Mayoral candidate Josh Matlow is promising to launch a new public agency to develop housing on city-owned lands, rather than partnering with private sector developers.
Matlow made the announcement during a press conference on Tuesday morning.
He said he would fund the initiative, dubbed “Public Build Toronto,” with $300 million in taxpayer dollars.
That money, Matlow said, would be taken from the approximately $500 million in savings that could be realized by cancelling a costly rebuild of the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway East and instead building an at-grade boulevard.
It should be noted that $500 million in contracts have already been awarded for the Gardiner East project, with construction set to begin in 2026. Staff have warned that those sunk costs likely won’t be recouped should the city revisit its plans for the Gardiner.
“We're facing a $46 billion budget pressure over the next 10 years and we need to make decisions. Rather than choosing the most expensive option to connect the DVP and the rest of the Gardiner, I'm going to choose a preferred option that still connects it but it's going to be on the ground, we will save $500 million (after sunk costs) and put $300 million of that toward a real priority, a far more important priority which is to get affordable housing built immediately,” Matlow said.
Toronto has an existing initiative known as “Housing Now,” in which the city has given developers access to 21 different sites in exchange for the development of thousands of affordable units.
Matlow, however, pointed out that none of those projects have actually resulted in the construction of new housing so far and remain in various stages of the development pipeline.
He said his initiative would allow the city to get housing built quicker, with a focus on replacing some Green P and TTC surface parking lots with new developments.
“Even though Housing Now was announced over five years ago (in January 2019), there still hasn't been a single shovel in the ground, not a single home built for people who are living in the housing crisis now. Housing Now wasn’t housing now,” Matlow said. “So by putting $300 million dollars in seed money into Public Build Toronto, we get rid of that private industry risk. We're going to go ahead and start building, we're going to be able to move ahead and have the contractors work for us directly to be able to get the housing out the door to the people who need it.”
Matlow said that under his plan, the resulting buildings would be “financially self-sufficient” due to a mix of market rate and affordable units.
He said that he believes the initial $300 million investment could fund as many as 8,250 market-rate apartments, 6,750 affordable apartments and 750 deeply affordable apartments.
Matlow also expressed hope that other levels of government would match the city’s funding commitment, potentially allowing for more housing to be built.
“I often get frustrated when I hear politicians get up and say they've got the magic answer and it's going to solve everybody's problems. I'm not announcing that today. What I am announcing is that rather than waiting and waiting and waiting for a single unit of affordable housing to be built on city property, that we're going to get going on it,” he said.
In a message posted to Twitter following Matlow’s announcement, fellow mayoral candidate Mark Saunders said that the idea of using city-owned land for the development of affordable housing isn’t new and was a key piece of the city’s 10-year housing action plan that was developed in 2019.
“Congratulations Josh, you just invented the 2019 HousingTO Action Plan,” he said.
