Feds give Peel $276M for housing, shelters
The federal government says it will give $276 million to support the development of affordable housing units and shelter beds in Peel over the next eight years, a significant injection of funding for the region’s master housing plan.
Families, Children and Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen made the funding announcement Friday in Brampton.
The money will come through the National Housing Co-Investment Fund, and along with support from the province and regional council, is aimed at the development of 2,240 affordable rental units and shelter beds across sites owned by the region.
Peel’s regional council last summer endorsed a housing master plan — the keystone of its 10-year housing and homelessness plan, which began in 2018 — laying out the development of 5,700 affordable rental and emergency units over 15 years on regional surplus land.
Under that plan, 5,364 rental units, 226 supportive housing units and 60 emergency beds were to be developed by 2034.
But Regional Chair Nando Iannicca acknowledged this fall that it couldn’t happen without “significant” funding from Ottawa and Queen’s Park.
As of late November, the region said that 965 affordable housing units were in development.
According to Hussen’s office, the funding announced Friday is separate from previous affordable housing announcements in Peel Region, including a one last week that promised $23.5 million in federal and provincial money for two specific housing developments.
A breakdown of the individual projects that Friday’s funding will support was not immediately available.
Peel, like many other jurisdictions, has seen its affordable housing shortage brought into sharp relief by the pandemic.
Experts have pointed out that a shortage in affordable housing stock can lead to overcrowding, with underhoused populations facing steeper challenges if they needed to isolate or physically distance to curb the virus’ spread.
“If we want to protect our communities, we need urgently to increase access to affordable, healthy housing,” Dr. Kwame McKenzie, CEO of the Wellesley Institute, urged last week, while pointing out that racialized and low-income households are more likely to be underhoused.
Tenant advocates and legal experts have warned that homelessness could rise in the months ahead, due to the economic turmoil of pandemic-related lockdowns, coupled with a recent change to provincial laws for tenants and landlords and the end of an eviction moratorium in Ontario.
Between March 17 and July 19,
Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board processed 6,083 applications to evict tenants for not paying their rent. As of Thursday, Tribunals Ontario said those cases hadn’t yet been scheduled for hearings.
The news release Friday noted that Peel has had one of the highest growth rates in the Greater Toronto Area over the past two decades. From 2011 to 2016, Peel’s population went up 6.5 per cent. At the same time, Peel’s housing and homelessness plan notes that their number of low-income households grew by eight per cent.
Peel’s vacancy rate for market rental housing, according to Friday’s release, is just 1.2 per cent. A healthy rate, according to the region’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan, would be three per cent.