What are the initiatives laid down by the city?
Mayor Olivia Chow, alongside PM Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland, deputy PM, and Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, have announced an allocation of $471 million in funding through the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), which will go towards an additional 11,780 homes in Toronto over the next three years.
HAF is delivered by the Government of Canada through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as part of the National Housing Strategy. HAF’s current goals include achieving 100,000 new homes across Canada over the next three years. These include net new rent-geared-to-income (RGI), affordable and market rental homes located within mixed-income, mixed-use and transit-oriented communities.
Alleviating rental supply pressure
According to the City of Toronto, the funding can increase the supply of rental homes, protect existing rental homes, and revitalize neighbourhoods across Toronto.
The news release said the city submitted its HAF application in June this year and followed up with a revised submission in August. The application outlines eight initiatives that are focused on improving housing affordability in Toronto. Among the proposed actions are the following:
- Transforming organizational structures, processes and technology used to deliver development review and increasing capacity to expedite the approval of development applications
- Revitalizing Toronto Community Housing buildings and creating net new RGI and affordable rental homes
- Protecting rental homes, supporting people who rent and reducing housing speculation
- Developing city-owned land and expediting delivery of new, permanently affordable rental homes within transit-oriented and complete communities
- Transforming Toronto’s Waterfront as a catalyst for support of social, economic and cultural growth
- Implementing a new Rental Housing Supply Incentives program
- Expanding missing middle housing options and increasing project certainty
- Optimizing land use and simplifying the planning approvals process to increase purpose-built rental supply in apartment neighbourhood zones
The city also said federal HAF investments will enable it to expand the Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) program, which has been described as successful in supporting the not-for-profit housing sector to acquire and convert rental properties into permanently affordable rental homes for lower- and moderate-income residents.
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