The Star is partnering with the School of Cities at the University of Toronto to pitch big ideas during the run-up to this month’s municipal election. Affiliated faculty at the school have taken on some of the city’s thorniest problems and the Star has presented their solutions to the two main contenders running to be mayor. In the second edition, the case for building on the city’s affordable housing plan.
Toronto is already successfully working to protect — not just build — existing affordable housing.
Ahead of the municipal election on Oct. 26, Carolyn Whitzman, a senior housing researcher and adjunct professor with the U of T School of Cities, is challenging the city to escalate its efforts.
Whitzman suggests Toronto expand its Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) fund, a program of loans and grants to help non-profit housing providers purchase buildings at risk of getting rent increases to turn them into permanently affordable housing.
She said the move would preserve affordable housing and prevent tenant displacement, increase the number of “supportive and deeply affordable” homes and help non-profit providers build equity.
“It is an easy win because it expands a program that’s already working,” she argued in a municipal election issues brief.
MURA has preserved more than 1,000 homes in 34 properties across the city since 2021, the paper added, and its expansion “can be implemented now.”
In an interview Whitzman said affordable housing efforts must include new construction of nonmarket housing, acquisitions of private-market homes to turn into nonmarket housing — for example, with public housing, co-ops, and community land trusts — and renovations of aging, nonmarket buildings.
Give the city an advantage
It also calls on Toronto to advocate for the Ontario government to give the city a “right of first refusal.” This would entail the city identifying affordable buildings and areas at risk of demolition or at risk of being sold to a company that would significantly hike rents and then requiring the sellers to go to the city for the first offer.
“The city has the option of paying market cost for it,” Whitzman explained. “It’s not expropriating it, by any means.”
Such initiatives have already found success with British Columbia’s “Rental Protection Fund,” a “pre-emptive right” approach allowing Montreal to purchase buildings with affordable housing and the right of first refusal for co-operatives or local governments in several U.S. jurisdictions, the brief notes.
In the province’s Build Ontario fund, Whitzman added that the federal government recently began rolling out its $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund which aims to help community housing providers preserve affordable properties.
“The time is so, so ripe for the City of Toronto to apply for some federal funding to help their own efforts to expand their own program,” she said.
What do the candidates think?
Brad Bradford’s team: “Keep your home, by enforcing the renoviction by-law the City already has and publishing the results by address. Cool your home, with a maximum heat standard delivered on Council’s existing June 2027 deadline, oldest towers and Toronto Community Housing first. Build more homes, by giving non-profit and co-op builders predictable density rules instead of a negotiation on every site, expanding the revolving pre-development fund so early money gets repaid and lent again, and publishing a quarterly scoreboard against the City’s own target of 65,000 rent-controlled homes.”
Olivia Chow’s team: “As mayor, Olivia Chow expanded the MURA Program with nearly $100 million in funding to help nonprofits acquire more than 1,000 homes so far, and keep them affordable. Olivia Chow will continue to fund MURA. In addition to MURA, we need to protect renters citywide. That’s why as mayor, Olivia Chow established a Renters Action Committee and has been acting on their feedback.”
