HOW THE HOUSING CRISIS TAKES A TURN
FROM FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
COUNTING ON IT
Think we have a housing crisis now? Toronto’s population is predicted to swell by at least 700,000 new residents by 2051. Most of the city’s existing housing stock consists of detached homes and apartments taller than five storeys. That state of affairs has led to a widening gap between high- and low-density development, with all sorts of housing types missing in between.
Compounding the situation is that most new apartments are in highrises, with units that tend to be smaller, with fewer bedrooms, an obstacle for those trying to house a family.
According to the Ford government’s More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, Toronto has a target of adding 285,000 new homes to the city by 2031. However, there are nuances to supply, explains Abigail Bond, executive director of the City of Toronto’s Housing Secretariat, which reports to the deputy city manager, Community and Social Services, and works with federal, provincial, private and non-profit stakeholders to develop housing solutions.
“It doesn’t say what kind of supply that should be, just that it’s a home,” she says.
As such, the city has set its own target, designating 40,000 new homes as affordable, with 18,000 of those set aside for supportive housing. The type of home, level of affordability, tenure (rented or owned), and potential to make them suitable for people experiencing homelessness are also factors for the city. Currently, there are more than 100 active affordable housing projects, representing more than 20,000 new units, in the city’s development pipeline.
“We want people to be able to choose where to live, to live affordably in a sustainable and complete community,” Bond says. But as the numbers below indicate, in Toronto right now, that’s a tall order.
Shelters
While the city doesn’t consider shelters a form of housing, they do provide a critical emergency response to the immediate needs of people experiencing homelessness. Per capita, Toronto has more shelter beds than any other city in Canada, with several types of shelter services available to people experiencing homelessness.
“BETWEEN 2020 AND 2022, 43% OF CALLERS SEEKING SHELTER WERE TURNED AWAY”
Emergency shelters are staffed 24/7 and provide temporary accommodation and related support services that help people to move into housing. They are available to anyone experiencing homelessness, with or without a referral. The city operates 10 shelters itself and oversees the operation of 53 others funded by community agencies. Transitional shelters, available by referral only, provide tailored support programming to help those with histories of homelessness find and keep a home. The hotel/motel shelters provide shelter beds through contracts with hotel/motel operators. This program has allowed the city to increase and decrease emergency shelter capacity as demand for services fluctuates.
According to the city’s budget documents, the shelter system can provide beds for about 9,000 people per night. However, according to a recent analysis conducted by the Information Mobilization for Public Accountability Collective Toronto (IMPACT) – based on data from the city’s central intake line between November 2020 and June 2022 – 43 per cent of callers seeking shelter were turned away.
Social housing (rent geared to income)
“AT THE END OF 2022, 84,593 HOUSEHOLDS WERE ON THE WAIT LIST FOR SOCIAL HOUSING”
The city offers subsidized housing that makes rent affordable. This type of social housing is known as rent-geared-to-income-housing, or RGI. Generally, RGI rent is 30 per cent of a household’s monthly “adjusted family net income,” which is determined annually using each family’s income tax return. For those receiving social assistance, rent is calculated using the rent benefit set by the government of Ontario. Unfortunately, the need for subsidized housing far exceeds the number of available units. Much, though not all, of Toronto’s RGI stock is owned and operated by Toronto Community Housing, which manages about 48,000 RGI units (out of a total inventory of 58,000 apartments). At the end of 2022, there were 84,593 households on the active waiting list for social housing. According to the city, based on 2022 data, the wait list is between eight and 15 years.
Supportive housing
Supportive housing combines subsidized housing with health and social supports. These supports, tailored to an individual’s circumstances, are geared toward improving health and socio-economic outcomes. The city views supportive housing as an essential part of the housing spectrum, as it helps to ensure that an experience of homelessness is brief and not repeated. The city administers or funds approximately 10,400 supportive housing units through its Shelter, Support and Housing Administration division.
“THE WAIT FOR A SUPPORTIVE HOUSING APARTMENT IS CURRENTLY 5 TO 7 YEARS”
According to a representative of The Access Point, which manages the central waiting list for supportive housing in Toronto, the wait lists are long: one year for a shared room, five to seven years for a spot in a shared house or apartment, and seven to 10 years for an apartment of one’s own.
The city currently has a target to approve 18,000 new supportive homes by 2030. In the first 24 months of its plan, the city says, it created 2,300 affordable and supportive housing opportunities with the support of the federal and provincial governments, surpassing its goal of 2,000. It hopes to create 2,500 more supportive housing opportunities in the coming 24 months.
Non-profit co-operative housing
“IN 2018, 12 co-op
UNITS WERE DEVELOPED.
