[URBAN NOTE] On the future of renting in Toronto

[rfmcdonald]

Denise Balkissoon's article in The Globe and Mail, "The renting gap: Is Toronto in the midst of a rental renaissance – or is it just more of the same?" is not very hopeful.

The rental sector is desperate for square footage – the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation puts Toronto’s vacancy rate at 1.6 per cent – so every unit is welcome. Yet even as 32,726 new condos have gone on the rental market in the past half-decade, tenants continue to struggle with affordability, unit size and family-friendliness, plus trickier issues such as security of tenure and landlord-tenant relationships. Once the first rush of gladness about new space wears off, many landlords, tenants and market watchers are left frustrated at a piecemeal approach that isn’t necessarily filling the gaps that exist.

Rental properties, when they are built to meet all of a prospective tenant’s needs, attract a range of incomes and living circumstances that elevate the diversity of a neighbourhood. “I think the enlightened development community that get it, they see integration as an important public benefit,” says Sean Gadon. As director of the City of Toronto’s Affordable Housing Office, his job often requires much liaising between other public agencies and developers to find innovative means of adding affordable housing to new construction. With the current state of the rental market, Mr. Gadon has seen that “key workers in the economy are squeezed out of access to housing.”

Private developers have 12 tower projects designed specifically for rental currently under way, but most of them are clustered along the city’s wealthy north-south axis. A few carefully negotiated city-led partnerships between developers and non-profit organizations are bearing fruit, but not nearly as much as is needed.

Gillespie, whose company has almost 4,000 new rental units under way across Canada, knows that his brand-new complex in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood won’t be accessible to all. He believes the Honest Ed’s project will add to “the housing continuum,” saying that as new buildings go up, “older housing becomes more affordable.”

Geordie Dent, executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenant Associations doesn’t agree the trickle-down effect will materialize. He points out that despite all of the new individual condo rentals that have come online, the FMTA still gets thousands of calls a year from people who can’t find affordable places to live.