[homeles_ot-l] TO's new housing plan: A Charter is great, but people can't live in a Charter

[Lynne Browne]

FYI . . . Lynne Browne

Coordinator, Alliance to End Homelessness (ATEH)

147 Besserer St., Ottawa, ON K1N 6A7

613-241-7913, ext. 205

HYPERLINK "http://www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca/"www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca

   _____  

From: hhno-on-owner at povnet.org [mailto:hhno-on-owner at povnet.org] On Behalf
Of Michael Shapcott
Sent: May 13, 2009 3:19 PM
To: Michael Shapcott
Subject: [hhno-on] WI backgrounder on TO's new housing plan: A Charter is
great, but people can't live in a Charter

 

May 13, 2009: After more than a year of consultation, the City of Toronto
has finally released its proposed 10-year housing plan. Hundreds of U.S.
cities, and dozens of Canadian ones, have already developed and are busy
implementing practical and pragmatic affordable housing plans, so Toronto
needs to move quickly and take decisive action to catch up. A growing number
of cities in Ontario and across Canada are supporting the development of
thousands of new affordable homes. Toronto’s plan goes to City Council for
final approval in early July, but there’s still plenty of work to strengthen
some key shortfalls. Click here for links to the City of Toronto’s HYPERLINK
"http://www.toronto.ca/affordablehousing/hot.htm"Housing Opportunities
Toronto plan and the Wellesley Institute’s HYPERLINK
"http://wellesleyinstitute.com/theblueprint"Blueprint to End Homelessness in
Toronto. 

 

What’s in Toronto’s plan: The plan includes a new Toronto Housing Charter
that states “all residents should have a safe, secure, affordable and
well-maintained home”. The Charter sets an excellent foundation on which to
build a comprehensive affordable housing plan. The plan also includes a
commitment to develop a detailed implementation strategy that will allow all
the key players – community-based housing groups, the private sector and the
City of Toronto – to work together. The plan pulls together a number of
existing city housing initiatives – such as the social housing repair
program, Streets to Homes and housing first strategy, tax credits for some
home owners – and puts them in a co-ordinated package. With today’s plan,
the city is well-placed to effectively spend the hundreds of millions in
federal and provincial housing dollars that are due to start flowing shortly
as part of economic stimulus plans. In addition, the plan sets out a
strategy to ensure that Toronto’s critically important “housing first”
policy for surplus lands delivers appropriate land for new housing
development (Toronto has had some difficulty delivering on the “housing
first” policy in recent years).

 

Painfully low targets: The city’s previous critically low annual target of
1,000 new affordable homes (of which only 200 would be truly affordable to
low and moderate-income households) remains unchanged in the new 10-year
plan. This target is half the amount previously adopted by Toronto City
Council in 1999 following the year-long review by the HYPERLINK
"http://www.toronto.ca/pdf/homeless_action.pdf"Mayor’s Homelessness Action
Task Force. The current target is less than one-quarter of the 4,500 new
homes annually set out in the Wellesley Institute’s Blueprint to End
Homelessness in Toronto. The city’s new target of 1,070 new supportive homes
annually is about half the total recommended in the Wellesley Institute’s
2006 Blueprint. The city’s new target of 7,000 rent supplements annually for
low-income tenants is well short of the Wellesley Institute’s assessment of
9,750 rent supplements. The painfully low targets mean that the 68,475
households currently on the City of Toronto’s affordable housing waiting
list (up almost 2,000 over the past year) face a long wait for a place to
call home. Even with a new Charter that guarantees them the right to a new
home, they face a 17.9-year-wait for that home. 

 

Poor record on affordable homes: The City of Toronto has approved almost
3,000 new affordable homes using $208 million in federal and provincial
funding since 2004, according to the Affordable Housing Office (as of
February 2009). This represents an average approval of less than 750 homes
per year.

*        919 completed or under construction for 2008;

*        756 under construction or in development for 2009;

*        1,579 in development for 2010.

 

A Charter is great, but people can’t live in a Charter: A complete housing
plan needs an implementation strategy that includes targets and timelines,
funding, legislation, programs and services to meet the range of housing
needs in Toronto. And the plan needs a public evaluation and accountability
process to measure progress and fine-tune the key elements over time. 

 

Immediate actions: Here are some immediate steps that the city can take to
ensure all Torontonians have a good, healthy and affordable place to call
home: 

o       Inclusionary housing: The City of Toronto should adopt a detailed
inclusionary housing (zoning) strategy – following the lead of literally
hundreds of U.S. cities – and tie the new housing policies to the Transit
City plan, which will add thousands of new, affordable homes throughout the
city.

o       Top up existing housing fund: Add $25 million to the almost depleted
Capital Revolving Reserve Fund, which would not only help to fund several
hundred new truly affordable homes, but would also send a strong signal to
the provincial and federal governments that they also need to ramp up their
investments in new homes.

o       Target s37 bonus dollars: Ensure that the bonus dollars collected by
the City of Toronto as a result of negotiations under section 37 of the
Planning Act are directed to affordable housing as a first priority.

 

Enormous costs in “doing nothing”: Toronto has the highest housing costs in
Canada, according to Statistics Canada. Research from the Wellesley
Institute and others shows that housing insecurity and homelessness leads to
poor health, disrupts neighbourhoods and puts a damper on the economy. The
status quo – in which tens of thousands of Torontonians experience
homelessness and hundreds of thousands of households are precariously housed
– is simply not acceptable. Toronto is the richest city in one of the
richest countries in the world. Affordable housing solutions cost much less
than “doing nothing”.

 

-          Michael

 

***

 

Michael Shapcott | Director, Affordable Housing and Social Innovation |
Wellesley Institute 

45 Charles St E, Suite 101                    Tel: 416.972.1010 ext 231
Toronto, ON, Canada,  M4Y 1S2           Mobile: 416.605.8316  
E-mail:   michael at wellesleyinstitute.com

 

www.wellesleyinstitute.com

rigorous research. pragmatic policy solutions. social innovation. community
action.

 


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