Rent relief coming for 550 Toronto families waiting for affordable housing

Federal and provincial funds will allow families to maintain place in line for affordable housing while paying current rent

Thestar.com
July 7, 2016
By Jennifer Pagliaro

A total of 550 families will receive rent relief while they continue to wait alongside 97,000 others for affordable housing.

Eligible families will receive $250 per month toward rent in their current homes while keeping their spot in line for more affordable housing. That money comes as part of a federal and provincial funding program, Mayor John Tory announced Thursday morning.

They are the first new allowances handed out in Toronto since 2012.

“There’s a real and growing divide in this city between those who can afford to live and work here and those who can’t,” Tory said at the Regent Park Athletic Grounds, part of recent redevelopment in the densely-populated social housing community. “It can be the difference of keeping a roof over their head.”

The new allowances will be given to 500 families with three children or more who have been on the waiting list for 10 years or more and 50 families who need wheelchair-accessible units and who have been waiting for at least eight years.

The allowances give families the ability to move and still receive the rent relief, unlike rent subsidies which are attached to a particular address.

There are currently 4,000 families who receive housing allowances from the city. There are more than 170,000 people represented on the affordable housing waiting list.

Councillor Ana Bailao, who chairs the affordable housing committee, said they are looking to “diversify” the tools to provide adequate housing at a time when there are billions in backlogged costs to repair shuttered public housing and an operating shortfall for next year at Toronto Community Housing already totalling $96 million.

“These 550 new housing allowances will have a real impact for some of the families on our wait list who need our help the most and have been waiting just way too long,” she said.

On whether the city can expect more substantial commitments from the federal and provincial government to cover those ongoing pressures, Tory said there have been “small steps forward” and they remain in conversation with the province. “They are productive, but they take time,” he said.

Groups like the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association have advocated for portable housing allowances, saying they give the greatest flexibility to families and that creating a greater pool of available funds would allow more people to move from social housing into the community.