Toronto engag­ing condo devel­op­ers to help build des­per­ately needed afford­able housing.

Lau­rie Mon­se­braaten – Toronto Star

With more than 70,000 house­holds lan­guish­ing for years on Toronto’s afford­able hous­ing wait list and few pub­lic dol­lars avail­able for new con­struc­tion, the city is turn­ing to its bur­geon­ing condo mar­ket for help.

Half a dozen con­do­minium devel­op­ers have inked deals with the city and non-profit hous­ing providers to offer low-income fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als afford­able rental and own­er­ship units in their buildings.

Pro­posed amend­ments to Toronto’s Offi­cial Plan to be debated by city coun­cil next month are designed to encour­age more devel­op­ers to play ball.

The changes come in the wake of a new province-wide cam­paign try­ing to put afford­able hous­ing back on the polit­i­cal agenda, as low-income fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als strug­gle to pay rent in the shadow of hun­dreds of pricey down­town con­do­minium towers.

“It’s not a solu­tion to the hous­ing cri­sis,” says Coun­cil­lor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina.)

“But in the absence of a real national or provin­cial hous­ing pro­gram, we’re going to have to find a thou­sand other small inven­tions to try and see what works and what can be done.

“If one day Ottawa or Queen’s Park decide to get engaged, we’ll be ready to roll out these poli­cies and mod­els and deliver the hous­ing we need.”

Some condo buy­ers may balk at invest­ing in a build­ing that includes units for low-income peo­ple for fear it will depress prop­erty values.

But Alan Vihant, senior vice-president of devel­op­ment for Great Gulf Homes, says he has had no push­back from pur­chasers at the company’s Char­lie condo near King St. W. and Spad­ina Ave., which opened last fall.

Great Gulf offered the city four afford­able rental units in the 36-storey build­ing, along with other pub­lic ben­e­fits, in exchange for added height and density.

“At the end of the day, a lot of con­dos that are pur­chased are rented out,” Vihant says.

The afford­able units are really no dif­fer­ent, he argues, as they are scat­tered through­out the build­ing and have the same doors, fin­ishes and square footage as the rest of the units.

“As a strat­egy for afford­able hous­ing, I think it is actu­ally much bet­ter to dis­trib­ute a few units in every build­ing as opposed to col­lect­ing 200 units of afford­able hous­ing and putting them all in one build­ing,” he adds.

Encour­ag­ing afford­able rental and own­er­ship units in con­do­minium devel­op­ments will pre­vent down­town Toronto from becom­ing a “ver­ti­cal sub­urb,” says Vaughan.

“We need a mix – from the per­son who works at the cor­ner store in the base of the con­do­minium to the per­son who cleans the office across the street,” he says. “They all deserve the oppor­tu­nity to walk to work just like every­body else in the neighbourhood.”

Artscape led the way in 2007 in response to the loss of afford­able live-work space for cash-strapped artists in the rapidly gen­tri­fy­ing West Queen West area.

It part­nered with devel­oper Urban­corp and com­mu­nity group Active 18 to include afford­able own­er­ship and rental units for artists in a tra­di­tional con­do­minium complex.

Artscape Tri­an­gle Lofts, which opened in 2011 and occu­pies the first three floors of the 18-storey West­side Gallery Lofts con­do­minium devel­op­ment near Queen St. W. and Dover­court, was a pio­neer, notes Sean Gadon, the city’s man­ager of hous­ing development.

Gadon helped the project secure city ben­e­fits, such as prop­erty tax and devel­op­ment charge exemp­tions for those units, which are part of tra­di­tional afford­able hous­ing deals. It allowed Artscape to offer 48 below-market own­er­ship units and 20 afford­able apart­ments as well as gallery and café space for the artists. To keep costs down, the artists don’t share Westside’s pool or other ameni­ties and use a sep­a­rate entrance and lobby.

Actor Jane Luk still can’t believe she scooped an afford­able apart­ment at Tri­an­gle Lofts.

A ten­ant since the build­ing opened, Luk pays about $790 a month for her 600-square-foot apart­ment on the third floor – con­sid­er­ably less than the $1,009 monthly aver­age for a one-bedroom apart­ment in Toronto. The city defines rents as “afford­able” if they are at least 20% lower than the aver­age for a given unit.

Com­ment: Say what? The aver­age rent for a 1-bedroom is closer to $1,600!

Luk had been liv­ing on friends’ sofas due to money woes before she moved in.

“I hon­estly thought I would have to move into my par­ents’ base­ment,” said the 40-something full-time actor, writer, pro­ducer and improviser.

“I just feel so relieved that I got in,” she says out­side the condo’s brightly painted lobby over the clam­our of con­struc­tion crews work­ing on condo tow­ers to the east and north of her build­ing. “It’s the only way I could live in the city and be where my work is.”

