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Throughout October UrbanToronto is featuring a special State of Housing 2026 editorial series to examine the pressing housing challenges facing Toronto and the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
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Toronto's housing record measured against what developers and chief planners told StrategyCorp shows progress, but gaps remain.
Toronto heads to the polls on October 26 with housing still at the centre of the City of Toronto's agenda. But the problem facing the next Council looks different from the one confronting Toronto four years ago.
StrategyCorp has been following this issue in step with industry leaders since we completed our first Developer Survey in 2024 and our first Chief Planner Survey in 2025. Developers and Planners told us similar stories: municipal approvals were beginning to improve, but approved projects were increasingly failing to become housing starts.
That gap remains the defining challenge for housing in Toronto.
The City has moved furthest where it controls the pinch point. This meant it has attacked costs associated with development. Toronto froze development charge indexing and introduced deferrals, then secured up to $1.5 billion through a federal-provincial program to reduce residential development charges by 40 to 60 per cent through 2029.
That responds directly to developers' concerns about project financial viability. But it is temporary relief, not a long-term answer to how growth infrastructure should be financed.
Toronto has also increasingly used incentives to get approved projects built. The first phase of its Rental Housing Supply Program was oversubscribed and supported more than 8,000 homes, while a second phase targets up to 10,000 more. Projects with at least 20 per cent affordable units can receive indefinite development-charge deferrals through this program.
Public land is being used more actively for housing, too. Housing Now projects are moving into construction, and federal financing announced this summer is intended to support more than 5,600 rental homes, including projects on City-owned land.
The City has also opened more neighbourhoods to greater housing densities. Four-plexes are permitted citywide, while six-plexes are allowed in parts of Toronto. Reduced parking requirements have removed another longstanding constraint.
Inside City Hall, the development review system has undergone major reform. A dedicated Development Review Division consolidated staff previously spread across multiple divisions, while priority review now focuses on projects positioned to start construction within 12 to 24 months.
These are meaningful changes. But approval speed is no longer enough.
An approved project still needs financing, servicing, labour, buyers or renters, and a construction market that makes the numbers work. Toronto can lower fees, change zoning and accelerate reviews, but it cannot independently solve every constraint affecting project economics.
That makes coordination with other governments increasingly important. Recent joint federal, provincial and municipal funding agreements demonstrate what that can look like, but infrastructure funding remains fragmented.
Predictability remains another issue. Developers surveyed in 2024 asked not simply for fewer rules, but for greater certainty. Since then, provincial planning legislation has continued to change, while Toronto's inclusionary zoning framework took effect only to be paused by the Province until 2027.
The City's own review culture also remains a work in progress. Developers continue to favour earlier iterative working sessions, fewer rounds of comments and clearer certainty over when a file is complete.
The next term of Council, whoever leads it, inherits a housing system that is approving homes faster but still struggling to get them built. The immediate challenge is to convert temporary relief into durable reform: make growth financing more predictable, reduce repeated review cycles, coordinate infrastructure investment across governments, and ensure incentives are tied to actual construction.
The next tests are already visible. Inclusionary zoning is scheduled to return in 2027. Development-charge relief runs to 2029. The second phase of the City's rental program now has to translate approvals and incentives into shovels in the ground.
Toronto has made meaningful progress on the front end of the housing system. The next Council will be judged increasingly on what happens after approval: whether projects can be financed, serviced and built.
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Throughout October, UrbanToronto will be publishing features that examine the housing crisis in depth. Follow along as we present stories and perspectives that capture the state of housing today, and the ideas shaping how the region meets its growing need for homes.
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UrbanToronto's research and data service, UTPro, provides comprehensive data on construction projects in the Greater Golden Horseshoe—from proposal through to completion. Other services include Instant Reports, downloadable snapshots based on location, and a daily subscription newsletter, New Development Insider, that tracks projects from initial application.
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Thank you to the companies joining UrbanToronto to celebrate State of Housing Month 2026.