East York Tenants Group

The City of Toronto’s Affordable Housing Office has been involved in various housing initiatives to make life easier for renters in the GTA with low or modest incomes .  The initiatives include various strategies that would increase the supply of affordable rental housing and also provide opportunities for low-income renters to purchase a home.  Here are some examples of the City’s affordable housing initiatives:

1. Rental Housing
The City of Toronto’s Affordable Housing Office has a project in place to increase the number of affordable rental units available to renters with modest incomes. This ‘affordable rental housing’ project consists of 35 rental buildings under development and as of September 2008 a total 6 were completed.  You can view a list of the ongoing building and construction projects and check the development status here:  http://www.toronto.ca/affordablehousing/pdf/affordable_housing_developments_status_report.pdf.   (NOTE:  There are also a few other projects on this list that pertain specifically to ‘affordable home ownership’ but these are currently in the development or consultation phase.) 

2. Homeownership for Renters with modest incomes
The City of Toronto Affordable Housing Office has approached Housing Connections  to assist Options For Homes contact families listed in their database who may be interested in home ownership.  Housing Connections has been contacting applicants on their waiting list to bring this opportunity to their attention.  As you aware, Housing Connections provides access to rent geared to income solutions (subsidized housing or social housing) for Toronto residents. It is also common knowledge that Housing Connections has a huge backlog of well over 65,000 applicants on their waiting list. In addition, many of the buildings on the Housing Connections list are in dire need of repairs. Lack of proper building maintenance is a serious issue for tenants residing in these buildings.  So, this opportunity for home ownership might be welcome news for renters with modest incomes who have been on the Housing Connections waiting list for years and who qualify to become homeowners.

More on Options For Homes . . . .  City Hall has been collaborating with Options For Homes, a non-profit condominium developer that offers low-income renters a chance to own their own home. Householders with incomes as low as $15,000 (or $30,000 if you have children) can apply to be considered for this program. For more information on this affordable housing initiative you can check Options For Homes website.   Options For Homes offers free information sessions to qualified renters to acquaint them with this initiative.  As mentioned above, Housing Connections has sent out invitations to some of the applicants in their database.  The next Options For Homes information session will be held on November 22, 2008 at Toronto City Hall.  Their contact information to attend this session is:  Phone: 416-867-1501 Ext. 221.

(Also . . . why not check this link at Toronto Star  to read the story of a low-income renter who managed to purchase a condo earlier this year through Options For Homes.)

3. Housing Opportunities Toronto (HOT)
The Housing Opportunities Toronto (HOT) office has a lot of useful information for renters.  We recommend you check out their website Toronto’s Housing Opportunities Toronto (HOT)  and you can contribute comments and suggestions to their City Hall contact. 

4. Affordable Housing Action Plan 2010-2020
The City of Toronto has also been engaged in an ambitious project titled An Affordable Housing  Plan 2010-2020 and has published a document that outlines the strategy and plans being put in place to provide ‘affordable housing’ to residents in the GTA.  You can access this publicaction at this link:  http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2009/ah/bgrd/backgroundfile-21130.pdf

It is reassuring the City of Toronto introduced ‘affordable housing initiatives’ for low-income Toronto residents given the financial constraints under which the City has been operating.  As you may recall, during the recent Federal election campaign The East York Tenants Group published posts that brought the issue of ‘affordable housing’ to the attention of our readers.  (See – FEDERAL ELECTION: Are Tenants Invisible?,  – “Sustainable Affordability”, Job Shift, and Housing and – MISSING: National Housing policy in Federal Elections!)  We also addressed the need for tax breaks from both the federal and provincial government given the current global economic crisis.  Bear in mind that the 2009 Annual Guideline,Landlords can increase rents by 1.8% despite the economic meltdown and the growing demand for affordable housing.  We emailed all levels of government to bring this issue to their attention. Once again, we urge both the Federal and Ontario governments to consider tax breaks that will provide relief to low-income renters and incentives to low-income tenants who desire to become homeowners. We want meaningful tax breaks in place to correlate the cost of housing to the incomes of ordinary work people.

We will keep you posted on developments on these strategies and projects by the City of Toronto.