2,000 APPLICATIONS WERE RECEIVED FOR THOSE SPOTS”
A non-profit housing co-operative, or “co-op,” is a corporation owned and operated by its residents, who are called members rather than tenants. There is no landlord; instead, a co-op is governed by an elected board of its own members. Members of these mixed-income, multi-unit buildings pay full rent; however, the price is lower than in the private rental market. Approximately 45,000 people live in 180 co-ops across Toronto, Durham and York Region. Within Toronto proper, there are about 16,000 units in approximately 150 co-ops, and waiting lists are closed. According to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto, 12 units were developed in 2018, while co-ops received roughly 2,000 applications for those spots.
Multi-tenant houses (rooming houses)
“NEW ZONING IS NOW IN PLACE FOR ROOMING HOUSES. AS OF OCTOBER 2022, 262 ROOMING HOUSES HAD BEEN LICENSED OR HAD LICENCES IN THE APPLICATION STAGE”
Multi-tenant houses are the most affordable form of housing in Toronto, providing single-room accommodation to students, seniors, recently arrived immigrants and others at the lower end of the income scale. Usually, four or more individuals rent rooms in these homes and share the kitchen and washroom. In December, city council adopted a regulatory framework to legalize this important stock of existing homes. The new zoning and licensing bylaws will ensure consistent standards, oversight and enforcement to protect tenant safety. As of October 2022, 262 rooming houses had either been licensed or had applied for a licence.
Purpose-built market rentals in low- and mid-rise buildings
“TORONTO HAS 162,245 UNITS IN LOW-RISE BUILDINGS”
Along with multiplexes, low- and mid-rise apartment buildings form the “missing middle” in Toronto. In height, low-rise apartments are usually four storeys or less, while mid-rise buildings typically fall between four and 11 storeys. In neighbourhoods zoned for single-family homes, planning regulations have hindered the development of these slightly higher-density buildings. But the beauty of low-rise apartments is that their moderate scale is repeatable, allows more access to sunshine and casts smaller shadows. Their proximity to the ground feels comfortable in low-rise neighbourhoods. According to 2021 census data, there are 162,245 apartments in buildings that have fewer than five storeys. (By comparison, there are more than 540,000 units in buildings over five storeys).
The solution to Toronto’s housing woes isn’t to build more supply, according to a group of experts who sketch a picture for writer Leslie Sinclair of what a healthier housing landscape looks like.
As they see it, it’s about tipping the balance: clamping down on units designed as commodities for investors and increasing the flow of housing that meets a wider swath of residents’ needs
Late last year, I stepped out my apartment door to find the neighbour who lived across the hall shuffling the contents of his unit into a U-Haul. For years, we’d known that our rent was sitting below the market rate, thanks to a former landlord who’d allowed the building to fall into disrepair. We used to joke that our rent-controlled three-storey building – the kind of gentle-density housing that the City of Toronto has made impossible to construct – would have to burn down around us before we’d move. Coping with the deterioration meant our rent was rarely raised.
When the building was sold, however, the fear of renoviction set in as fast as the new landlord started fixing up the building. Many changes were necessary improvements to safety and security. But we also noticed that as tenants turned over, their old units were updated, and the rents skyrocketed. Demolition on my neighbour’s unit started not long after he booked it to Montreal. When it was finished, the monthly rent jumped several hundred dollars, meaning a market-rate unit in my own building is now completely out of my single-income reach.
Governments and developers have focused relentlessly on more supply as the beguiling solution to Toronto’s housing crisis. What we might call “trickle-down housing” is the theory that if you increase the housing supply, the price will come down at some point. The trouble is, simply building more housing stock doesn’t address the more serious underlying problem that housing, having been left to the whims of the market, has come to be seen as a commodity: In early February, StatsCan reported that 41.9 per cent of condos in Ontario were being used as investment properties.
While Ontario raised the Non-Resident Speculation Tax from 20 per cent to 25 per cent in October, and this January Canada banned foreign buyers from purchasing property for the next two years, the truth is that in the GTA only 3.4 per cent of properties are foreign-owned. That number increases slightly to 4.9 per cent within the City of Toronto.
But we could go further to prevent domestic speculation on the home front. Back in 1974, Ontario Premier Bill Davis introduced a 50 per cent land speculation tax on purchasers buying and selling homes that weren't their principal residence. Criticized by some, the tax quickly cooled the housing market. South of the border, according to the Wall Street Journal, some American homeowner associations have begun capping the number of rentals they allow in their developments because owners of investment properties have made it so difficult for others to buy homes.
