Housing in Toronto: it’s top of mind, it’s a part of daily banter and arguably one of the biggest concerns for city residents.
The ability to buy a home in the city is largely considered a formidable achievement in the current economy and you’ve probably had at least a few casual conversations around home buying wherein some feel that they may never be able to own one. A new CityNews poll conducted by Maru Public Opinion is showing some concrete numbers to back up that general feeling.
The poll conducted by Maru Public Opinion surveyed 500 people of varying ages and backgrounds across the city.
As of 2021, almost half the residents in Toronto are renters and according to the survey, a whopping 77 per cent of those who don’t own a home in the city agreed with the statement “I will never be able to own my own house/residence in this city.” From that number, 52 per cent feel very strongly about it and 25 per cent somewhat strongly. Twenty-three per cent disagreed, with 17 per cent somewhat disagreeing and six per cent strongly.
“I think it’s a realistic assessment of the market right now,” says Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities and Professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto.
“I think this last year has been really instructive for people because interest rates went up, housing prices were supposed to come down. They did, but only in certain areas in the city of Toronto. For the most part, they didn’t. And if you’re looking at single family homes or semi-detached homes in Toronto, you’re seeing that prices are basically the same. So when prices don’t go down and supply is actually going up and prices are still not going down, people get very discouraged.”
Why is the cost of a home so high in Toronto?
Cost is no doubt among the biggest considerations when gauging your ability to buy a home. The survey asked homeowners, who comprise 58 per cent of the sample, why the prices of home and condo units are now much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic. They were given multiple reasons and asked to choose all that may apply.
Forty-five per cent believe investors, developers and others have overvalued the worth of homes or condos for greater returns.
“The real estate industry has been in a state of what we call financialization, that they’re really looking at housing as a commodity. They’re not thinking about families and homes and use value. They’re thinking about how much money they can make off of it,” explains Chapple.
She adds that financialization is being driven not just by real estate developers, investors or landlords, it’s also ordinary people.
“It’s mom and pop that have equity in their home, and they thought that their home had increased [a certain amount] in price and that they would be able to sell and take out their home equity and finance their retirement. So they don’t want to lower the prices,” she says.
“So it’s across the board, it’s the industry — but it’s also ordinary people that are holding on, keeping the prices high because they’ve been sort of deceived into thinking this is the actual value of their property. And you can’t blame them. They counted on it for their retirement.”
Forty-one per cent of respondents also felt more practical factors are affecting prices — the dramatic increase in the cost of building materials from suppliers.
Thirty-five per cent felt the scarcity of housing supply is driving prices up, while 33 per cent felt the city’s taxes on building, buying, holding and transferring homes or condos is too high. Another 33 per cent felt that low interest rates during the pandemic pushed purchase prices up and they’re now stuck there.
To increase housing supply, a majority of Torontonians believe residential zoning should be updated. Sixty-six per cent of respondents agreed with the statement “The Ontario government should allow the building of up to four residential units, up to four stories, on any parcel or land zoned as ‘residential’ in my neighbourhood so we can create more available homes.”
Mayor Olivia Chow says those updates are already taking place in Toronto.
“We are relaxing all the zonings. So as of right now, you don’t even need to apply to city hall. If you have a home, if you’re an empty nester and you have this big house. ‘Well, I don’t need a big house because my kids are now grown up with their family and they’re not moving back because they might be in a different town’ or they already have their own place. So you can convert it into two units, three units, so we can rent it out, create housing,” she tells CityNews.
She explains that with the relaxed zoning rules, a property on a main street can be developed into a six storey, 60 unit building and in other areas into a three storey, four unit building.
“Build it, build it. Work it with the banks, get the money up front, build it, rent it out. We need the housing. And then you can have some secondary income, which would be most welcome,” she says.
Why is the rent in Toronto so high?
Renters, who comprised 28 per cent of the survey sample, were asked why they feel the price of rent is now much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic and a majority place the blame on landlords and housing provider companies.
