rfmcdonald | [URBAN NOTE] "When Toronto’s “Affordable Housing” Isn’t Affordable" (Reply)

In Torontoist, Tamara Yelland describes how the definition of "affordable housing" in Toronto is, practically speaking, irrelevant to the relatively poor people the definition is for.

“Affordable housing” is both a common-sense concept and a policy term. The accepted benchmark in policy is that someone spending no more than 30 per cent of their household income on everything related to housing: rent or mortgage, insurance, utilities. Initiatives like Toronto’s Open Door program and the federal-provincial Investment in Affordable Housing (IAH) seek to encourage private developers and non-profits to rent spaces either at or slightly below the average cost of what a similar unit goes for in the commercial market (which is referred to as average market rent, or AMR), thus making it possible for people with low incomes to have a place to live while also having money for the other necessities in their lives.

What’s lost in using this phrase is that designated “affordable housing” often, in fact, is not.

Using the metric mentioned above, the Wellesley Institute calculated in 2014 that the “affordable housing wage” for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto was $41,400. Yet, the report went on, someone earning the then-newly announced minimum wage of $11 per hour and working 40 hours each week—already an uncertain scenario—would earn just $22,800. The minimum wage has since gone up to $11.40, allowing workers to bring home a grand total of $23,712. In other words, making rent and living comfortably is unlikely for everyone earning anything near minimum wage and working full time. For the many part-time workers in the city, it’s even further out of reach.

But many apartments built under affordable housing programs are rented either at this mark or just below. The City of Toronto’s Open Door program, which offers private developers tax breaks in exchange for building residential properties “where at least 20 per cent of the residential gross floor area is affordable,” mandates that those affordable units be rented to tenants at or below market value. By the program’s own figuring, the people who can afford market-value rents are professionals like dental assistants and social service workers.