You Can't Build a House You Can't Flush a Toilet In: The Real Reason Ontario Isn't Building Low-Rise Homes

The reason there aren't more houses being built near Newmarket, Aurora and East Gwillimbury has almost nothing to do with builders, interest rates, or demand. It's that the pipes aren't there. You cannot build a house you can't flush a toilet in, and across some of the fastest-growing parts of Ontario, the sewage capacity to serve new homes simply does not exist yet.

This is the least-discussed reason housing supply stays tight — and unlike interest rates, it does not turn around in a year.

What actually happened in York Region

York Region's population is projected to nearly double by 2051. To handle that, the region needed a major wastewater solution. Planning began in 2009.

By 2022 — thirteen years later — no solution had been approved. The region had spent roughly $100 million of a $715 million budget, mostly on buying land, and the environmental assessment alone cost $25 million. Aurora, Newmarket and East Gwillimbury all warned they would have to halt development entirely without more capacity. (The Narwhal)

The region has since moved to a Lake Ontario solution, routing wastewater to the Duffin Creek plant in Durham, with funding to enable roughly 8,000 homes across those three towns. (York Region)

Eight thousand homes. For a region adding hundreds of thousands of people.

It isn't only Ontario

The clearest illustration of how these projects go is on the other side of the country. Metro Vancouver's North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant was estimated at $700 million in 2013, due to open in 2020.

By March 2024 the estimate was $3.86 billion — more than five times the original budget — with completion pushed to 2030. North Shore residents are expected to carry roughly $590 a year in extra utility costs for the next thirty years. (CBC News)

One plant. Ten years late. Five times over budget. That is the machinery we are relying on to unlock housing supply.

Why this matters more than another rate cut

Most housing commentary treats supply as a builder problem or a zoning problem. Zoning gets changed in a council meeting. Servicing capacity takes a decade and costs billions.

The practical consequence is that even when a subdivision is approved, and even when a builder wants to build, and even when buyers want to buy, the homes cannot be serviced. Worse, the constraint is often invisible: municipalities quietly do not open land for development at all, because they already know the infrastructure cannot support it.

So when you hear that supply will catch up, ask the follow-up question — with what water and sewer capacity, funded when?

What this means if you're buying in this corridor

If you're looking in Bradford, Newmarket, Aurora or East Gwillimbury, three things follow from this.

Do not plan around a supply wave that fixes affordability. New low-rise supply in this corridor is gated by infrastructure timelines measured in years, not quarters. Buying decisions built on "prices will come down when they build more" are betting on something with a very long fuse.

Watch the development charges. Someone pays for this infrastructure, and a meaningful share arrives as municipal development charges — which builders pass into the price of a new home. It is one reason new-build pricing in the GTA fringe is stickier than people expect. Those charges are also part of why closing costs here run higher than buyers budget for.

If you find a home that works, the financing question is separate from the market question. Waiting for a supply correction that is gated by a decade-long sewer project is a different bet than waiting for a rate you can actually qualify at. One of those you can plan around. The other you cannot.

The honest summary

Canada has not built enough low-rise housing, and the standard explanations — builders, zoning, red tape — are only part of it. A large share of the constraint is that the water and sewer capacity to serve new neighbourhoods was not built, and the projects to fix that run over a decade and into the billions.

That is not a reason for despair, and it is certainly not advice to rush. It is a reason to make your decision on your numbers — what you can carry, what you can qualify for, what happens at renewal — rather than on a supply story that is further away than it sounds.

Figures above are drawn from public reporting and municipal sources, linked inline, and were accurate as of the dates in those sources. Infrastructure timelines and budgets change; this is general information, not financial advice for your situation.