real people.
What I’ve learned is that solving the housing crisis requires all hands on deck.
For too long, the burden of building homes has fallen on private developers alone. That model isn’t enough anymore. If Canada is serious about building affordable rentals at scale, we need unions, pension funds, and institutional investors fully at the table. That’s exactly what we’re doing in Brampton.
Look no further than Church and Main — a partnership with LiUNA delivering a landmark 35-storey, 400-unit purpose-built rental in the heart of our city. It’s transit-oriented, fast-moving, and proof that when labour invests in housing, the result is more homes for workers, sooner.
Brampton has introduced a Development Charges (DC) incentive program to support purpose-built rental developments of at least five storeys with a non-residential component on the ground floor. DC reductions are scaled depending on unit type, up to a maximum 100 per cent discount. These tools help rental projects, especially those that can accommodate families, move forward faster and in the right locations. Increasing rental supply requires cities to actively remove barriers to building.
Our message to unions, pensions, and builders is simple: join us. Let’s build a city where the people who keep Brampton running can afford to live here.
But a strong city isn’t built on rentals alone. Families deserve the dignity and pride that comes with owning a home. That’s why our partnership with Home Opportunities in Mount Pleasant is such a game-changer — delivering 157 new homes where families earning as low as $35,000 can become homeowners. Not someday. Now.
Add to that the $6-million investment from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund into Habitat for Humanity, helping build 27 new homes on William Street and Countryside Drive. These projects are more than construction sites. They are future dinner tables, bedroom walls covered with kids’ drawings, and long-term stability for families who have worked incredibly hard to get ahead. Housing must remain a path to middle-class security — not a closed door.
While we act urgently today, we are also reshaping the Brampton our children will inherit.
The Hazel McCallion Light Rail Transit project will transform how our city grows. With a 1.4-kilometre tunneled section into downtown Brampton, the LRT will unlock new housing, support higher-density development, and connect residents to jobs and education across the region. This isn’t just a transit project — it’s a city-building investment that will deliver thousands of new homes where people actually want to live.
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At the same time, Riverwalk is addressing a challenge that has held back downtown Brampton for decades. You can’t build housing in a floodplain — but you can fix the problem. Riverwalk will protect our downtown from flooding and unlock 3.6 million square feet of space for homes, jobs, small businesses, and community life.
Once complete, it will support housing for 17,700 new residents. Riverwalk isn’t a slogan. It’s shovels in the ground and long-term vision in action.
Housing is one of the great challenges of our time, and Brampton is meeting it head-on. We are calling on every builder, every investor, and every partner who wants to help solve the housing crisis: come build in Brampton. Bring your innovation. Bring your ambition.
Brampton is building — responsibly, urgently, and with purpose. For the families who are counting on us, we won’t slow down. We’re just getting started.
