RESCON: Land scarcity problem is strictly a myth
Ontario does not have a land scarcity problem. Rather, it has a serviced, approved and buildable land scarcity problem.
Richard Lyall, Published Jun 12, 2026
American writer and humourist Mark Twain once said, “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.”
That premise, it seems, can be applied to the thinking around land supply for housing.
For years, a popular narrative has dominated Ontario’s housing debate: we are running out of land. It is a convenient explanation for soaring home prices, shrinking affordability and a chronic shortage of new housing.
But it is, as they say these days, an alternative fact – just plain wrong, fiction, a fabrication, a falsehood.
Ontario does not have a land scarcity problem. Rather, it has a serviced, approved and buildable land scarcity problem – one largely created by decades of public policy choices that have made it increasingly difficult, expensive and time-consuming to transform land into housing.
That distinction matters because if policymakers misdiagnose the problem, they will continue prescribing the wrong solutions.
The evidence is increasingly clear.
Research comparing residential development land costs across Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Texas and Colorado found that serviced buildable housing land in the GTA and the broader GTHA is among the most expensive in North America. Yet this premium cannot be explained simply by geography or a lack of physical land.
www.torontosun.com/life/homes/rescon-land-scarcity-problem-is-strictly-a-myth
