For the past seven years, whenever David Brown stepped outside of his red-brick burger joint in the Upper Beaches, his eyes would lift just above the black-and-red Fearless Meat sign to where the housing would go.
His restaurant, tucked into a narrow indoor space but spilling out onto a wide patio, has become known to the community for its towering Montreal smoked meat sandwiches, free soft-serve cones for kids and for giving out burgers to homeless people during the pandemic.
But ever since the 72-year-old butcher bought the building in 2016 — back when it was an antique store — he’s known exactly what he wanted to do with it: build affordable housing.
“The system right now is failing our most vulnerable people,” Brown says. “If people in the shelter system are given the right supports and assistance, they could transition successfully out of it … and that’s what this is designed to do.”
The project, long in the making for Brown, would include 100 self-contained affordable rental apartments in a nine-storey residential tower built atop the existing building and a neighbouring property he purchased in 2021, for a total height of 10 storeys.
Once the project is underway, he hopes to lease it to a non-profit housing provider to operate. It would have around-the-clock on-site social work support, case managers on staff, and his restaurant would serve as a job training centre for tenants.
Sitting inside his restaurant beneath framed copies of features he wrote for the Toronto Star’s Food section as a freelancer in the 1980s, Brown told the Star that once the drawings are finalized later this year, he plans to submit a formal application for permission to build higher than the current six-storey zoning limit allows.
Brown added that he has been working with a city planner who told him a month earlier that the city could support this proposed development. (The City of Toronto would not confirm to the Star that the project would be supported, but did say the zoning bylaw would have to be amended to permit 100 units.)
Originally from Kincardine, Ont., on Lake Huron, Brown moved to Toronto with his family while he was still in kindergarten. His family had a modest income and he started working at the age of 10 to help out at home, before entering the meat business as a butcher’s apprentice during his first year of university to help cover tuition.
His interest in housing took root in 1982, when he began renting out rooms in his own home to low-income people. Then in 2012, Brown, at his own expense, developed an old Victorian on Dundas Street near Sherbourne as a supportive short-term residence for First Nations youth.
Among his tenants was a young man in his 20s who worked part-time on a construction site run by Brown, just down the road. He was renovating two Victorian homes that would later be leased to non-profit housing provider Fred Victor and offer 37 transitional housing rooms for women.
The young man, who Brown said had aspired to a career in law enforcement, left the housing program six months later, after moving in with his girlfriend and landing a government job.
A year later, Brown was shocked and saddened to hear the young man had died of a drug overdose in Vancouver.
“I thought, as a landlord, what could I have done differently?” says Brown. “Then I came up with this idea. Let’s take this housing thing a step further and create job training opportunities for people while they’re supervised and have the support from social workers.”
After years of working with various architects and securing approval during the pandemic to build 50 apartment units under the city’s Open Door Affordable Housing program, Brown now hopes to transform his corner of Kingston Road into a 175-seat steak house connected to a neighbouring building he purchased in 2021. In the process, he hopes to double the number of affordable apartment units towering over the restaurant to 100.
He said he’s not worried that housing homeless people will affect business at the steak house, as careful tenant selection and strict protocols will be in place.
Instead, he says the project will serve as an “eye-opening” experience for NIMBYs, demonstrating that just because someone is homeless doesn’t mean they will be a problem for society. Brown says he is willing to be upfront with neighbours and address their concerns.
A number of non-profit housing providers have shown interest in the initiative, and his longtime partner, Fred Victor, confirmed its interest to the Star.
“It’s a different way of looking at the homeless population,” Brown says, “instead of just throwing money at it, creating more shelters and putting people there and forgetting about them.”
Brown says he was deeply influenced by the story in 2006 of a chronically homeless man named Murray living in Nevada who cost the city $1 million in public resources over more than a decade.
He believes Toronto has its own “million dollar Murrays” — and if his project can help people get back on track and permanently out of the shelter system, it could save the city a great deal of money.
Brad Bradford, city councillor for Beaches and East York, said he has a lot of admiration for Brown, who “has been a true pillar of the Beaches community for many years,” and added that should an application be submitted for the project, he is committed to ensuring a community consultation takes place for residents to share their perspectives.
“What the City of Toronto is doing right now to manage the homelessness crisis isn’t working,” Bradford said. “The answer is to build more housing, including housing with supports — but how we do it and where we do it matters.”
Keith Hambly, CEO of Fred Victor — whose team has met with Brown several times over the years to support him in promoting it to the city — said he sees Brown’s proposal as an innovative model.
“He’s thinking even more broadly than just four walls and a roof to an affordable place to live,” Hambly says, “but also the opportunity to garner more skills to help a person in their employment history.” He adds that it’s an example of how people in the private sector, especially property owners, can step up to help alleviate homelessness.
But Hambly says more details need to be worked out, such as how the apartments will be built, the partnership between Brown and Fred Victor, and whether working at Brown’s restaurant will be an expectation for tenants.
David Hulchanski, a housing professor at the University of Toronto, also found the principle of Brown’s project laudable. But he added that he could see some major hurdles as well. For instance, the project still needs to get rezoning approval and survive public meetings with neighbours who may not support a high-density project.
The funding from the federal affordable housing program usually comes late in the process and could add uncertainty to the project financing as well, he added.
Brown admitted that the financial burden of the project has been “hugely stressful.” So far, he says he has invested between $2-to-$3 million in this project, including mortgage payments on the properties.
He hopes that a financial institution or business could see the project as a good publicity opportunity and work with him to provide low-interest loans for the construction while he applies for funding from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The forward-thinking Brown repeatedly emphasizes that he needs to find an applicable financial model that generates a reasonable rental income return — enough to cover expenses and yield some profit so he could replicate the project and “roll out across Toronto” — while meeting affordability requirements.
He acknowledges that some people — including members of his family — struggle to understand his decision to personally take on a project that comes with such a large financial commitment.
But Brown says it’s something he has to do.
“I feel that I could seriously solve the homeless crisis in Toronto. It’s a legacy project for me. It’s a culmination of all of the things that I’ve worked for in my life.”
