Mayor John Tory called on city staff at a report Friday to draft a “housing action plan” that could bring major changes to zoning regulations, including allowing multiplexes on all residential lots and legalizing housing. The proposal will go to the city council on Wednesday in one of the most important meetings of the year. Here is a breakdown of the report:
What is Toronto’s goal?
The Ford government’s housing plan set the goal for Toronto: 285,000 new homes over the next decade. On Friday, Tory said he wants to “meet or exceed” the province’s target. “It’s going to be difficult,” said Rocky Petkov, a volunteer with More Neighbors Toronto, an advocacy group that aims to address the long-term political, social and economic consequences of unaffordable housing. “There are real concerns; there’s only so much manpower and construction materials. This is something that’s going to take time. … It’s not going to be overnight. But I think it’s possible.”
Where does Tory stand on this?
Tory campaigned for an import scheme much more kinds of houses in town. In a letter to the council supporting these reforms, Tory writes: “Voters at the last local election gave me and this council a mandate to make bold moves on housing.” In a proposal to the council, the Tories asked staff to review plans for the Port Lands and waterfront to “ensure housing density is optimised” and create a separate post-secondary strategy focused on “increasing availability student housing”. “This plan will bring our city into the 21st century by removing the exclusion zone that has concentrated development in just a few areas of the city and prevented Torontonians from having housing options,” Tory told reporters Friday. Staff are also being asked to review urban planning guidelines, heritage standards and urban forestry policies to help meet the goal of building new housing, according to the proposal. “More needs to be done,” Tory said. “We know that we as a city government must take a more aggressive approach to addressing the acute affordability and housing crises facing our city.” Mayor John Tory called on city staff at a report Friday to draft a “housing action plan” that could bring major changes to zoning regulations, including allowing multiplexes on all residential lots and legalizing housing. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press) Coun. Brad Bradford, chairman of the planning and housing committee, said the housing plan would create a fairer city “where everyone has the dignity of a roof over their head, where there are affordable options for those who are here now and those who will call Toronto home in the future. “To get there, it’s abundantly clear that the status quo approaches that have dominated housing for many years are no longer sustainable,” said Bradford, who represents Ward 19, Beaches-East York. With Tory’s enhanced “strong mayor” powers, he can pass these new rules with just a third of the council’s support at Wednesday’s meeting.
What does this new level of housing look like?
If approved and implemented, this plan will significantly change the composition of Toronto’s housing in the coming years. You would see:
More so-called “soft density” in neighborhoods, meaning multi-family housing will pop up in areas currently zoned for single-family homes only. Rooms for rent were legalized throughout the city. Currently, they are only legal in certain places.
Expanding the variety of home options in addition to building more homes is something housing advocates like Petkov have urged. In April 2021, Diogo Pinto bought a three-bedroom detached house in Scarborough with his partner after looking for a bigger space to allow them to work from home. At the time, she said it wasn’t what the couple were looking for. “We found that we had no choice but to buy a tiny apartment for too much money or a big house for too much money,” Pinto said. “[This] it would open up housing options for people like me who are trying to get into the housing market and haven’t yet.” Rocky Petkov, a volunteer with More Neighbors Toronto, would like to see more in the city’s plan to increase emergency, transitional or supportive housing. (CBC) With this new plan, Pinto said he hopes there is variability in the type of units available “so we’re not stuck between buying a tiny one- or two-bedroom apartment or a big house in the suburbs.” The city is also committed to streamlining its “housing delivery system,” which in theory should reduce hurdles faced by builders and developers. How does it not seem? Tory, in a letter to the council, wrote: “These efforts are not intended to create towers on every corner.”
Increasing accountability
Construction is everywhere in Toronto, but cranes in the sky don’t necessarily equate to building more affordable housing. Part of the city’s housing plan calls for developing a “public database to track affordable rental units approved, under construction, and under construction.” Speaking of affordable housing, the city is also committed to updating its Open Door program, which began in 2016 with the goal of building 40,000 affordable homes by 2030. Housing campaigner Mark Richardson says the move to review the Open Door program is the right one. Richardson leads HousingNowTO, a grassroots group that has long called for more density and a higher percentage of affordable units across the city. “We think it’s the right kind of program,” Richardson told CBC Toronto. “It eliminates property taxes and development charges on affordable housing and is one of the ways the city can put its own money toward delivering affordable housing at speed and scale in Toronto.” The organization wrote to the city council after Friday’s announcement, urging it to approve the proposal.
Rooms houses
The report also asks staff to explore legalizing multi-tenant housing, also known as rental housing, by March 2024. Tory said this is separate from the proposed 2023 Housing Action Plan, but is in the report presented to the city council. This would be the second attempt by the Tories to push through this change after it was previously delayed because it did not get enough support from the council. Some housing experts have urged the city to legalize these types of homes to allow more capacity in the housing market, although the Tories have previously said these types of homes have left the city with a “flood of complaints”. Murtaza Haider, a professor of data science and property management at Metropolitan University of Toronto, said the move to support housing in the city is a “step in the right direction,” but the criteria for these types of housing are still unclear. “A very large segment of the city’s working population doesn’t earn enough to pay market rents, so you need creative solutions,” Hyder said. “Our rooming houses provide an opportunity for people to have a reasonable, safe and secure and reliable shelter by sharing a residence.” The Village, which is close to York University’s Keele campus, is awash with rooming houses pictured here in 2019. The Tory report also calls on city staff to investigate the legalization of this type of housing, which if approved, will be completed by March 2024. (CBC News ) Petkov, of More Neighbors Toronto, agreed that housing options are critical to addressing housing affordability. “These are some of the last affordable, market-rate homes in the city,” he said. “They’ve never really been legal in Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke, the places that have merged. It’s completely anarchic, which means the worst kinds of unscrupulous people are running these things.” This time around, Tory said the city should hire more inspectors to regulate housing, in addition to a public education campaign to address concerns.
What advocates think the plan loses
Petkoff said that while the plan addresses other issues related to unaffordable housing in the city, it does not address emergency, transitional or supportive housing. “It’s good to work on these market-side reforms, but a housing plan must also address the needs of our most vulnerable residents, our homeless,” he said. “That’s something that, if not in this push, we need to look at in another push, because if middle-class people can struggle to wait five years for it to have an impact, the homeless certainly can’t.”
When will the public see action on this?
Like most things at town hall, this is a process. If the council approves the plan, city staff will have until March 2023 to report back to the Tory executive on how to put everything into place.
