{"id":58327,"date":"2018-01-17T01:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T06:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=58327"},"modified":"2018-01-17T13:06:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T18:06:32","slug":"lorinc-wynnes-liberals-gut-affordable-housing-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2018\/01\/17\/lorinc-wynnes-liberals-gut-affordable-housing-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Wynne’s Liberals gut their own affordable housing policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember when inclusionary zoning was going to solve Toronto\u2019s affordable housing crisis, or at least take a big step towards ameliorating it?<\/p>\n

Let’s travel back in time to that shining moment in the spring of 2016,<\/a> when Kathleen Wynne\u2019s Liberals announced they\u2019d be introducing legislation that would steadily build up the city\u2019s depleted affordable housing stock.<\/p>\n

How? Simple: by requiring developers to set aside a specified proportion of the units in each new condo building. These units could be affordable rentals owned and operated by a non-profit housing agency or less expensive condos.<\/p>\n

The overarching principle is that inclusionary legislation [IZ], which has been enacted in hundreds of cities in the U.S., levels the economic playing field \u2014 all developers would have to submit, so none would be disadvantaged \u2014 and transforms the creation of new affordable units into a routine part of the development approvals process.<\/p>\n

While IZ doesn’t solve all aspects of the affordability crisis, housing advocates of all flavours applauded.<\/p>\n

Now fast forward to the week before Christmas, when the province very quietly published proposed regulations [download the PDF<\/a>] to accompany the legislation, which received royal assent<\/a> in late 2016.<\/p>\n

The skinny? Turns out Wynne\u2019s Liberals \u2014 who have been dutifully shimmying over to the progressive end of the political spectrum as the spring election approaches \u2014 pretty much gutted their ostensibly progressive housing policy, presumably at the behest of the development industry\u2019s lobbyists.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they\u2019ve come up with is so cautious and timid that it will just not produce affordable housing,\u201d observes IZ expert Richard Drdla, a Toronto housing consultant who monitors<\/a> developments in this arena. The new regs render the law \u201ca waste of time,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t have done much worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

According an analysis Drdla has prepared, and which will be published later this week on his website, there are several key failings with the proposed regs:<\/p>\n

Set-asides<\/h3>\n

The regulations proposed that up to 5% of the number of apartments or gross area of any new building with more than 20 units can be set aside as affordable. That proportion rises to 10% in the vicinity of rapid transit stations.<\/p>\n

The City of Toronto, in its submission last year [download PDF<\/a>] to the province, had recommended a minimum of 10%. Indeed, when the province began talking about IZ, former chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat told The Toronto Star<\/a>: \u201cIf the city required 10% of new units to be affordable in developments with over 300 units . . . we would have secured 12,000 affordable housing units.\u201d As of spring, 2016, only 3,700 affordable units had been built in Toronto using bits and pieces of federal, provincial and municipal funding.<\/p>\n

According to city officials, there were 312,503 apartments (including rentals) in buildings over 20 units that have either been built or were in the approvals pipeline between 2012 and Q2 2017. A 10% set-aside would have likely yielded well over 20,000 affordable units, whereas the proposed regs likely reduces that figure by almost half.<\/p>\n

Location<\/h3>\n

This is a “pox on both their houses” item. When done well, IZ should apply everywhere in order to promote mixed income communities in all urban neighbourhoods. But the proposed regulations adds lots of weasel words on this matter, giving municipalities the latitude to rig their official plans with provisions that allow the City to dictate that only certain areas be subject to IZ bylaws. The wonderfully passively constructed wording is telling: municipalities, the proposed rules say, can \u201cidentify locations and areas in the municipality that may be appropriate for inclusionary zoning by-laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questions abound: Why would one community be \u201cappropriate\u201d for IZ zoning and another not? And how much influence will local councillors, development lobbyists and homeowners groups have in making such determinations? If I had to bet, I\u2019d predict this NIMBY-prone provision is the one that ensures we\u2019ll see barely any development subject to these inclusionary zoning laws.<\/p>\n

