Toronto

Toronto City Hall

At the 11^th Street Bridge Park, we believe that the answers are already in the community – we just need to listen. So when I was recently invited by the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing and ULI Toronto to advise the City of Toronto on anti-displacement and affordable housing strategies, I was glad to see our three day convening put local residents at the center of this work. 

Toronto is investing heavily in light rail throughout this city of nearly 3 million residents (6 million in the greater Toronto region.) The City is working with ULI Toronto to ensure local residents can benefit from this transit-oriented development and preserve and create affordable housing. I was part of a ULI Technical Assistance Program (or TAP) focused on the Jane and Finch community – a predominantly Black neighborhood in NW Toronto where a transit line will open later this year. I was honored to participate with colleagues including: Kirk Johnson, President Eco-Efficiency and TAP Chair; Mitzie Hunter, former member of the provincial parliament; Dr. Nemoy Lewis, Assistant Professor, School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University; Robert Walter-Joseph, Principal at Gladki Planning Associates; Barika X Williams, Executive Director at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development in New York City; and Agnieszka Wloch, Vice President of Development at Minto. Our task was to recommend actionable strategies to reduce displacement and preserve and create housing affordability for Black residents around the new Jane and Finch light rapid transit line that could be replicated elsewhere in the city and beyond.   

The Jane and Finch neighborhood has a rich history of community activism with a high concentration of second and third generation Black immigrants. Just like the community Building Bridges serves in Washington DC, there is a legacy of deep disinvestment and broken promises. Residents described themselves as twice and thrice displaced – first kidnapped during the trans-Atlantic slave trade four hundred years ago and then forcibly moved from a large public housing development that was not properly maintained and suffered demolition through neglect. Residents were then displaced due to the lack of affordable housing in the neighborhood and forced to move further outside the city center away from jobs and amenities. 

ULI TAP members meet with resident and community leader Shannon Holness in Jane and Finch community during resident-led tour.

We started our TAP by visiting the Jane and Finch neighborhood and meeting with bright young residents who care deeply about the future of their community. I was struck that several young people  had successfully completed graduate school degrees in urban planning to better understand the forces that were shaping their city. There was a deep passion and desire to create equitable and inclusive communities for their family and neighbors. 

We met with the City’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism unit (CABR) – an agency responsible for creating Toronto’s Action Plan to confront Anti-Black Racism and our “client” for this TAP. CABR along with City staff spent the last year working with local residents to create a Community Development Plan to be considered by City Council this June that focused on eight key areas: Access to Space and Mobility; Food Justice and Sovereignty; Community Safety & Wellbeing; Climate Action; Arts, Culture and Heritage; Inclusive Economic Opportunities; Inclusive Entrepreneurship Opportunities; and explicit anti-displacement strategies. It was interesting to see how closely aligned these topics are to the 11^th Street Bridge Park’s community driven equitable development plan.  

The next two days we met with city planning officials, developers and local non-profits to inform our goal of creating recommendations for the City. Our report included that the city proactively support workforce training programs, connect a pipeline for union jobs, provide capacity building opportunities for local residents and non-profits, invest in major civic assets as both a destination and community gathering places, provide technical assistance and funding to existing and new small businesses, and celebrate / amplify communities arts, history and culture. There was also much discussion about how to align the city’s sustainability goals with affordability. Green buildings are critical to reduce the impact of climate change but can often cost more. That creates economic challenges around providing the greatest number of affordable units. Suggestions were made to speed up the review process for green affordable housing developments and reduce the time it takes to electrify existing buildings and tie them into the power grid. The TAP recommended reducing or even waiving development costs for green affordable projects and creating a separate and distinct permit review to fast-track approvals. Exploring new sources of capital funding is key, but it is also essential to consider the long-term operations and maintenance costs to keep housing functional, livable and in good repair. 

We discussed the valuable role that Community Land Trusts can serve in both the creation and long-term stewardship of affordable housing. The Douglass Community Land Trust in Washington DC has been a helpful example of community driven ownership that bends the affordable housing cost curve in the long term and has created over 260 permanently affordable units to date. Non-profits must play a critical role in building new affordable housing and there was an appetite for increasing the capacity of these NGOs and encouraging mutually benefiting partnerships with the private sector. 

As a final recommendation, we provided the City with a list of short-term, mid-term and long-term actions to consider. Short-term suggestions included mapping land ownership in the Jane Finch neighborhood with a particular focus on government owned property where there can be greater control. We strongly recommended engaging local philanthropy to implement the community driven Jane Finch Community Development Plan and deploy effective communication strategies to drive deep stakeholder engagement in the decision-making process. Mid-term (3 – 6 months) strategies included mapping and engaging recently displaced tenants with a specific focus on the local Black population and pulling in local anchors institutions such as York University and a proposed HUB community Hub and Center for the Arts as part of this process. Municipal agencies should work on breaking down agency silos to align land use, housing, transportation and climate policies to create a common vision in coordination with the Provincial government. Finally, long-term suggestions included developing articulated policies around land use in future transportation projects, an ambitious goal that 60% of  TOD apartment units are renewed or built as affordable and creating civic investments such as public spaces, sport facilities and cultural festivals. 

Even though Toronto is 500 miles away and in a different country, the challenges and solutions were so similar to our work with the East of the River community in Washington DC. Beginning this work early, intentionally and with the community at the center can lead to greater opportunities for building inclusive cities and neighborhoods. I look forward to continuing to track future efforts as Toronto implements these strategies and in turn, learn from our neighbors to the north. Special thanks to ULI Toronto, the Terwilliger Center and my fellow TAP participants. Fabiola Yurcisin and Linda Weichel pulled together an amazing whirlwind 3-day program. It is always an honor to partner with passionate people creating equitable cities across North America.  

You can read the final ULI Toronto report here. 

ULI Terwilleger Center staff Fabiola Yurcisin & TAP Members Agnieszka Wloch, Robert Walter-Joseph, Scott Kratz, Barika X Williams, Kirk Johnson and Mitzie Hunter