Conversation with Mayor Morgan Part 1: Homelessness, communication, and housing

Only recently has London, Ont. Mayor Josh Morgan found time to display paintings from Museum London and local students in his office.

Months of bare walls were an indication of his busy first year leading city council.

In a year-end interview with CTV News, he opens up about his greatest challenge of 2023.

“Throughout my time as a councillor, I liked saying yes to meeting people, going to events, engaging with different groups across the city,” he explained. “Last Thursday, I had five requests [to attend events] in the same evening. Guess what, four of them were a no. That has been the hardest thing to adjust to.”

A defining issue at city hall this year was the launch of London’s Whole of Community Response to Homelessness.

The homelessness strategy developed by stakeholders and civic administration aims to assist the highest acuity people living unsheltered by eventually opening 600 highly supportive housing units and up to 15 low barrier service hubs.

Just two hubs were approved by council this year with a goal to stabilize people before they move into the supportive housing.

Reflecting on the process to date, Morgan now believes the initial goal to create up to 15 hubs can be reduced to a lower number.

“I think our focus moving forward with hubs and supportive housing is really going to be on flow-through. I don’t think at the end of the day that we are going to need 10 to 15 hubs across the city. I think we can get flow-through into supportive housing and then from supportive housing into housing with financial supplements with less.”

He also admits a need to better communicate with Londoners about the plan.

“We have not done a good job at all on communication through this process,” he said. “There has been a lot of confusion, a lot of assumptions, and I think there has been misinformation out there at times. One of the things we absolutely have to improve in 2024 is how we communicate with Londoners.”

Morgan also sees a need to improve how he communicates mayoral priorities to the public, calling it "a critical focus" for the second year of his term.

"It will range from making myself very available to media for engagement and opportunities to discuss issues, to toying around with ideas like doing a podcast, putting ideas out on my social media platforms, and really just communicating a lot more,” he said.

The mayor also intends to continue direct communications with local developers and the provincial government to address the impact high interest rates and construction costs have had on the number of building approvals sitting on the shelf.

“We need to turn these [municipal] permissions into homes for people at some point,” he told CTV News.

In November, a progress report on London’s pledge to create 47,000 new residential units by 2031 included the province’s evaluation that city hall has only achieved 37 per cent of its 2023 target— declaring the target “not met.”

Specifically, the province set this year’s housing target at 3,447 units, but only recognized 1,260 housing starts.

“The most frustrating part of this is the fact that we can approve more permits than we ever have, we can do it faster than we have, we can have all of these difficult discussions about high density across the city and approve them, and then we have a report come out and say you didn’t meet your housing target. You have failed. But we haven’t, right? We’ve done our part in this process and we need other partners in this process to do their part too,” Morgan asserted.

Morgan said he’s been in conversation with Ontario’s Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs Paul Calandra about giving municipalities the ability to incentivize construction starts and implement a use-it or lose-it system once permits are approved by the municipal government.

As for the costs incurred by municipalities after the province approved the Building More Homes Faster Act, Morgan said the Minister is listening.

Calandra’s predecessor Steve Clark acknowledged there would be financial impacts and committed to “make municipalities whole,” but London’s multi-year budget includes average annual tax increases of $24.06 (development charges) and $7.76 (additional staff) related to the provincial legislation.

“I don’t think it’s a broken promise yet,” Morgan said after recently leading a meeting of the Big City Mayors in a discussion with Minister Calandra. “I can say this is a topic that is top-of-mind for him, and something that we need to move on fairly quickly. The catalyst for all this is the municipal budget season we are all in.”

Next year, the mayor will also pursue creating a local incentive program that was part of his 2022 Campaign Platform.

“If interest rates are not going to come down, and there aren’t other tools at play, we have to do what we can to get the capital deployed in our city and building the housing,” he said.

He suggests it could both attract capital investment in local projects and focus the highest density development where it’s envisioned in The London Plan.

Morgan added, “One of the ideas that we are looking into, that you will see come out in 2024, is the idea to incentivize high density development in areas like the downtown and transit villages. We are going to design new Community Improvement Programs that are going to have temporary benefits for building that hopefully can get that capital deployed in the short-term.”

He continued, “We created 18,000 jobs this past year. Once upon a time 10,000 jobs over the course of a four-year term of a mayor was a big promise. We need places for those people to live.”

In Part Two of Morgan’s year end interview with CTV News, he discusses affordability, budget priorities, and the future of the Rapid Transit project.

Part Two will be available on Dec. 29.