“IN FEBRUARY THIS YEAR, STATSCAN REPORTED THAT 41.9% OF CONDOS IN ONTARIO WERE BEING USED AS INVESTMENT PROPERTIES”
Even in terms of providing new supply, the market is focused on where developers can maximize their profits, either by building as tall as they possibly can or by sprawling out from the city. The consequences cut across Toronto incomes but are especially acute at the lower end of the scale.
“I don’t see it ever happening in our lifetime,” non-profit developer Andrea Adams says of the supply-demand theory working in practice. According to Adams, who is executive director of St. Clare’s, a non-profit housing provider, a significant number of residential development projects have been approved by the city but are either incomplete or aren’t even under construction yet. It can take five or more years for a project to be finished, bringing new supply online.
Developers can’t keep up with demand anyway, because there simply isn’t enough available labour. “The only answer to that would be higher immigration, and I think you see the problem,” she says. “That would increase the demand for housing.”
Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, agrees that pumping out more supply isn’t a complete solution. “You have to have a focus on affordability as well,” she explains, noting that newly built units will take a long time to become affordable. And affordable for whom? According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s January Rental Market Report, the average market rent for a two-bedroom rental in Toronto was up 6.5 per cent from last year to $1,765, a figure that will likely seem quite low to anyone trying to negotiate a new lease in the purpose-built rental market, which has just a 1.7 per cent vacancy rate. Contrast that with the average Toronto income hovering at $52,700, according to 2020 Statistics Canada data, and it’s no secret that we are in a moment when even working professionals who perceive themselves as being in the middle class are increasingly unable to access housing within their means.
“A simple supply solution isn’t going to help,” agrees Mark Winfield, a professor in the faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Of particular concern for Winfield is what gets destroyed in the process. “We’ve seen developers targeting existing affordable housing as the places they want to redevelop,” a trend he fears will only make the problem worse. That’s the case at 40 Raglan Ave., just north of St. Clair and Bathurst, where a seven-storey apartment building will be demolished to make way for a new 28-storey condo tower. Residents have the right to return to similar units for similar rents, but those units won’t be subject to rent control. This right was eliminated under the province’s latest housing reforms. Bringing that protection back would drastically improve the situation for many of the vulnerably housed.
“CANADA’S SOCIAL HOUSING STOCK SITS AT 3.5%, AMONG THE LOWEST OF THE 38 NATION MEMBERS OF THE OECD”
Derek Ballantyne, a developer of affordable and social purpose housing, points out that governments at all three levels used to routinely fund and build housing for low-income households. In Toronto, that funding famously manifested as Regent Park, built in the late 1940s and intended to replace a slum with decent housing for working families. The original City of Toronto, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and the province funded hundreds of apartments in the years after Regent Park was built, including Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s portfolio. There have also been compelling examples of mixed-income development.
“It’s places like St. Lawrence Market that have a significant component of affordable housing, both non-profit and co-operative,” Ballantyne says.
Non-market housing – that is, housing that is owned by Toronto Community Housing, non-profit housing agencies or co-ops – accounted for about seven per cent of the housing stock in the early 1990s.
But that period marked the moment when governments began to cancel programs to build non-profit housing. In the three decades since, non-profit housing has accounted for a steadily declining proportion of overall housing stock because of those political decisions.
Today, Canada’s stock of social housing sits at just 3.5 per cent, and ranks among the lowest of the 38 nation members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to a report on housing affordability released by Scotiabank in January. “The moral case to urgently build out Canada’s anemic stock of social housing has never been stronger,” the report exhorts.
Although Markee Developments builds affordable purpose-built rental housing rather than social housing, vice-president Alex Mather agrees with Scotiabank's assessment. “When you have a shortage at every point in the housing spectrum, it means people can very easily fall down more than one rung at a time,” he says. While Markee’s mission is to build affordable housing at scale by leveraging private sector partners and accessing private capital, Mather says it’s actually the government’s responsibility to solve the social housing problem.
“You just throw money at that problem, and you can go a long way toward solving it,” Mather says. “And that’s actually a pretty easy thing to do.”
Some parts of Toronto, like neighbourhoods in Scarborough and Etobicoke, have remained relatively affordable because historically they have had poor access to transit. “For a generation, we’ve understood that there is transit inequity in our city,” says urban planner Keisha St. Louis-McBurnie. “The places that are experiencing higher proportions of having racialized residents and being lower income are those areas of the city that are less served by transportation.”
