Why won’t Ford pay for more affordable housing?
Big number: Two per cent, the share of city hall’s preliminary $403-million, 10-year capital plan for affordable housing funded by the provincial government. The city is paying for 46 per cent, while the federal government is in for 52 per cent.
Ever since the demolition equipment rolled up to the heritage buildings at the provincially owned Dominion Wheel and Foundry site in downtown Toronto’s Canary District, the provincial government has been singing the same tune. This needs to happen, reps for Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark say, because we need more affordable housing.
Affordable housing is the reason offered when asked why this work is happening during a stay-at-home order. It’s the explanation for why there wasn’t any kind of community meeting, or a publicly unveiled plan, prior to walls coming down.
And it was their explanation for why crews seemed to be working at speed not always seen on construction sites — at least until the provincial government agreed to pause work until Wednesday after intense community backlash and the filing of a court injunction.
And, look, I agree with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns that this city needs more affordable housing. But I have some issues with the story that this hasty demolition of heritage is really about affordable housing.
For one thing, there’s the lack of specifics. If Clark and Premier Doug Ford had a great plan for building lots of affordable housing on this site, you’d think they’d be eager to show it off.
But city hall’s planning department was kept in the dark, as was the public. Some details that have now emerged suggest the site will see three towers, with only the smallest tower dedicated to affordable housing. So affordable housing can’t be the whole reason for this demolition — at best, it accounts for a third of it.
And then there’s the track record of the Ford government on affordable housing. This government keeps saying affordable housing is their priority, but their money is not where their mouth is.
I’ve been digging through budget documents at city hall over the last couple of weeks, and on housing the provincial government is conspicuous by its absence. Toronto’s Housing Secretariat, for example, has $403 million in its 10-year capital plan to build a bunch of affordable housing units. Of that, federal funding amounts to 52 per cent and municipal funding amounts to 46 per cent. The provincial government? Just two per cent.
Queen’s Park has also been slow to commit dollars to Mayor John Tory’s $25.6billion housing plan, which targets the creation of 40,000 new affordable homes by 2030. Its costs will be worked into the budget in coming years. As of last update, the city has earmarked about $5.5 billion, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s National Housing Strategy has led to commitments for about $1.5 billion.
The province is in for just $148 million.
There’s more. Take a look at Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s budget to repair its portfolio of 58,500 homes, housing 110,000 people. Any serious affordable housing plan has to include cash for fixing up the existing stock of subsidized housing. But of the $2.7 billion TCHC will spend between now and 2030 on building repair, the province is committed to just $4.1 million, while the city and the federal government are kicking in more than a billion dollars each. The province’s share is around 0.15 per cent.
None of this fiscal track record is consistent with a government that is just so darn motivated by affordable housing they can’t let heritage buildings stand in the way.
Instead, the Ford government’s affordable housing strategy has been typified by stuff like their increased use of minister’s zoning orders, or MZOs, that allow developments to skip parts of the planning process. Some of them, like the MZOs the city used to fast-track modular housing developments, have been useful. Many of them, though — like the one issued for the foundry site — have a more vague connection to actually achieving more affordable housing.
And that’s the problem. If the Ford government has an affordable housing strategy, stop being vague and show us the plan — and show us the money. So far, most of what we’ve seen are secret plans and demolition equipment. They know how to break stuff. I’m not sure they know how to build.