From the Globe and Mail:
Toronto City Council had a chance this week to take a clear, practical step toward solving its housing crisis.
Surprise: It did not. Instead, the city’s leaders cowered before the most reactionary elements in local politics and seemed ready to waste $60-million in the process.
With Thursday’s vote, council had to decide whether to legalize “sixplexes” – apartment buildings of up to six units – across the city. Suburban councillors responded by claiming that this, in effect, would destroy Toronto.
There was real money on the line. Toronto had promised to legalize six-unit buildings when it accepted $471-million from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund in 2023. This year, then-housing-minister Nathaniel Erskine-Smith confirmed that Ottawa expected the city to hold up its end of the bargain, and warned that about $60-million could be withheld.
In the end, council passed a compromise motion that may or may not pass muster with Ottawa. The new, looser rules apply in just nine wards, including old Toronto, East York and the Scarborough North ward of Councillor Jamaal Myers. The remaining two-thirds of the city will remain safe from an imagined influx of tenants.
This weak policy was years in the making. For decades, Toronto – like most North American cities – effectively banned new apartments across most of its low-rise areas. In 2020, the planning department assembled a young, reform-minded team to begin loosening those restrictions. The resulting “Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods” policy was, at least in theory, a step toward inclusion.
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