The City of Toronto is unveiling a broad, ambitious 10 year plan to address the major issues of homelessness, housing stress, and a lack of affordable housing options for tens of thousands of City residents.

The plan seeks to pool together resources from many City divisions, the province, and the federal government to invest over $20 billion in the next decade. At its heart, the plan seeks to bring together government, non-profits, and banks to cooperate on models to get as much affordable housing built as is possible. Pressure on politicians to address public housing repair bills, the lack of cheap aparments and homes for Torontonians, and increasing rents and housing prices is steadily building. In many ways, the housing crisis is augmenting inequality and is reinforcing poverty. A serious chunk of Toronto’s population is spending massive chunks of their disposable income on rent.

The plan has the following key goals:

Creating 40,000 new affordable rental homes approvals including:

·         18,000 new supportive homes approvals for vulnerable residents including

people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless

·         A minimum of 25% (10,000) of the 40,000 new affordable rental and supportive

homes dedicated to women and girls including female-led households

·         Preventing 10,000 evictions for low-income households through programs such as the City’s Eviction Prevention in the Community (EPIC) program

Improving housing affordability for 40,000 households:

·         31,000 households to receive up to $4,800/year/household in Canada Housing

Benefit

·         9,000 households to continue receive housing allowances

·         Maintaining affordability for 2,300 non-profit homes after expiry of their operating

agreements

·         Providing support services to 10,000 individuals and families in supportive housing

Improving housing conditions for 74,800 households by repairing and revitalizing

Toronto’s rental housing stock, including:

·         Repair of 58,500 Toronto Community Housing units

·         Revitalization of 8 TCHC communities to add 14,000 new market and affordable

homes with 5,000 replacement homes across the city

·         Bringing 2,340 private rental homes to state-of-good repair

·         Assisting 10,010 seniors remain in their homes or move to long-term care facilities

·         Providing property tax relief for 6,000 eligible seniors

·         Providing home repair assistance for 300 eligible low-income senior

homeowners

·         Redeveloping 1,232 City-owned long-term care beds and creating 978 new beds

utilizing provincial investments

·         Supporting the creation of 1,500 new non-profit long-term care beds

·         Creating 4,000 new affordable non-profit home ownership opportunities

·         Assisting 150,000 first-time home buyers afford homes through first-time Municipal

·         Land Transfer Tax Rebate Program

Is this enough to solve Toronto’s affordable housing crisis? Probably not, but the scale of the initiatives outlined in the plan and its aggressive nature in tying together a wide array of agencies, levels of government, and private and non-profit players shows how serious the city’s leaders are in trying to make tangible impacts in addressing what is the paramount socio-economic challenge our City faces. The HousingTO 2020-2030 plan will be voted on by Council next week.