Mayor John Tory will host mayors from across Canada later this week as part of a housing summit where municipal leaders will discuss “the affordable and social housing crisis facing Canadian cities.”
Edmonton mayor Don Iveson, Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson and representatives from Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa are expected to attend the 2016 Toronto Housing Summit, which will be held in Toronto on Friday.
In a news release issued Monday, the city says that at the summit, municipal representatives will be urging the federal and provincial governments to do more on the social housing front.
According to recent numbers released by the city, Toronto’s affordable housing waitlist currently contains about 97,000 households and 176,000 people.
Tory previously said that the challenge of finding an affordable place to live in Toronto is “one of the biggest we face today” as a city.
“Far too many people, from seniors to single people to people with disabilities to newcomers, simply can’t find safe, suitable, affordable housing. We need to make much more progress on this much faster at city hall,” Tory said at a news conference in July.
In addition to a lengthy wait list, the capital repair backlog for the Toronto Community Housing Corporation - the city’s largest social housing provider -- is pegged at $2.6 billion.
Other attendees at this week’s summit include Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie and London mayor Matt Brown.
