Affordability and Resilience: The Challenge of Tower Renewal in Private Rental Apartment Buildings

[Northern Light]

We have a few threads that cover housing/homelessness issues but I felt this piece didn't neatly fit in any of them.

Back on Christmas Day, The Star's Donovan Vincent wrote about this report which discusses the need to renew older rental building, maintain their affordability to tenants, and expedite new rental construction.

The report title is Affordability and Resilience: The Challenge of Tower Renewal in Private Rental Apartment Buildings

His story can be found here: I have offered the 'outline' link directly on this occasion for ease of access.

outline.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com

outline.com

The actual report can be found here:

https://knowledge.uli.org/-/media/files/advisory-service-panels/2020/uli-asp_report_toronto_final_v2.pdf?rev=b66c36885b014da19208422c613c2cbf&hash=972B6A945B1F06B32A4863D943DAC7DB

While a Youtube presentation/panel discussing same, can be found here:

The entire report is extremely information dense and quite interesting.

For now, I'll skip to the end and post the Recommendation summary:

 

[Northern Light]

On the heels of the above report, The Star has published another article on the subject of affordable housing and 2 reports related to same.

The article can be found here:

‘Everybody in the middle is getting squeezed out and it’s painful’: Toronto’s lack of affordable housing hits those in higher income brackets, say experts

There’s a growing call to house those whose income is too high to qualify for community housing but not high enough to pay market prices.

www.thestar.com

or via Outline, here:

Outline - Read & annotate without distractions

Outline is a free service for reading and annotating news articles. We remove the clutter so you can analyze and comment on the content.

outline.com

The reports referenced in said Article are:

Housing a Generation of Workers: Which can be found at the link below.

https://www.bot.com/Portals/0/PDFs/BOARD_Woodgreen_WorkforceHousing.pdf

and

Housing a Generation of Essential Workers:

Which can be found here:

Housing Report 2 | Toronto Region Board of Trade + WoodGreen

workforcehousing2.trbot.ca

 

[TRONto]

Surprised there was nothing about zoning in there. I feel if there was more zoning to form (i.e. all avenues get up to 12 storeys without a zoning change.... maybe a minimum of 3 stories on all avenues). Change residential housing areas to be simply that, residential - doesn't matter single family, rental, etc. How about having a blanket, anyone can build up to 3 stories anywhere in Toronto without a review on the height? Blanket allowance for laneway and garden suites as long as they fit the particular guidelines.

I think zoning changes would create more affordable housing in existing neighborhoods in addition to what they mention. More small investors in the mix is better than exclusively big investors.

 

[Undead]

Sorry for the thread bump, but I was curious: who built the 60s and 70s rental towers? Was it private developers with government aid? @Northern Light, any insight? PS thanks for sharing the above reports.

 

[Northern Light]

Sorry for the thread bump, but I was curious: who built the 60s and 70s rental towers? Was it private developers with government aid? @Northern Light, any insight? PS thanks for sharing the above reports.

Yes.

It was private developers, largely assisted by programs through CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) which substantially lowered their interest payments to well below commercial lending rates in exchange both for the building the
rental housing; and in many cases some further commitment to affordability.

There was also a simultaneous program of public housing construction.

Much of which led into this program (it peaked shortly after WWII) with an eye to housing returning soldiers and their new families.

Though the St. Lawrence neighbourhood would largely follow the program as the last big housing hurrah.

By the end of the 70s affordable housing construction, both private and public had largely ground to a halt.

The subsidized lending program was discontinued; and major construction of new public housing would take more than a decade off before a brief revival in Ontario under Bob Rae's NDP.