{"id":17306,"date":"2017-05-17T11:50:56","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T15:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17306"},"modified":"2017-05-17T11:50:56","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T15:50:56","slug":"owners-of-vacant-homes-should-face-tax-penalties-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/owners-of-vacant-homes-should-face-tax-penalties-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Owners of vacant homes should face tax penalties: Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aurora might soon have the tools at its disposal to crack down on the owners of vacant homes \u2013 hitting them in the pocketbook.
\nCouncil has tasked municipal staff with developing a list of options available to the municipality to impose a vacant home tax, a provision which was made in the recent Ontario Budget.
\nThe move stems from a motion made by Councillor Tom Mrakas, who said in his pitch that residents \u2013 particularly young residents \u2013 are \u201cexperiencing difficulty entering the housing market due to a lack of affordable homes\u201d along with \u201can increase in buyers purchasing properties and, upon closing, many of these homes remain unoccupied.\u201d
\nThe motion was taken to the next level by Councillor Paul Pirri, who suggested an amendment formally requesting that it receive the ability from the Province to tax vacant homes in any upcoming legislation.
\nA recent announcement from the Province made it clear that they would be introducing legislation empowering the City of Toronto \u201cand potentially other interested municipalities\u201d to introduce just such a vacant homes property tax and it is time for Aurora to get its bid in.
\n\u201cI think the Town of Aurora needs to be vocal about being included in this initial phase of the program,\u201d said Councillor Paul Pirri.
\nThe amendment had the full support of Councillor Mrakas \u2013 and indeed Council as a whole.
\nSpeaking to the amendment, Councillor Mrakas agreed it is time for Aurora to have its voice heard.
\n\u201cI do agree that it is important that we get on the ball first, jump in and be strong and vocal and say that we want this, we want this as a Town,\u201d he said. \u201cFor all we know they are only going to give it to a certain number of municipalities and I think it is important that we be at the top of the list.
\n\u201cWe have talked at Council for a long time about having this ability \u2013 and I just think let\u2019s ask for the ability to do this and staff will bring those options forward on how we can implement and move forward. Once the legislation has been drawn out and we can look at exactly what the province is going to allow us to do and will not allow us to do, but I think it is very important that we take a lead and jump in on this right away because we have been talking about doing this for a really long time and we need this ability. Now that the Province is allowing it, we need to jump in.\u201d
\nAdditional support was offered by Councillor Sandra Humfryes, who said a vacant home tax is \u201ca great plan and I am looking forward to launching this.\u201d
\n\u201cThe thought of having that legislation on the table usually starts the ball rolling and I suspect that most of the land speculators will be long gone before legislation kicks in and this will certainly be a positive step forward for the future [if] another tight housing market exists again.\u201d
\nAlthough they both supported the motion, however, Mayor Geoff Dawe and Councillor John Abel cast doubt on the hope such a tax would facilitate more affordable housing in the community, particularly for younger buyers.
\n\u201cThis [vacant property issue] has been something that was brought to our attention more than a year ago by a prominent real estate person who asks to remain unnamed,\u201d said Councillor Abel. \u201cAlthough I don\u2019t think it is going to address the shortage of affordable housing, those are the concerns we are going to address with a vacant home tax. I am in support of moving along with what the Province is going to do to bring forward as an initiative and I think it is important that municipalities who want to participate respond.\u201d
\nAdded Mayor Dawe: \u201cI think we have to be very clear in recognizing that a vacant home tax is not necessarily going to fix this issue. It is a supply side issue.\u201d
\nIn response, Councillor Mrakas said he didn\u2019t disagree that a vacant property tax won\u2019t be a magic bullet, he disagreed there was a supply problem.
\n\u201cThe development community has taken this opportunity to jump on this and state that supply is the problem and therefore they can ask and push for the Provincial government to open up lands that are not currently available to them, environmentally sensitive lands,\u201d he contended. \u201cThere is more than enough supply to move people into.\u201d
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora might soon have the tools at its disposal to crack down on the owners of vacant homes \u2013 hitting them in the pocketbook.
\nCouncil has tasked municipal staff with developing a list of options available to the municipality to impose a vacant home tax, a provision which was made in the recent Ontario Budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4v8","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 17:10:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}