Housing in Ontario is at a breaking point and the private sector alone can’t fix it, says new research from the United Way Greater Toronto and the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada.
The “Built for Good” report, released Tuesday, calls for dramatically scaling up co-op and non-profit housing through $62.6 billion in investment and subsidies by 2030.
“We know there’s a housing crisis and what we’re doing is not working,” said Heather McDonald, president and CEO of United Way Greater Toronto.
There’s a clear gap, she added, in housing for lower-income people.
“If we don’t pay attention to this need we will leave too many Ontarians behind.”
The report identifies a need over the next decade for: 805,000 deeply affordable units for households with low incomes, including 255,000 newly constructed non-profit and co-operative units, and 145,000 moderately affordable units for households with moderate incomes, including at least 12,000 for Indigenous households.
About 225,000 more housing units need to be acquired, repaired and maintained to prevent the further loss of affordable units.
Over half of the deeply affordable units are needed in the Greater Toronto Area, the report says.
McDonald said investment is needed from all levels of government. But there’s an opportunity for the province in particular to step up to the plate.
She said the United Way would be happy to work with government partners on how to best acquire and invest in existing aging housing units.
“We need to go big to get Ontarians home,” she said, adding she sees affordable housing as a critical part of the province’s infrastructure.
Without that spending on housing, more money will need to go toward things like shelters and emergency care in hospitals.
“We need to catch up, because we haven’t been investing as we have needed to in the last couple of decades,” McDonald added.
There are about 550 housing co-ops in Ontario, said Simone Swail, senior manager of government relations for the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Ontario Region.
This type of housing is generally more affordable, as members of the co-op make decisions together about things like rent and maintenance. They don’t turn a profit and there’s no landlord.
But so far, they haven’t been built at the scale that’s needed.
“For so many Ontarians the housing that is coming out from the private sectors is so far beyond what they can afford,” Swail said, adding there has also been a glut of smaller units that aren’t big enough for families.
With the condo market facing a downturn and developers cancelling new projects, there’s a “huge opportunity” to build co-ops and non-profit housing that would help the province to achieve its goal of 1.5 million homes by 2030.
“Particularly in this moment when everything else has ground to a standstill,” she said.
“We see the need in our communities as greater than it’s ever been.”