But as the city plans more housing growth around the existing subway and LRT stops, that transit-oriented intensification must include an anti-displacement strategy to prevent low-income and working-class residents from being pushed further out into the GTA. Market-related arguments for greater housing supply often assert that cities are going to change anyway, so we have to adapt and work around it, notes St. Louis-McBurnie. Rather, she says, we ought to “think critically about keeping communities intact, especially those that have historical roots in a given place.” In April 2021, Toronto city council voted to designate Little Jamaica, a Caribbean neighbourhood on Eglinton West, as “heritage conservation district understudy.” The request came from the community and allows the city to study, survey and protect the area under the Ontario Heritage Act. The idea is to help preserve Little Jamaica from accelerating gentrification and further displacement of the unique businesses and residents that characterize it, following the ravaging effects of the Eglinton Crosstown construction.
Adams argues that affordable housing can be inserted into developments already slated to be built if developers are incentivized to do so. She notes, however, that affordable units are the “first to go” when overall units are cut back due to rules around setbacks, angular planes and shadow studies. Evidence suggests that fixes like inclusionary zoning won’t solve the problem because it drives up prices while reducing overall housing access. Governments simply need to get back into the funding game, as they were until the 1990s, rather than relying on the market to provide housing for lower-income people.
“If you want any affordable units, build a big square box and do it close to the property line,” she says, explaining that that tack might mean a bit of shadow on a homeowner’s lawn. But, she says, “Toronto residents have to decide what they want.”
What happens to a city that is unable to house anyone but the most financially comfortable, and do we want to live in a place like that? A city needs people at all income levels to sustain it, and yet Toronto has created a housing system that favours the wealthy and elbows aside everyone else. These two realities are in stark tension – what about essential workers, artists, young people? If Toronto is to remain a place where people can pursue their dreams, getting behind the most neglected forms of housing will be essential.
Purpose-built market rentals in highrise buildings
“MORE THAN 1,000 HIGHRISE RENTALS WERE BUILT BETWEEN THE 1950s AND ‘80s. NOW THEY TEND TO HAVE SMALLER BEDROOMS AND FEWER OF THEM”
Highrise buildings are 12 storeys or taller. More than 1,000 highrise rental buildings were built between the 1950s and 1980s. Despite providing critical housing, these aging towers pose increasing concerns about systems failures, poor maintenance and pest infestations. Newer purpose-built highrise towers tend to have smaller bedrooms and fewer of them.
Condominiums
“62,000 UNITS WERE STUCK IN A CONSTRUCTION BACKLOG AT THE END OF 2022”
Condos are a vital part of the housing market, providing both an entry to the market for first-time buyers and a source of rental supply. According to the CMHC, sales of pre-construction condos were up in 2022. At the same time, approximately 62,000 were stuck in a construction backlog at the end of 2022, which delayed new projects from breaking ground. In 2022, the average selling price was $710,520, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.
Multiplexes
“35% OF THE CITY’S LAND AREA CONTAINS LOW-RISE NEIGHBOURHOODS, WHERE BUILDING NEW MULTIPLEXES IS CURRENTLY NOT PERMITTED”
These dwellings, which include duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes and are built at a scale similar to single-detached homes, could add much-needed gentle density to Toronto’s low-rise neighbourhoods, which make up 35 per cent of the city’s land area. The building of new multiplexes is currently not permitted, but the city is working on revisions to its planning and zoning bylaws that would enable them as part of its Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods (EHON) initiative.
Semi-detached dwellings
“THE MEDIAN SALES PRICE FOR SEMIS AT THE END OF 2022 WAS $985K”
Found in many of Toronto’s older neighbourhoods, semis were once a more affordable option for buyers. But MLS data indicates that the median sales price for semi-detached units in Toronto was $985,000 at the end of 2022. According to 2021 census data, there are 71,955 semi-detached dwellings in Toronto.
Single-detached dwellings
“THE MEDIAN SALES PRICE FOR DETACHED HOMES AT THE END OF 2022: $1.2M”
Not surprisingly, single-detached homes are the most expensive type of housing in the city – the median price at the end of 2022 was $1,205,000, according to MLS. According to 2021 census data, there are 270,490 single-detached homes in Toronto.
Laneway suites
“LANEWAY SUITE BUILDING COSTS RUN $300-$500K FOR A SINGLE UNIT”
The city has permitted self-contained laneway suites since 2019. Typically, these units are built in backyards adjacent to a public laneway. Since May 2021, the city has received more than 500 building permit applications for new laneway suites, and about half of these have been completed or are under construction. While these structures contribute to the availability of low-rise housing, they are unlikely to result in affordable units due to the cost the homeowner undertakes to construct them – on average in the $300,000 to $500,000 range for a single unit.
This story is part of a year-long multi-media partnership with Maytree, an organization devoted to finding systemic solutions to poverty through a human rights-based approach. WEP is grateful to Maytree for its financial support. All stories, video series and artwork created through the partnership are being independently produced by West End Phoenix.