TORONTO—In the search for nation-building projects, it would be hard to beat affordable housing. Far too many Canadians—families with children, seniors, working individuals—face an endless struggle to find housing and to afford the high cost when they do. According to one estimate, there are about three million very low- and low-income households in Canada that need homes renting for less than $1,000 a month. Many middle-income Canadians are also struggling.

But there are solutions. “Back in the 1970s, the feds came up with the financing, the private developers built the units, and the non-profits, specifically housing co-ops, continue renting them with affordable rents,” said former Toronto mayor David Crombie. “We need more of those partnerships now.” 

What Crombie and his colleagues at the Alliance For a Liveable Alliance—a network of municipal leaders, private-sector developers, non-profit housing groups, city planners and architects, environmentalists and community builders—are looking for is a federal government that acts as an enabler for partnerships at the community level for projects that combine market and non-profit affordable housing. The creative potential exists at the community level—Ottawa’s role should be to support bottom-up initiatives, not impose top-down solutions.

It’s a message the Carney government needs to hear as it drafts this country’s new housing policy. Innovation and solutions are more likely to emerge at the local level, not in government offices in the nation’s capital. The government should learn to listen, not dictate. 

An example of a highly successful community-led partnership is the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood Project in downtown Toronto. To this day, it remains a model for a community-led local partnership for mixed-use, mixed-income housing. It was launched after Crombie won the 1972 mayoralty election. At the time, Toronto faced a housing crisis. Affordable housing was not being built, vacancy rates were very low, and rents were rising fast. 

The city had to act, but Crombie and his allies wanted to avoid traditional public housing where low-income families were segregated into stand-alone social housing that became ghettoes. Instead, Crombie and the housing commissioner he appointed, Michael Dennis, wanted to combine market-priced housing with affordable non-profit and co-operative housing, based on rent-to-income.

With supportive 1973 amendments to the National Housing Act that Toronto campaigned for, 56 acres of land were assembled in an old industrial area, and in a public-private partnership that gave developers a role and which attracted planning and architectural talent. A community of 4,310 housing units for families, seniors and individuals that could house 10,000 residents was built, creating a successful community with its own park and a plethora of food and other retailers, schools, health clinics, a public library, and recreation facilities. An essential part of the project was that it was a real partnership between the city, non-profits, developers, and innovators.

Yet, in the years that followed, successive federal governments either dismantled or downsized the programs that made such projects feasible. The focus was increasingly on boosting home ownership while the rental housing needs of low- and middle-income Canadians were neglected.

But this can change. 

The Carney government has promised a new housing strategy though we have yet to see the details. Moreover, there is a new housing minister, Gregor Robertson, who served three terms as mayor of Vancouver and has experienced the struggles at the local level to get affordable housing built. In fact, Vancouver has its own version of the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood Project: the False Creek Comprehensive Development District. It is at the local level where city officials, developers, non-profits, financiers, architects, and community activists all know one another, and can best design and energize new projects and partnerships.

A good place to start is with Crombie and his 15 colleagues—developers, non-profits, architects and planners and social activists—at the Alliance for a Liveable Ontario. Early this month they sent Robertson a plan to build one million affordable homes over 10 years for low- and middle-income Canadians, with one per cent of Canada’s GDP dedicated to the project, compared to five per cent for national defence. Some actions could be started fast by taking advantage of the current condominium crisis in many cities.

If this country can afford to boost defence spending, then surely we could devote one per cent of GDP to non-market housing that would go a long way to alleviating the current  housing affordability crisis faced by so many low- and middle-income Canadians, they argue. 

This would be a true nation-building project that would also create jobs, open markets for Canadian building materials and for Canadian technology, attract the creative skills of planners, architects and designers, bring on new infrastructure, and facilitate the adoption of new construction methods. It would energize innovation. 

Much of their focus is on creating new incentives to embed non-market housing to be owned by non-profits within all market-led multi-residential housing developments, recognizing that condominium-style projects will be the main source of new housing units. Crombie’s team propose that all such projects contain 15 per cent of units, backed by federal incentives to be owned by non-profit housing providers and rented to low- and medium-income families and individuals.

The group says there are currently 23,000 unsold condominium units in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area which they say could be turned into affordable housing units very quickly, calling for federal support to enable qualified non-profits to acquire ownership of such units and then rent them out to low- and middle-income Canadians.

But going beyond such immediate opportunities, they want the new federal housing strategy to facilitate private-sector partnerships with non-profits for new projects that would build new units for low- and middle-income Canadians. This would also include identifying federal properties across Canada suitable for building multi-residential buildings. They also propose creating incentives to motivate philanthropic capital to support affordable housing. 

This is a moment of opportunity. Robertson should listen to Crombie. Cities are where things actually get done. And solving the affordable housing crisis is surely something that must be done.

David Crane can be reached at crane@interlog.com.

The Hill Times

 

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