Although Luk says Artscape units with their exposed ceil­ing pipes and con­crete walls, floors and pil­lars are “pretty bare bones,” the secu­rity of an afford­able home and the sup­port of fel­low artists nearby allows her to focus her ener­gies on her art.

Since Artscape, Gadon has worked with devel­op­ers and non-profits to secure another dozen apart­ments and two dozen own­er­ship units for low-income peo­ple. The strat­egy is begin­ning to offer the pos­si­bil­ity of mixed neigh­bour­hoods in Toronto’s grow­ing ver­ti­cal city.

But the num­bers are still small. By com­par­i­son, about 285 afford­able apart­ments in rental build­ings are under con­struc­tion or in the plan­ning pipeline.

Coun­cil­lors Vaughan, Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Cen­tre–Rosedale) and Ana Bailao (Ward 18, Dav­en­port) who chairs the city’s afford­able hous­ing com­mit­tee, have been cham­pi­ons on the polit­i­cal side.

Together, they have been using Sec­tion 37 of the city’s Offi­cial Plan – which allows munic­i­pal­i­ties to grant devel­op­ers increased height and den­sity in return for pub­lic ben­e­fits such as pub­lic art, parks and day­cares – to squeeze afford­able units into high­rise con­do­minium towers.

Toronto chief plan­ner Jen­nifer Keesmaat says it is time to make these “one-off” deals explic­itly part of the city’s afford­able hous­ing tool-box.

Pro­posed changes would add afford­able rental units in con­do­mini­ums owned and oper­ated by non-profit hous­ing providers and afford­able home own­er­ship, built by non-profit char­i­ties, to the list of eli­gi­ble Sec­tion 37 benefits.

“It sends a very clear mes­sage that this is some­thing that is desired,” Keesmaat says. “So instead of stum­bling through this on a case-by-case basis and essen­tially secur­ing afford­able hous­ing sim­ply by will and might, we instead have some more clar­ity on how it might work when we are going to do it.”

Across the province, Rich­mond Hill is the only other munic­i­pal­ity believed to be using con­do­minium devel­op­ment to add des­per­ately needed hous­ing for low-income peo­ple. It recently secured seven afford­able rental units in three condo devel­op­ments.

In Toronto, devel­oper Great Gulf began nego­ti­a­tions in 2008 with the city to donate four con­dos to the Kehilla Afford­able Hous­ing Program.

The non-profit hous­ing provider serv­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­nity was the first to forge a deal with a devel­oper to acquire condo units, for the nom­i­nal cost of $10 each.

Rents – rang­ing from just under $700 for two bach­e­lor units, to between $700 and $900 for one-bedroom and two-bedroom apart­ments – cover condo fees, main­te­nance and admin­is­tra­tion costs.

“Will it be repeated? I would hope so,” said Kehilla’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nancy Singer.

But she wor­ries the city is jump­ing on this con­cept 10 years too late.

“If we had done this when 100,000 (condo) units were being built and if 1% were devel­oped like this, we would have had thou­sands of units of truly afford­able hous­ing at no cost to any­body,” she says.

“But you can’t look back­wards, you look for­ward. The oppor­tu­nity is still there.”

Other afford­able hous­ing in con­do­mini­ums since 2011:

The Bisha Hotel and Res­i­dences, 56 Blue Jays Way
Life­time Devel­op­ments includes a floor of rent-controlled apart­ments for hotel work­ers in its 41-storey hotel-condo project under con­struc­tion on the old Sec­ond City site. It will include five three-bedroom units for fam­i­lies and two stu­dio apart­ments for sin­gles. Expected occu­pancy: 2016

Pace, 155 Dun­das St. E., at Sher­bourne St.
Artscape is work­ing with devel­oper Great Gulf to include 13 below-market own­er­ship units and one rental apart­ment for artists in the 46-storey tower. Expected occu­pancy: 2015

Ten York, at Har­bour St.
The 62-storey tower being devel­oped by Tridel will include 12 afford­able units man­aged as co-ops by the Co-op Hous­ing Fed­er­a­tion of Toronto. Expected occu­pancy: 2016

210 Sim­coe St., north of Queen St.
Dia­mond Corp.’s 25-storey build­ing near the Ontario Col­lege of Art includes four afford­able own­er­ship and one afford­able rental unit owned and man­aged by Artscape for artists. Expected occu­pancy: Sum­mer 2015

159 Welles­ley St. E., at Sher­bourne St.
Habi­tat for Human­ity is work­ing with Dia­mond Corp. to secure eight below-market own­er­ship units for fam­i­lies in the 35-storey build­ing. Expected occu­pancy: to be determined

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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