A few weeks ago, someone from the Green Party of Ontario got in touch and asked if I’d like to interview Mike Schreiner, their leader, about his housing platform. And if I’m totally honest, at first I thought, nope, I’m not doing politicians on this thing, and it’s a bit silly just after Ontario voted for more of Doug Ford.
But then I had a bit of a change of heart, partly because I did a little reading into Mike, his background and the Greens’ housing policy. Firstly, Mike seemed a bit different to the usual Green, and second, their housing policy was pretty comprehensive. So I changed my mind and wanted this to be the first interview for Series 3, because if there’s a Challenger political party, then the Greens should be a decent candidate.
I also thought I might be able to give him a bit of a hard time about what a party with just two provincial members of parliament. If I’m honest, I didn’t do a very good job of that because Mike had quite a good answer.
A Green, But Not That Kind
Forget the caricature of the hair-shirted environmentalist shouting about the planet first too. Often the echo chamber of Greens around the world, and I assumed, Schreiner is quietly putting forward possibly the most practical housing plan in the province. It’s not particularly flashy, it won’t win a Twitter argument, and it certainly doesn’t pander to the NIMBYs of certain bits of the province, not naming names, Etobicoke. But it might just work.
“I feel in Ontario, you have two choices: tall or sprawl,” he told me. “And there's so many better options that are more affordable for people, more affordable for communities, better for the environment, better for our quality of life.” It’s one of many points where you find yourself wondering: why isn’t everyone already saying this?
But let’s go back a bit, for Mike comes to provincial party politics through an interesting route, a farmboy from a very small town in Kansas, who ended up founding one of Ontario’s first organic food businesses. His politics come from building things, not trying to break them.
“I’ve always liked creating,” he says. “Businesses, organizations, food systems that work better and that’s the lens I bring to housing. We have to build stuff. But we have to build it smarter.” He sees housing as the heart of many things that aren’t working terribly well, from affordability to climate to mobility, and economic opportunity. He comes across a very calm, but I can also sense a bit of anger for how things are just now.
“There is no city in Ontario where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford average monthly rent,” he says. “None.”
The Anti-Sprawl Playbook
The Greens’ housing plan seems to get a lot of credit for proposing smart, actionable reform, not taking sides and focusing more on action. It’s comprehensive, and while being very YIMBY, doesn’t come across as overly antagonistic.
“We’ve got to stop this market versus non-market nonsense,” he says. “We need both. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment.”
Here’s the gist:
Legalise fourplexes and mid-rise apartments province-wide, as of right.
Eliminate development charges and land transfer taxes for homes under 2,000 sqft within existing urban boundaries, and rework how municipalities are funded.
Re-fund non-profit, co-op and supportive housing, especially for people who’ve been shut out of the market entirely.
Introduce a speculation tax and vacant home levy, because “Homes should be for people, not speculators.”
This should help to break free of Ontario’s binary ‘Tall or Sprawl' approach to development (high-rises or subdivisions) has failed affordability, the environment, and fiscal sustainability. Mike is proposing a return to ‘missing middle’ housing along existing infrastructure corridors to reduce sprawl, cut emissions and preserve farmland. “The fact that we’re losing 319 acres of farmland every single day to sprawl? That’s not just unsustainable—it’s absurd. And we can’t eat subdivisions.”
Housing is the connecting thread.
What perhaps most important is housing isn’t a single policy area but recognised as the pressure point where what matters converges like climate, infrastructure, affordability … even democracy. It’s the exact right place a contemporary Green party should be focused on.
“Housing is directly related to the climate crisis and protecting the environment,” he says. “Low-density sprawl development is primarily what drives climate pollution in Ontario. The number one source of GHG emissions in Ontario is transportation emissions, primarily driven by people having to commute to get to work or to go shopping or spend time with their family and friends.”
So yes, more housing. But it matters where and how too. “If we can build homes that people can afford in the communities they know and love, close to their family, friends, where they work, it will significantly reduce climate pollution and improve the quality of life as well as affordability for people.”
