Community advocates blame ‘greed’ for developers’ resistance to new affordable-housing definition

Appeals of the new definition -- which are based on tenants’ incomes, rather than market rents -- aren’t driven by what’s best for Torontonians, said Walied Khogali Ali of Regent Park Neighbourhood Association.

Thestar.com
Nov. 4, 2022
David Rider

Community advocates are calling on 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.

At issue is a new definition of “affordable” approved by city council last November after debate and consultations with tenants, housing policy experts, landlords, homebuilders and others.

It replaces a definition based on average market rents -- what landlords are currently getting from tenants, a figure that rises in hot rental markets like the current one -- with a definition based on what tenants can actually afford.

Torontonians in units designated affordable shouldn’t pay more than 30 per cent of before-tax monthly household income on shelter, under the more recent formula that will, if it survives, save some people hundreds of dollars per month.

Several developers are appealing the new definition at the Ontario Land Tribunal. They say it’s premature to enact the change before the start of inclusionary zoning -- a system that would require new condos in certain areas to set aside between eight and 22 per cent of floor space to affordable housing by 2030.

The developers also warn that the new definition of affordable housing may reduce the economic feasibility of some projects and curtail the supply of new homes amid a widely acknowledged housing crisis.

City figures from 2021 suggest a one-bedroom unit with an average market rent of $1,431 per month would, under the new definition, have had a revised affordable rent of $1,090. Previously, an affordable rent would have been about $1,144.

Any suggestion that local residents don’t earn enough to live in new projects springing up around them angered community advocates who spoke at city hall on Thursday, warning that gentrification will freeze many people out.

“The change in the definition for affordable housing from market rates to income-based marked an important step forward (for) housing as a human right,” said Carly Bowie of Lakeshore Affordable Housing Advocacy and Action Group.

“When we define affordability as housing that people can afford, we begin to build a Toronto that’s for everyone, where we have a mix of incomes that make it truly sustainable and a vibrant place to be where someone like me -- renting while raising two children -- doesn’t have to fear displacement from the community and city my family calls home.”

Walied Khogali Ali of the Regent Park Neighbourhood Association said developers in Toronto “make enough money right now,” and urged them Thursday to drop their appeals at Friday’s 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.”

The Star reached out to several of the developers appealing the definition and got no response. BILD, the lobby group for Ontario developers, declined to comment on the “project specific” issue.

In documents filed with the tribunal, lawyer Natalie Ast, who is representing multiple developers, argues the definition change shouldn’t happen while changes to the inclusionary zoning system are still possible.

Units deemed affordable that are outside the parts of Toronto subject to inclusionary zoning require “additional flexibility to account for market conditions,” she wrote in a letter on behalf of Double Z Investments.

“Our client acknowledges and supports the important objective of protecting existing affordable housing, and to promote opportunities to create new affordable housing within the city,” Ast wrote.

“Constraining the definition of affordable housing to coincide with the proposed (inclusionary zoning instruments) will have the unintended consequence of limiting opportunities to replenish existing affordable rental housing stock and it will further limit opportunities to create additional affordable housing options” in areas outside inclusionary zoning, she wrote.