Toronto Community Groups Challenge City and Developers over New Affordable Housing Bylaw

By Dawar Naeem
Dawar is a Community Journalist Focus Media Arts Centre

A group of developers from across Toronto have filed overlapping, separate appeals to block implementation of the City of Toronto’s new affordable housing bylaw. To counter this the Toronto Community Benefits Network along with Friends of Kensington Market, Lakeshore Affordable Housing Advocacy and Action Group, Build A Better Bloor Dufferin, Regent Park Neighbourhood Association, Parkdale People’s Economy, Toronto Community Benefits Network, the West End Coalition for Housing Justice, and ACORN, held a press conference at the City hall Media room.

After years of assessment, the City of Toronto amended its affordable housing bylaw in 2022 to ensure all development that receives municipal incentives and credits for being “affordable” housing are actually affordable to the average Torontonian by using income to define affordability, rather than market re  nts. Some developers want this change struck down. Minto, Dunpar, Greenwin, Carlye, Metcap, Pemberton Group and their subsidiary companies are appealing at the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT). These developers are seeking to reinstate old definitions that allow them to call rental units “affordable” even though rents usually exceed 30% of the average income of Torontonians.

The City’s new definition of “affordable rental” housing is beneficial for tenants. The new bylaw sets rent for an affordable bachelor unit, for example, at $812 a month, which the average single person in Toronto can afford. These developers want the “affordable” rate reverted back to be based on the median rent charged by landlords, which has consistently been 50% above the rent affordable to the average income of a single person in Toronto. The City will defend its bylaw at the OLT.

Community Groups and advocates through a press conference,called on the developers to stop fighting the City of Toronto’s new criteria for affordable housing, saying that doing so exposes their “greed” and willingness to exploit people’s suffering.

Serena Purdy of Friends of Kensington Market said, “The new bylaw represents an extensive process of research, community input and a year-long consultation process, But now developers want to undermine all that and overturn the results of this process.”

Walied Khogali Ali of the Regent Park Neighbourhood Association said developers in Toronto “make enough money right now,” and urged them to drop their appeals at the tribunal hearing. “This is about greed, this is not about what’s best for the public, the good residents of Toronto, and it’s deplorable that developers are undermining our democratic principles,” Khogali said. “This is an attempt to undermine something important to our national housing strategy.”