Fifty-five per cent believe rent prices have gone up due to landlords and companies gouging tenants and inflating the prices.
Fifty per cent feel renovictions contribute to higher rents – referring to the unscrupulous practice of evicting tenants under the guise of renovations and then re-renting the same unit at a much higher rate.
Mayor Chow points to a renoviction bylaw that is currently in the public consultation phase at city hall which she says will prevent such unnecessary evictions.
“If a landlord wants to renovate, great. Of course they need to apply for a building permit. And the building permit needs to show ‘why do you need the unit vacant? Are you just painting? Or are you tearing the whole thing apart?’ So that should prevent some of the needless renovictions from taking place,” she says.
Forty-seven percent feel that the higher interest rates homeowners are paying are being passed down to tenants and driving up rent costs. The same percentage of people feel there aren’t enough vacant units available and high demand is sending prices soaring.
Increase in maintenance costs, higher price of renovation materials and higher residential taxes are also reasons why 27 per cent of people polled feel rent prices are higher than prior to the pandemic.
Has the mayor delivered on promises of helping renters and building more affordable housing?
Among mayor Olivia Chow’s stated top priorities are helping renters in the city and building more affordable housing.
Only a small fraction of Torontonian’s say she is successfully delivering on those promises. A mere two per cent say the mayor has made great progress on the file and they are seeing real evidence of it. Fifteen percent feel the mayor is making good progress, things are moving in the right direction and hope it continues.
However, almost half of those surveyed — 46 per cent — say they have seen or heard of some movement but have not seen any real progress yet. Thirty-six per cent felt there was zero evidence that the mayor has made any progress on this priority since she was elected in 2023.
The mayor points to a number of initiatives that have been implemented during her time in office so far.
“We have a program where the city helped renters to form land trust and cooperatives,” she says.
Through the Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition Program (MURA), the city provides funding to non-profit housing providers, cooperatives and community land trusts to acquire private market rent units.
“The program enables the purchase of at-risk private market rental housing to secure the homes as permanently affordable non-profit housing,” they city’s website reads.
“So there are 228 homes that have turned into non-market, meaning people would have their homes affordable forever,” says Chow.
“So it’s really a form of ownership in a way, but a collective ownership.”
She adds that the program is currently too small and more funding is needed to scale it up.
“If we can get the federal government on side — they have a program that hasn’t rolled out yet. We need that rolled out. We need more money so that we can massively expand it to a few thousand,” she says.
Chow says they are also working to cut down red tape for those looking to build housing and streamline the process of approving developments.
“We’ve consolidated all the departments into a one stop shop. Planning, legal, water engineering, you name it,” she says.
She adds that the city is currently building more than 1,500 rent-controlled, affordable and rent-geared-to-income units and there are approximately 33,000 housing starts at this time.
The mayor admits no visible change seems to be happening but she says things are moving.
“Right now I see in your poll, people are not feeling it. They’re not seeing it. The buildings are not totally built yet. You have to be able to see the building. The rents haven’t dropped yet because there’s not enough households being built, not enough people have been housed yet,” she says.
“Now we do have 6,000 people that have received permanent housing. So if you’re [one of the] lucky 6,000 then you go, ‘wow.’ Or if you are the 4,000 people that because of us, you no longer have to face eviction [via rent bank and homelessness prevention programs]. Okay, great. That’s 10,000 people. That’s small compared to the number of renters we have. Or if you’re the lucky 3000 people that gotten rent geared to income housing, yay, you’re happy. So you add it up, it’s about 10,000 -13,000 people. 13,000 people is a drop in the bucket. But we have to start somewhere”
“So is 13,000 people being helped good enough? No, it’s nowhere near enough … but in a year plus that I’ve been in office, I’m fixing the pipeline so that … we can push it forward.”
This CityNews poll, conducted by Maru Public Opinion, surveyed a random sample of 500 adults within the city of Toronto between August 29 and September 6, 2024, with the results considered accurate from +/- 4.4% 19 times out of 20.
