Mayor John Tory says that one of his first acts upon being sworn in for a second term will be to seek council approval to make a new batch of city-owned properties available for the development of affordable housing.
During the mayoral campaign, Tory promised to build 40,000 new affordable housing units over the next 12 years. While the commitment was modest compared to the 100,000 units that Jennifer Keesmaat promised to build over a decade, it’s still ambitious given the city’s recent track record in building affordable housing.
In 2009, city council set a target to approve in excess of 1,000 new affordable housing units per year, though that target was only met during the last two years. In 2018, the city approved a record 1,650 new affordable units but that number would still be short of the estimated 3,300 annual approvals that will be required to reach Tory’s target by 2030..
“It is time to get on with building and I want to build as much affordable housing as possible as quickly as possible. That is something that I had in our plans before but it is certainly something that has been reinforced by the dialogue I had with voters over course of election campaign,” Tory said during a news conference on Wednesday, his first since being re-elected. “My commitment to meeting and beating the target that we did set will not waver and there is no time to lose in getting on with that because the clock is now ticking.”
Tory said that he met with city staff on Tuesday, who in turn identified 10 additional city-owned properties that could be made available free of charge to developers willing to build new affordable housing.
The land is in addition to a number of other city-owned properties that were made available for the development of affordable housing during the last term of council, Tory said.
He said that he is committed to seek the necessary approvals to make this latest batch of surplus land available to developers “at this first possible council meeting.”
Looking further ahead, Tory said he will also be asking the province to make additional surplus lands that it owns within the city available for the development of affordable housing.
“I will be formally requesting the Minister of Housing for Ontario to identify additional provincially-owned land which we can put to good use in increasing the supply of affordable rental housing,” he said. “We are obviously anxious to begin to do this type of business as soon as possible.”
In addition to making more city-owned land available for affordable housing, Tory said that he has also asked Toronto’s chief transformation officer top report back within 30 days on ways the city could “cut red tape” to speed up the construction of affordable housing.
