Toronto Chinatown Land Trust buys its first building in bid to keep neighbourhood affordable

“Buying a building is more money than any of us have ever contemplated having,” Chiyi Tam, managing director of the land trust said. “Only so many of us know people who own property, so it’s a totally new world.”

Tam said the group reached their decision due to the building’s location in the “beating heart” of west Chinatown, the opportunity to turn short-term rentals into “forever homes,” and the opportunity to support existing businesses.

While the property was listed for $1.89 million, the land trust found it had been listed multiple times, and wondered if the seller would be open to negotiating for a community-led group and giving them more time to close if they knew they had to fundraise, Tam said.

So far, Tam said, the group has raised $518,000 of their $600,000 target in just two weeks.  The deal closes Nov. 15.

The group also found the building was owned by “family friends of family friends,” giving them the opportunity to speak with the sellers about the legacy the building could have under community ownership, and not just “transactional real estate.”

“I think they had never thought about that as an option before and were really excited,” Tam said.

How it all happened

Tam said she credits another neighbourhood group, the Chinatown Advocacy Network, for raising the community’s affordability challenges with the city, and University—Rosedale councillor Dianne Sax for helping the land trust get $700,000 in discretionary funding from the city for a down payment.

The land trust board then spent four months poring over multiple property options with many questions: What was the condition of the building; how feasible would it be to manage; what impact would the purchase have on the community?

They then considered financing options with community lenders, and found the best option was to take out a mortgage from a community housing entity, Tam said. 

They also set an ambitious fundraising target of $600,000 to reduce the mortgage they would need ahead of closing and to pay for inevitable repairs.

“The more money we raise through this phase, the less we have to take out in a loan for the building,” Tam said, “which then allows us to set the rents that are really, really competitively low.” 

Tam said the land trust did not get any money from Toronto’s Multi-Unit Rental Acquisition program that’s meant to help non-profit housing providers buy properties partly because the program only applies to buildings that are nearly 100 per cent housing.

“I really think people underestimate working-class power and the ability for everyday people to handle really complicated financial conversations,” Tam said. “Because people have very little resources and very little means, I think they’re even more judicious with an ability to make a decision around money that we have.”

Carolyn Whitzman, senior housing researcher and adjunct professor with University of Toronto’s School of Cities, said the growth of community land trusts has been “exponential” in recent years.

“The cool thing about them, which in some ways is also the constraint on them, is that they come out of specific communities, quite often very disadvantaged communities, and they’ve got lots of community energy — they’re very close to the people they’re serving,” Whitzman said. “The only downside about them is that they tend to be somewhat small.”

That can get in the way of getting institutional funding, which she said is more likely to go to groups that have large portfolios.

It might be ideal for a small group like this to work with a larger, more established non-profit housing provider, she said. 

“Let’s put it this way: I don’t think that community land trusts alone can solve the housing crisis in Canada,” Whitzman said. “They’re just too small, but I think that they’re incredibly important.”

The movement she said began with the Parkdale Community Land Trust went on to involve the Little Jamaica Community Land Trust, the Kensington Market Community Land Trust, as well as groups outside Toronto like the Ottawa Community Land Trust, and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust.

“I think it’s pretty exciting,” said Lait Night co-owner Leanne Li, one of the two current commercial businesses in 81 Huron. “We’ve never had, obviously, a land trust as a landlord or anything, but we met with (Tam) before and she seems really friendly.”