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“I think this is too much of a move,” councillor Luke Stack said. “I don’t think we can just turn off the tap of supply for single-family homes.”

“We will force people into other communities,” councillor Maxine DeHart warned. “But they’ll still come back here to use our roads and facilities.”

The staff plan before council was to adopt a set of policies aimed at ensuring 49 per cent of all new housing units to be built by 2040 are constructed in one of five existing urban centres: Downtown, central Rutland, South Pandosy, Capri-Landmark, and the area around Orchard Park Shopping Centre, which the city calls Midtown.

That plan projected that 33 per cent of all new homes would be built in suburban areas and 18 per cent of new homes would be built in other areas.

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But the plan endorsed on Monday changes those percentages considerably. Now, the goal is to have 64 per cent of all new homes built in urban centres and just 19 per cent in suburban areas.

The most likely way the city will try to achieve a reduction in new home construction is to change the OCP and remove the development potential from currently vacant lands.

Stack said builders and other landowners would surely bristle at losing what he called “development rights.”

However, Basran countered that a future development designation under the official community plan does not confer any such right.