Compensation<\/h3>\n

Get this: with these proposed rules, the City actually has to bribe <\/em>developers to obey the law. I know, I know: maybe that\u2019s a bit harsh, but the fact is that under the misleading heading of \u201cmeasures and incentives,\u201d the regs offer up a formula specifying how municipalities must make \u201cfinancial contributions\u201d to builders operating in an IZ area, in the form of reduced parking requirements or waivers on \u201call or part\u201d of the various applicable development levies and fees. (The regs preclude the City from granting extra density as a compensatory mechanism.)<\/p>\n

Given that the City is pressed at the best of times to fund its affordable housing programs, the payment provision looks to me like another show-stopper. And one without precedent, Drdla adds. In over 500 jurisdictions in the U.S. that have adopted IZ, none involve municipalities paying builders subject to such laws.<\/p>\n

Parkdale-High Park councillor Gord Perks says he calculated how much affordable housing the Liberals\u2019 IZ provisions would create in a pair of high-rise projects at King and Dufferin that recently won council approval. He reckoned the $1.9 million for non-profit housing he could secure through a Section 37 deal would exceed what this version of the IZ laws would have yielded. (The City had already complained<\/a> to Queen\u2019s Park about how the IZ law forced it to choose between securing affordable housing or negotiating funds for community benefits.)<\/p>\n

Affordable for How Long?<\/h3>\n

Anyone who\u2019s been paying attention to Toronto\u2019s affordable housing crisis knows that the thousands of co-op units created in the 1960s and 1970s under federal mortgage subsidy programs faced existential threats in recent years as those backstops expired. The risk facing co-op tenants \u2014 who live in genuinely affordable housing generally insulated from rent and real estate spikes \u2014 is that the end of the subsidy meant that rents would quickly rise to market levels.<\/p>\n

The federal Liberals, in their recent national housing policy announcement, promised to protect those co-ops by extending the agreements. But the bigger point is that when governments create affordable housing, it should remain affordable. Temporarily affordable is merely putting the pain off for another day.<\/p>\n

The province\u2019s regs, however, make precisely this mistake, limiting the monitored affordability period to no more than 30 years. After that, the restrictions on resale price will be lifted, meaning these apartments will just slip back into the regular housing market. Bottom line: the relief is temporary (although there\u2019s no concomitant expectation that the builders also return the funds they collected from the city at the front end). And so we\u2019re back to square one.<\/p>\n

What next? At the planning and growth management meeting earlier this week, the committee voted to call a special meeting by the end of the month so the City can respond to Queen\u2019s Park before the consultation period expires on February 1. \u201cThis is just the beginning of the fight,\u201d Drdla says.<\/p>\n

For the record, I asked the mayor\u2019s office if John Tory had any position on these proposed regulations, which have been floating around for a month. Given the shelter bed crisis that blew up over Christmas and New Year\u2019s because of Tory\u2019s failure to support a proactive emergency plan to open the armories, you\u2019d think the mayor would have learned a hard lesson about the need to anticipate future housing crises.<\/p>\n

Hard to say. My question was shunted off to deputy mayor Ana Bailao.<\/p>\n

photo by Mack Male<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember when inclusionary zoning was going to solve Toronto\u2019s affordable housing crisis, or at least take a big step towards ameliorating it? Let’s travel back in time to that shining moment in the spring of 2016, when Kathleen Wynne\u2019s Liberals announced they\u2019d be introducing legislation that would steadily build up the city\u2019s depleted affordable housingContinue reading “LORINC: Wynne’s Liberals gut their own affordable housing policy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":58339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housing","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Wynne's Liberals gut their own affordable housing policy - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2018\/01\/17\/lorinc-wynnes-liberals-gut-affordable-housing-policy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Wynne's Liberals gut their own affordable housing policy - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Remember when inclusionary zoning was going to solve Toronto\u2019s affordable housing crisis, or at least take a big step towards ameliorating it? 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