From johntory2022.ca – August 23, 2022
Plan aims at addressing the housing shortage and builds on Mayor Tory’s proven track record of getting homes built in Toronto
Today Mayor John Tory announced his 2022 re-election campaign policy to help get more homes built in the city and address affordability issues. Canada is facing a national housing shortage, one that is acutely felt in Toronto. When home ownership is out of reach, and rental supply is inadequate, affordability suffers and undermines Toronto’s economic competitiveness.
“We’ve made strong progress over the past eight years to get housing built in Toronto, but to tackle increased affordability challenges brought on by a national housing shortage we need to build more homes, faster,” said Mayor Tory. “I’m proud to announce a five point plan that builds on this progress by looking critically at where we can streamline and modernize processes at City Hall, and how we incentivize our homebuilding partners to increase our housing supply and drive affordability.”
“This is about making sure that young people can live and raise their families in the neighbourhoods they grew up in, seniors can stay in their neighbourhoods if they decide to downsize, and newcomers can continue to move to and contribute to this City.”
The five key pillars of Mayor Tory’s plan include:
- Expanding housing options by permitting “Missing Middle” housing, and allowing greater mid-range density on major roads and in areas served by transit.
- Cutting red tape and speeding up approval times by creating a Development and Growth Division to streamline the process to get more housing built faster.
- Making sure projects move forward and that land that could be used for housing does not sit idle by asking the province to allow the City to enact a “use it or lose it” policy for developers sitting on approved, but undeveloped, land.
- Enabling more co-op, supportive and affordable housing by allocating a portion of City owned land to be developed by non-profits.
- Incentivizing the construction of purpose-built rental housing by reducing fees and charges, as well as prioritizing those applications.
This plan builds on Mayor Tory’s record of championing pro-housing policies during his two terms as Mayor. In July 2022 alone, the City approved a total of 24,829 housing units, including 2,060 affordable and 2,413 purpose built rental units and 775 rental replacement units.
“Under my leadership over the past eight years Toronto has made strong progress on getting more homes built, especially affordable and supportive housing,” said Mayor Tory. “But there’s more work to do. I believe building on progress we’ve made over the past eight years, in conjunction with actioning these policy proposals, will get more homes built in our city, faster.”
“The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) supports initiatives to make approvals more timely and efficient, as well as steps to make it easier to build housing of all types”, said Dave Wilkes, President and CEO of BILD. “This will help ensure we are able to build more homes for our City’s growing population, faster. Increasing housing supply and creating a more affordable city requires big thinking and bold action and we look forward to working with Mayor Tory to address this generational challenge.”
“We need steady leadership at City Hall to keep up the progress we have made over the last eight years,” said Ana Bailão, Deputy Mayor and Chair for the Planning and Housing Committee. “There have been scores of housing achievements in the last term. These accomplishments were possible thanks to the Mayor’s determination at City Hall and thanks to working with our federal and provincial partners. But there is much more work to do and that’s why we need to re-elect the Mayor to build more housing faster in Toronto.”
“We need to get more housing built, including more affordable and supportive housing, as well as housing that is attainable for the middle class. And we need to get it built as soon as possible,” said Brad Bradford, Councillor and candidate for Ward 19 Beaches–East York. “The best way to drive affordability is to increase our housing supply and that means more housing of every type. The Mayor’s five point plan does just that.”