Ford says he opposes building affordable units in the area, despite a city bylaw mandating that 20 per cent of the new neighbourhood must be open to lower-income residents.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says a city proposal to build between 70 and 75 affordable rental units in a waterfront condominium building is a waste of valuable real estate.
“You don’t use your waterfront for affordable housing, that’s the first thing,” Ford told reporters Tuesday.
“But then again, you get the province and the feds to give us money for affordable housing, which we need, and put it somewhere else,” he said.
“Where that other location will be, we’re not quite sure. But it shouldn’t be on the waterfront. That’s my position on it now, so I’m sort of torn on this one,” he added.
As the Star reported yesterday, city staff are proposing an innovative pilot project to incorporate affordable rental housing within a condominium building in the recently announced $1.1 billion Bayside neighbourhood development, east of Sherbourne Common and George Brown College.
The proposal is in keeping with the city’s Central Waterfront Secondary Plan, which stipulates that 20 per cent of all new housing in the East Bayfront area must be affordable.
“We have to start seeing condominiums as the neighbourhood itself,” said Councillor Ana Bailao, chair of the city’s affordable housing committee, which unanimously approved the proposal Tuesday. “They are vertical neighbourhoods, and that is how we have to start planning.”
Area Councillor Pam McConnell says Ford and some councillors have misunderstood the proposal. “This is all over talk radio, and even some councillors have come to me today saying they can’t support buying waterfront condos for the poor,” she said. “But they’ve got it all wrong.”
McConnell, who has been involved in negotiations with developers Hines and Tridel, said the city is simply moving about 75 units of its already approved affordable housing from a site on the east side of the Bayside neighbourhood and integrating them into a west-side site. The block of affordable units will operate as a permanent, independent non-profit company inside a building that will also house condominium units, she explained.
Not only does it mean the desperately needed units will be more integrated into the neighbourhood, they’ll be built about 10 years sooner than originally planned, she added.
Under the proposal, about $15 million of the $22.5 million cost of building the rental units would come from last spring’s federal-provincial affordable housing program.
A prospective non-profit or co-op housing company, which would own and operate the units, would kick in $500,000 and take out a $7 million mortgage, which it would cover through rents.