CONSIDERING INTERSECTING IDENTITIES

5.0 RECOMMENDATIONS / ACTIONS

Action 1: Alter zoning within the City of Toronto’s Residential Detached (RD) zone to increase affordability and access to desired neighbourhoods

Toronto is in an affordability crisis. At 19.1% of households, Toronto has the highest rate of households in any Canadian city in core housing need and cannot afford their homes (ONPHA, 2018). In 2019, Toronto identified that 23% of renter households in the city pay more than 50% of their income on housing, which has grown by 21% since 2009 while homeowners paying more than 50% of their income has grown by 12% (City of Toronto, 2019). As income polarization becomes indisputable and a substantial portion of the middle class continues to decrease due to lack of affordability, there will be a growing number of low-income households putting increased pressure on social, subsidized & affordable housing in the City. Further, according to The Canadian Center for Economic Analysis and the Canadian Urban Institute (2019), inability to afford housing is one of the top three reported causes of homelessness in Toronto.

The article (CUI, 2019) suggests that rather than direct intervention, governments should be using resources to encourage increased supply and access to supply in the housing market.The City of Toronto has the ability to improve affordability in the city by implementing planning and policy support that can effectively drive an increase in private market supply. In the book Housing Divided, Burda (2019) claims that lack of housing affordability is more than just a supply problem, affordability involves the right supply in the right locations. The stringent zoning of Residential Detached neighbourhoods restricts housing development, limiting the ability to produce housing supply across a large portion of the city which contributes to higher housing prices. This makes such neighbourhoods inaccessible to TQIA2S+ individuals who desire to live there, but are unable to due to the lack of affordability and housing typologies to meet their needs. Toronto’s high rise buildings located only in precisely defined areas of the city can be attributed to this; increasing supply in the city is occurring but zoning limits it to certain areas and therefore is not increasing at the rate needed to meet the demand. When analyzing the types of supply being implemented within the city in tandem with the locations that development is occurring, it becomes clear that effectively increasing supply in Toronto involves reconsidering Toronto’s zoning and policy landscape.

Consider Burda’s (2019) idea that affordability relies on the right supply in the right locations. An effective way of expanding supply as well as density, the implementation of missing middle/multi family housing types is a feasible supply-based method of increasing affordability in the city but there is currently no land zoned to facilitate this building. Residential detached neighborhoods have the lowest housing density in the city and yet hold strong potential for medium-density housing growth. In addition, residential detached neighbourhoods such as Dovercourt Village - Little Portugal and Kensington Market - Trinity Bellwoods seem to be the locations in which queer individuals want to live, primarily in lower rise housing. Increasing density in these areas aids in improving affordability and provides the opportunity to produce for individuals to live within their desired housing type, and supports the queer community as they desire to live. Therefore, altering the Zoning By-Law for residential detached and semi-detached neighborhoods to include a wider range of medium-density housing typologies opens various opportunities for housing types and locations.

Action 2: Reconsider the housing typologies and unit types being implemented in the city in order to expand their inclusivity and potential use

In July of 2020, the City of Toronto published a report titled Expanding Housing Options in Neighborhoods which considered increasing density through allowing medium-density housing typologies in the Yellowbelt. Figure 5 identifies the missing middle housing options being considered. Comparable to the size of residential-detached homes, the identified “missing middle” typologies will increase density while conforming to existing neighborhood housing types. In addition to the proposed housing typologies, expanding housing options within neighbourhoods provides the opportunity to produce mid-size housing typologies which meets the needs of queer kinship and family formation, and others beyond the current ‘nuclear family’ standard. This may include purpose built housing intended to be shared such as cohousing or housing built to encourage cohabitation. In addition, increasing the number of bedrooms within shared apartments. Appropriately increasing permissions within the Yellowbelt to support the redevelopment of lots into mid-size alternative housing, such as triplexes, fourplexes and stacked townhomes in addition to the housing typologies which contribute to queer kinship structures