Prince Edward County is booming – and that boom comes with echoes. In recent years, our idyllic rural county has seen a surge of new development proposals: subdivisions on former farm fields, condo projects by the water, and historic sites eyed for redevelopment. Promises of more housing and economic growth abound. But peel back the glossy renderings, and a more complicated story emerges – one of environmental trade-offs, strained infrastructure, and community pushback. We investigate what rapid growth is costing PEC, and whether local government and developers are balancing progress with preservation.
Building Boom vs. Rural Character:
After a decade of stagnation, PEC’s population is growing again, rising 3.9% from 2016 to 2021. The pandemic accelerated this influx as urban families, drawn by cheaper real estate and country life, moved in. Suddenly, developers – including big-city builders – have zeroed in on our towns and villages. Where five years ago a “few dozen” homes were built annually, now “a few hundred” go up each year, with thousands more in the pipeline. The County is scrambling to expand water lines and sewage plants to keep up. On paper, growth sounds positive – more residents and housing should invigorate the community. Yet many locals worry about how it’s happening. Longtime farmers see prime farmland slated for subdivisions. Shoreline residents watch wetlands and vistas give way to construction. The County’s own Strategic Plan notes that our “rural and historic character” must be maintained even as growth is directed to settlement areas. That’s easier said than done.
Affordability and Who Benefits:
Beneath the tug-of-war over land use lies the question: growth for whom? Housing prices in PEC soared during the boom. The average 2-bedroom home list price skyrocketed from around $720,000 in 2020 to over $1.2 million in 2022, far outpacing local incomes. While prices have since dipped somewhat, many young families and workers are priced out of the market. Developers often target high-end buyers – luxury homes, waterfront condos, and estate lots that yield bigger profits. Only 5% of units in new projects are required to be “affordable” under current rules, a threshold one County councillor blasted as “too low…should be 15%”. The result? New subdivisions risk becoming enclaves for affluent retirees or seasonal residents, not the year-round workforce PEC needs. Indeed, a 2022 StatsCan study found PEC had one of the highest rates of homes used as short-term rentals in Canada (nearly 5% of all dwellings), indicating investors snapping up properties for Airbnb rather than long-term housing. Longtime residents see this and ask: are we building for the community, or for profit?
Local voices are sounding the alarm. “The actions by council are far more skewed towards tourists and not to the benefit of tax-paying residents,” resident Angus Ross warned back in 2017 regarding the rise of short-term rentals and loss of rental housing. Fast-forward to now, and one might apply his critique to certain development decisions too. Environmental advocates likewise fear that in the rush to build, vital natural protections are being eroded. In late 2022, County groups protested Ontario’s Bill 23 (the “More Homes Built Faster Act”), which strips Conservation Authorities of much planning oversight. “Building in wetlands…developers are going to build million dollar homes on them, not affordable homes,” said Hirsch (also president of a local environmental initiative) during the protest. He and others argued that sacrificing wetlands and farmland in the name of housing would damage the County’s ecology without solving the affordability crisis. Their point: growth policy needs to distinguish between quantity of houses and quality of outcomes for the community.
Transparency and Trust:
Another cost of rapid growth is harder to quantify: community trust in the planning process. When Council flouts its own planning staff’s recommendations, as in the Cold Creek case, it invites both developer lawsuits and public confusion. Conversely, when Council seems to push through approvals despite public opposition, residents feel unheard. The County has tried to improve transparency – e.g. more open houses, publishing development applications online – and in 2019 it declared a “climate emergency” explicitly citing extraordinary floods and weather as reasons to take sustainability seriously. Those moves were meant to reassure the public that long-term impacts won’t be ignored. Still, tensions persist. Who truly guides PEC’s growth? Some suspect that provincial pressure (to meet broader housing targets) and deep-pocketed developers hold the reins, more so than the voices of a small rural populace. After all, Ontario’s Bill 23 also removed many tools for municipalities to collect development charges or insist on green standards, effectively tilting the table toward builders.
Looking forward, Prince Edward County faces a crucial balancing act. Managing growth “hovering around 1–2% per year” – much higher than expected – is now a core challenge. The County’s latest official plan and public consultations emphasize protecting our heritage, environment, and sense of community amid change. Success will require better communication between developers, council, and citizens. It may also require saying “no” or “not here” more often to projects that undermine long-term sustainability, even if that means slower growth. As Councillor Hirsch noted, climate change means we must factor environmental limits into every approval. At the same time, saying “yes, but…” to good projects – yes to growth, but with affordability, but with green space, but with infrastructure upgrades – will be key to ensuring new development truly benefits the County.
Ultimately, the real cost of growth cannot simply be measured in dollars or acres. It’s also about the potential loss of what makes The County The County: open fields and clean shorelines, historic streetscapes, tight-knit villages where people know their councillors by name. Those intangibles have value too. The hope among many is that Prince Edward County can chart a different path than unchecked sprawl – one where we welcome new neighbours and homes without selling our soul. Getting there will require peeling back the layers on every proposal and asking the hard questions about who wins, who pays, and what kind of future we’re building.
Sources: Prince Edward County municipal reports on growth trends thecounty.ca; Quinte News and CountyLive reports on Bill 23 protest countylive.ca; Picton Gazette coverage of Cold Creek development debate pictongazette.ca and Angus Ross commentary on housing pictongazette.ca.