Scarce and precarious. Toronto’s rental situation constitutes a state of emergency for frontline housing workers. But policy researcher Jeremy Withers says he is more angry than discouraged. A housing policy researcher, who is working on his PhD, Withers said other cities are doing a better job of creating affordable homes using policies like inclusionary zoning and non-profit ownership of buildings that would otherwise be bought up by predatory landlords.He helped organize a conference Saturday by the University of Toronto School of Cities designed to set the stage around the city’s next-decade housing policy called HousingTO 2020-2030, an action plan being formulated this year. The event was also about mobilizing activism, he said. It’s “an important moment” at the beginning of a new term of city council, for housing activists to grab the attention of new councillors and others, who may not be on board with some potentially beneficial policies.The conference called “Affordable Housing Lessons for a New Decade of Housing Policy in Toronto” drew about 200 housing workers, activists, policy-makers and academics. Based on a show of hands, more than half of the participants were struggling to afford housing or worried about eviction themselves.“Because so many people are locked out of home ownership there’s a huge influx of affluent renters and yet there’s no new stock of rental being built,” Withers said. “We’re hearing the term ‘housing crisis’ a lot right now because these issues are suddenly affecting middle income renters — middle income people who felt entitled to home ownership.”But the housing crisis isn’t new for many people being squeezed hardest now, he said.“People on the low-income spectrum, racialized communities, Indigenous communities, they have been experiencing this crisis for many decades, centuries. When we target so much of our reso ...
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