SPONSORED BY
HOSTED BY
THE CONSEQUENCES
OF AFFORDABILITY
This session will focus on measures to make housing more affordable and the consequences of those measures.
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Parking: Land is expensive, so reducing parking reduces the amount of land used to build a home, however, that reduces the number of cars that can be parked in a driveway - leading to on-street parking and complaints from residents. In Durham Region, transit is not in place to support one-car or car-less households.
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ADUs: The province allowing three units per lot provides opportunities for affordability - both as additional income for the property owner, and by adding rental units to the market. However, ADUs provide challenges including parking, garbage collection, zoning, etc.
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Smaller Product Size: Building smaller houses is another option to bring affordability to the market, however, some municipalities have restrictions on lot sizes that don't allow for smaller products.​
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What are municipalities doing to help with affordability? Are they providing tax incentives to building doing affordable, municipal land on a land lease, etc.
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What are you willing to give up - from developers and from the municipalities? What's the compromise?
FEATURED INDUSTRY EXPERTS
SPEAKER
John Taylor
Town of Whitby
John has been a professional land use planner for over 30 years.  He started his career as a private planning consultant and transitioned to the public sector in the late 1990’s.  He is currently the Director of Planning at the Town of Whitby. John has been a guest speaker at several universities and planning symposiums providing his expertise on the role of government in the land use and development approval process in Ontario.  John likes to focus on solutions rather than problems and can often be found at the hockey arena or golf course in his spare time.
SPEAKER
Tito-Dante Marimpietri
City of Oshawa
Stakeholder Communications and Corporate Public Relations Specialist; Senior Elected Public Official whose initial prominence came from being one of the youngest Elected Councillors, and Deputy Mayors to historically serve Oshawa and Durham Region; Successful Public Service leading to a substantive career boasting of accomplishments across municipal, regional provincial, federal and even international public and private sector roles.
Exceptional leadership skills, public persona, financial planning, project management, corporate and community vision expertise, dynamic social media and public relations proficiency, and successful stakeholder engagement, are core competencies vital in my being selected as the MP candidate for Oshawa in the 2015 Federal Elections in Canada and further working with numerous high level strategic communications and management consulting firms over the period of a quarter century.
SPEAKER
Scott Waterhouse
GHD
Scott Waterhouse is the Planning Manager at GHD in Whitby, Ontario, leading land development and urban planning projects since October 2020. He brings over two decades of expertise, including work in urban and regional planning across both private and public sectors in Canada and Australia. Scott previously held roles such as Planning Project Manager with GHD (2010–2015), Manager of Planning & Land Development at Candevcon (2015–2020), and urban planner positions at the Town of Whitby, Moreland City Council, and the Victorian Planning Authority.
A Registered Professional Planner (RPP) and Ryerson University graduate (B.A.A., Urban & Regional Planning), he is skilled in land-use policy, zoning review, urban design, and project management. Scott's leadership in planning drives sustainable community development and regulatory excellence.
SPEAKER
Amanda Santo
Dorsay Development
A Toronto native with 25 years of experience in urban planning and land development, Amanda is currently the Vice President of Development at Dorsay Developments. Her career spans impactful roles at Bousfields Inc. and Waterfront Toronto, where she spent over a decade leading revitalized, master-planned communities. She holds a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from Queen’s and is currently pursuing an Executive MBA at the Ivey School of Business.
MODERATOR
Bryce Jordan
Bryce Jordan graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Environmental Studies in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Waterloo in 1979. He worked for 8 years as a planner in the Whitby Planning Department followed by an 18- month stint with the City of Etobicoke Planning Department.
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In 1988, Bryce joined the Sernas Group (now GHD) as the Manager of Planning in the company’s Whitby office. He spent the next 37 years working primarily on private sector land develop projects located throughout Durham Region and beyond. That time-period spanned three full scale reviews of the Durham Regional Official Plan and numerous updates of local official plans in Durham. A life-long resident of Whitby, he retired in January, 2025 to help his wife, Jo-Ann raise her new puppy, Freya.
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