🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Ana Bailão’s Plan to Support Renters Across the City

🔗 LINK: anabailao.ca/latest-new…

🔧 DOABLE? Yes.

💰 COSTED? Yes.

✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3 out of five)

In the 2021 census, renter households accounted for 48% of Toronto, up from 47% in the 2016 census. The trend suggests the city is on a path to the majority being renters.

So it sure is nice to see some mayoral campaigns devoting policy announcements to renters, who have generally gotten a pretty raw deal over the last few years, between rising rents, dwindling vacancy rates, and renovictions.

The most notable part of Bailão’s renter plan, announced yesterday, is this: “Guarantee that 20% of all new homes built – a minimum of 57,000 homes – are purpose-built rental.”

You don’t see a lot of guarantees in politics, and for good reason. It’s hard to guarantee anything, especially at the municipal level where policy-makers are very much at the mercy of provincial mood swings.

It’s not clear to me from this announcement how Bailão intends to enforce this target, but it may not matter. According to the City’s Development Pipeline, about 16% of the total proposed residential units in the city are purpose-built rentals — a total of 113,005 units. Some of those almost certainly won’t get built as proposed, but the numbers are close enough to Bailão’s guarantee that it’s probably a relatively safe guarantee.

But, well, it also appears likely that this guarantee would happen regardless of whether Bailão becomes mayor, which kind of takes some of the oomph out of the promise.

Bailão also pledges to “Triple the rent bank to $15 million annually to help renters keep their homes” and to “Invest $10 million to establish a specialized Anti-Displacement and Evictions Prevention Unit with 30 staff within Municipal Licensing & Standards.”

Both good suggestions, and let’s give Bailão credit here for identifying a funding source. She says these program increases will be funded via the City Building Fund. The CBF has, to date, been earmarked exclusively for capital projects, so directing pieces of it toward ongoing operating programs to prevent evictions and provide rental support is a bit of a crossing-the-Rubicon move, but I think it’s justifiable.

Another bit of her proposal that could be impactful is to “Temporarily freeze new proposals that would demolish rental apartment buildings while undertaking a comprehensive city-wide review to provide greater predictability for renters and builders.” This would seem to be a response to projects like 25 St Mary Street, where a 60s-era apartment building was demolished to make way for a new development. Rental replacement is part of the plan, and existing tenants got compensation for their temporary displacement, but that was cold comfort for people literally getting kicked out of their homes to make way for the new development.

I’m not sure a “temporary freeze” and a “city-wide review” would amount to much, but it is true that these kinds of rental redevelopments are currently attractive to developers because new infill projects are very challenging. Reducing the red tape and timelines related to those developments could help. (Bailão also promises to protect the City’s rental replacement policy against provincial meddling, which is important.)

One piece I’d like to see in plans like this is a plan to reinvest in the Tower Renewal program. Two-thirds of Toronto’s purpose-built rental stock was built between 1960 and 1979. It’s old and getting older. Any alternative to a demolish-and-replace scenario needs to include a plan to keep old buildings safe and make sure they remain decent places to live.

PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.