By: Alexi Guindon-Riopel Residential housing prices in Canada have been increasing sharply over the last 10 years. To solve this problem, the Trudeau government created the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive (FTHBI) which aims to do two things; ease the burden of the high initial cost to break into the housing market and reduce monthly mortgage…
Category: Housing
Addressing Toronto’s loss of dwelling rooms in rooming houses
By: Ruolan Ma As the epicentre of Ontario’s housing crisis, Toronto has a rental market with an extremely limited housing stock and one of the lowest vacancy rates in Canada at 0.5%. As a result, rental prices remain high with the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto reaching 2,250 in 2022, a 22%…
The Danger of Robust Inclusionary Zoning Policies without Providing Incentives
By: Zachary Betteridge In October 2021, the Toronto municipal government proposed an affordable housing plan that instituted inclusionary zoning policies for new development projects. Inclusionary zoning (IZ) refers to policies that require new housing units to include a certain percentage of available housing to be affordable, where the monthly rental cost is at or below…
A Tale of 3 Cities: Spatial Concentration of Poverty in Toronto
By: Hilda-Matilda Idegwu Labelling Toronto as an “urban hub of vitality” is a blatant disregard of the significant amount of the city’s population experiencing poverty at alarming rates. Waking up every morning on the corner of King and Portland (famously known as the Entertainment district) it’s easy to notice the hustle and bustle of workers…
Can Toronto’s Inclusionary Housing Policy Overcome Exclusionary Market Forces?
By: Anna Hardie It is hard to walk through downtown Toronto without coming across a new condominium. This is in part because housing policies incentivize condo development over any other type of housing. Between 1998 and 2018, 77% of all new housing supply in Toronto were condominiums. However, most people cannot access the new supply of housing…
The Real Culprit in Toronto’s Housing Crisis
By: Sonja Perisic Khaleel Seivwright has become something of a household name in Toronto in the last few weeks. With the support of over $200k in GoFundMe donations, the Toronto carpenter has been building tiny insulated shelters for Toronto’s homeless community as an alternative to tents or park benches. Many of the city’s homeless shelters…