Chow proposes pilot project for seniors’ community housing
Olivia Chow took the fight for mayor to the place where many of Mayor Rob Ford’s supporters live, with a plan to build more affordable housing and ultimately decentralize the sprawling Toronto Community Housing Corporation.
Olivia Chow took the fight for mayor to the place where many of Mayor Rob Ford’s supporters live, with a plan to build more affordable housing and ultimately decentralize the sprawling Toronto Community Housing Corporation.
The plan, delivered outside Toronto City Hall the morning of July 4, would see a pilot project set up allowing specialized seniors housing be managed by its own stakeholder-governed Senior’s Community Public Housing Corporation.
"It will still belong to the city but it will still be managed by stakeholders, tenants and families," said Chow.
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If it works, Chow said she’d expand the program to other TCHC properties.
As well, Chow said she’d create incentives to target 20 per cent of new residential towers for affordable housing, with a target of creating 15,000 new affordable rental units over the next four years.
Chow said she’d encourage it by cutting red tape and deferring development charges on those units for a decade, and the deferral could be renewed if the units remained affordable.
Chow said she believed the move wouldn’t impact the city’s ability to create the infrastructure necessary to support the new buildings.
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"The rest of the units of these buildings will be paying development charges, and they will be paying a number of taxes to the City of Toronto," she said. "We’re just saying we want to encourage developers to put some of the units there and make it affordable."
Howie Paskowitz from the Medallion Group was on hand at the announcement. Medallion is building 186 affordable units in the Finch Avenue/Weston Road neighbourhood, and is ultimately hoping to add 360 units to the site.
He said the development charge deferral could help.
"I think in this business it’s time and it’s money," he said. "Speeding up the process and finding ways of deferring development charges could match with our scheme. If you don’t find ways to encourage this with time and money, I don’t think it’s going to happen. There’s not a lot of others out there like us willing to make the long term commitment."
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