The Peterborough The Kawarthas Home Builders Association

6 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 11 its current membership aware of new trends in the housing industry. In educating them, and sharing appropriate information, the association works closely with the OHBA and some of its educational partners, such as EnerQuality, Canada’s #1 certifier of energy-efficient housing, whose mission is to help home builders innovate and stay competitive; and buildAbility, which offers training and core competency courses to builders, designers, and building officials. Schillemat notes that many of these courses are online to suit busy home builders on site responsibilities. “For a business owner to sit in a classroom and learn something -- their time is money. So, if we can offer them more flexible options like the online courses, it works well. CHBA National has a lot of educational information that’s open for members to access when it’s convenient for them.” Safety is a priority Homebuilding is a potentially dangerous profession. Thus, the PKHBA has partnerships with local health and safety organizations, and Schillemat concedes that that type of training does need to be done in person. “We have some great options in the City of Peterborough,” she relays. “There are two or three different first aid providers that we share information with and that our members use, and Fleming College does a lot of that too, which is great.” PKHBA partners include the WSIB (The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board), which is the workplace compensation board for provincially regulated workplaces in Ontario; and the IHSA (The Infrastructure Health & Safety Association), a provincial program that provides resources and training to help control and eliminate safety hazards in work environments involving high-risk activities. Going forward According to Schillemat, all levels of government in Canada – local, provincial, and federal -- agree that the country is facing a housing crisis, but there is little agreement on how to confront it. Certainly, more housing is needed but how will new homes get built? “They say they want housing, but there are still a lot of roadblocks at all different levels for various reasons,” she opines. “In Ontario, for example, the provincial government has asked municipalities to commit to a housing target. For the City of Peterborough, that target is 4,700 homes by 2031. But the city has never built that many homes in eight years before. It would require close to doubling what has been happening. 2021 was a good year, but there were not that many housing starts in 2022, and 2023 is also looking to be quite low. “The supply is not where it should be for the number of potential buyers in the city. There aren’t enough plans coming out and there are several projects that haven’t been approved that are still waiting in the queue at the municipality. So, there will be more housing but it’s not happening yet. There’s a strong need but it is going to take a long time,” she concludes.