The LOOP Ground Breaking release:
Published on November 13, 2017
Joe Deschênes Smith, Trillium Housing (with son Michael), Minister of Housing Peter Milczyn, Councillor Frank Di Giorgio, Minister of Citizenship laura Albanese, Deputy Mayor Ana Bailao, Mike Van Hemert - Van Mar, Fred Heller, Trillium Housing
November 9, 2017
Ontario Minister of Housing Peter Milczyn and Toronto Deputy Mayor Ana Bailão Join Trillium Housing to Celebrate Innovative Approach to Helping More Middle Class Families Own a Home
Toronto, ON— A ground-breaking ceremony for a new 62 townhome community is proving to be equally ground breaking in the way the pilot project makes home ownership more attainable for middle class families in Toronto and other parts of the province.
“We applaud Trillium Housing and Van Mar Constructors, for their creative approach to making home ownership more affordable and we’re proud to have backed their innovative approach to housing affordability,” said Ontario Minister of Housing Peter Milczyn, who attended the ceremony. Minister Milczyn was joined by Deputy Mayor Ana Bailão, a long-standing advocate of addressing the city’s home ownership and rental challenges who observed, "This is an important first project by Trillium Housing to make home ownership more attainable for low to medium income Toronto families. I congratulate the team at Trillium on this achievement. The City is proud to provide funding towards this project which will help to create a stronger community in Toronto's west-end.”
The average home in Toronto still tops $900k – well out of reach of most middle class Ontario families. In contrast, with LOOP Towns – a partnership between Trillium Housing and Van Mar offers 62 townhomes at fair market prices, starting in the $300s and made even more affordable thanks to the payment free Trillium Mortgage, which supplements the bank’s first mortgage and is being offered to qualifying families as a way to dramatically reduce monthly mortgage payments. Occupancy for the LOOP is expected for early 2019, with some units still available.
The LOOP is very much a public/private success story, with the Province of Ontario providing a loan guarantee for the purchase of the three-acre site, formerly used as a TTC turning station and the city of Toronto stepping up by investing $2 million CDN investment in the Trillium Mortgages, which will be fully repaid once families are no longer in need of the added financial support.
“A growing number of middle class families have been priced out of the home ownership market in recent years and we felt it was time to come up with a more viable, more sustainable way to enable these families to become home owners,” observes Trillium Housing partner and spokesperson Joe Deschênes Smith. “A critical piece of the puzzle has been the payment free Trillium Mortgage we’ve introduced, which is designed to set up families for home ownership success, unlike conventional mortgages that are a financial burden.”
Trillium Mortgages by the Numbers
The way the Trillium Mortgage works, is if a family puts $20k down along with a $180k bank mortgage and a $100k Trillium Mortgage to purchase a $300k home, they only have to make monthly payments on the $180k mortgage until they decide to sell the home. The fact there’s no need to make any payments on the $100k Trillium Mortgage portion alone translates into reduced payments of $400-500 per month and thousands of dollars less per year, based on current mortgage rates.
When the time comes to sell the home, if it has gone up in value by a specific percentage, the original Trillium loan amount is paid off, along with its corresponding percentage increase. And because it’s a shared risk loan, if the home were to go down in value, the Trillium Loan would share in the risk with a lower payout than the original loan amount. There’s also an anti-flipping clause to serve as a disincentive to sell Trillium financed homes for a quick profit.
“What we’re offering is the kind of creative solution the GTA market has been lacking far too long,” said Deschênes Smith. “It’s the opportunity to own your own home and not likely have to pay any more than what you would be paying if you were renting… maybe even less.”
Future Trillium Projects
Looking beyond the LOOP Urban Towns project, Trillium Housing has already set its sights on three new projects that will make use of the not for profit company’s unique financing model, with a provincial loan guarantee now in place for the purchase of land for a soon to be disclosed Pickering site. As well, sites have been purchased in Hamilton for two additional residential projects.
“From our perspective, LOOP is exciting because after years of planning and hard work behind the scenes, our dream of making home ownership more affordable is finally becoming a reality,” adds Richard Owen, another Trillium partner. “And it’s only just the beginning. It proves that with repayable government investments as part of the solution, we can support housing affordability far more efficiently than any other model we’ve seen.”
To learn more about Trillium Housing, go to
www.trilliumhousing.ca and to learn more about the LOOP Urban Towns and to register, go to:
www.thelooptowns.com.
