Moving from planning to building.

"Unlocking Peterborough’s full potential means having access to housing for everyone – from students to retirees and our most vulnerable residents."

Housing is foundational to a thriving community and a growing economy. Right now, Peterborough is facing a critical housing shortage that impacts families, young workers, seniors looking to downsize, and our most vulnerable neighbours.

For too long, we've managed scarcity instead of enabling growth. We often point to provincial regulations or inflation as the sole reasons for our limited housing supply, but it's clear we can improve the City's processes to replace barriers with bridges to responsible housing.

We need an approach that champions the missing middle, encourages responsible density, and supports lifecycle housing so residents at every stage of life can find a home they can afford.

Our Strategic Approach

To achieve these goals, our approach will be guided by three core strategies:

  • We will encourage new residential density in designated growth areas and along major transit corridors.
  • We will ensure our land-use policies have public input and provide certainty for developers.
  • We will encourage the development of “lifecycle housing” – ensuring all residents regardless of age or income have suitable housing options.

Our Core Policies

60 Additional Transitional and Permanent Housing Spaces

We can't leave our most vulnerable neighbours behind, but municipalities cannot fund these solutions alone. We will work with Council and senior levels of government to create 60 additional transitional and permanent housing spaces in the community for the unhoused.

This goes beyond just a roof. These spaces will include wraparound social services for treatment where necessary. The City will provide city-owned land and coordinate social services, while aggressively advocating for the provincial and federal funding required to build it.

Updating the Downtown Upper-Storey Housing Program

Our downtown has incredible untapped housing potential sitting right above our street-level storefronts, but construction costs have outpaced our current incentives.

We will work with downtown property owners to update the Downtown Community Improvement Plan (CIP) to reflect today’s realities. This means higher grant limits, additional support for mandatory life-safety and accessibility upgrades, interest-free forgivable loans to improve project cash flow, and fast-tracking approvals for larger family-sized or accessible units.

Empowering the Community Planning Permit System (CPPS)

Builders need clear rules, and neighbourhoods need responsible growth. Right now, navigating the planning process takes too long.

We will review the effectiveness of Peterborough’s new Community Planning Permit System and the Strategic Growth Areas Secondary Plan to ensure they actually provide certainty for developers while supporting well-planned growth where it is intended, allowing suitable developments to be pre-approved.

Additional Housing Policies
  • Once appropriate housing options are available, we will support consistent enforcement of bylaws that keep parks, trails, and public spaces available, safe, and accessible for everyone.
  • Direct staff to ensure that Peterborough’s participation in the Development Charge Reduction Program (DRCP) results in actual housing construction, and that the associated provincial funding is sufficient to deliver the infrastructure needed to support that growth so taxpayers won’t shoulder the shortfall.

"Our Invest in Housing plan is how we move from planning to building. This is how we create the responsible density our city needs, support the missing middle, and ensure Peterborough has housing for all."

Together, We Will.

That is how we take real action on housing supply.

That is how we build the responsible density our community needs.

And that is how we make Peterborough a city for everyone.