Sprawl also hits the bottom line, with Mike identifying how it’s expensive for governments to serve. “If governments are going to have the financial resources to address things like climate, healthcare, education, et cetera, we have to build in a way that's more affordable for we as a society.
The numbers are bleak.
“I think the infrastructure repair backlog for cities in Ontario is around $55 billion. And a lot of it is just old infrastructure that was built, you know, 1950s, 1960s... and we thought, man, we're making all this money and this is great—without thinking, you know, those pipes, those roads, that stuff's going to need to be replaced and fixed and upgraded. And the bills are coming due on that.”
That old pattern, of growing outward to fund the present, is falling apart. “Our post-World War II development patterns in North America is like a Ponzi scheme,” Mike says, citing the Strong Towns movement. “We keep building more to get revenue to build more. And now the bill’s coming due.”
There’s a better way, but it requires governments to stop treating housing as a one-off transaction and start seeing it as a long-term investment. “It costs 2.5 times more for a municipality to service a home that’s built through low-density sprawl versus one that’s built within existing urban boundaries.”
“You Can’t Approve Your Way Out of a Crisis This Slowly”
Perhaps the most damning stat of all is that under the Ford government’s let the market solve it approach, Ontario is building fewer homes than almost every other province in the country, even as the population surges.
“We’re at a 50-year low in housing starts … and housing prices are at historic highs. If the market-only approach was going to work, it would have worked by now.”
So what’s the holdup? In short: Time. And rules. And politics.
“It takes 8 to 10 years to get a midrise building approved,” he says. “And by the time you’ve done that, the financing doesn’t work anymore. The project’s dead.”
Then there’s the federal nonsense: “CMHC won’t finance fourplexes. Triplexes, yes. Fourplexes, no. It’s just arbitrary policy that completely contradicts the goals we say we have.”
Telling Better Stories, Faster
One of the best bits of our conversation was when Mike described a Guelph eightplex that had been fought tooth and nail by locals, only for some of the loudest naysayers to end up moving in after it was built!
“They were downsizing,” he said. “They didn’t want to leave their neighbourhood. Suddenly, they saw the value. That co-op gave them a place to stay in the community they loved. And now they love it.”
This is the quiet triumph of good housing policy. It’s not just numbers and zoning but about giving people real choices. Letting them see the alternatives. Making density visible, desirable, and, dare I say it, ‘cool’.
“We have to build more of these examples,” Mike says. “So people can walk past them, live next to them, experience them. That’s when it clicks.”
In case you haven’t noticed here, but that’s something we’re preaching all the time, urbanists getting better at showing, as well as telling, so the story is interesting, positive and what people might want to hear more about. It can’t all be pointing at places elsewhere, or sharing stories from being on vacation, but needs to happen on this very local level too.
Don’t Wait for Permission
Despite leading a party with just two seats at Queen’s Park, Mike and the Greens are managing to shift the political conversation in Ontario around zoning reform, missing middle housing and climate-aligned planning. Again, I wanted to give him a bit of a tough time about this now, from a small party, with limited voice in Queen’s Park. But to be fair to them, they’re being good members of opposition, speaking up loudly, clearly and being quite happy if their position gets adopted by someone else.
That’s cool to make a difference, rather than trying to win an argument or power. It’s being a proper Challenger!
“We introduced these ideas when nobody thought they were possible,” Mike says. “Now, even the other parties are adopting them. And that’s fine by me. If we’re serious about solving this crisis, we need to stop caring who gets the credit.”
So what can people do to help them?
“Make noise … Governments respond to pressure. If they only hear from the people saying no, then no is what they’ll do. But if they start hearing a lot of yes … yes to fourplexes, yes to co-ops, yes to housing your neighbours then they’ll move.”
And if he had a magic wand?
“I’d fix zoning tomorrow and get the government back into funding co-ops and supportive housing. Not either/or—both. That’s how we move forward.”
tl:dr? Mike Schreiner’s housing plan might not win splashy headlines, but it could fix the system that is giving endless bad news stories across the province of Ontario, and especially in and around Toronto. And in a province increasingly defined by unaffordability, that might be the most radical idea of all.
To being Challengers.
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