The Fight for Our Homes

Like many large urban areas Toronto is in the midst of a housing crisis. The last twenty years have witnessed a massive building boom. As a consequence, the downtown core where land is at a premium, and property values have soared, Toronto, Canada’s largest city has become a very expensive place to live in. In contrast, what would be considered affordable and adequate housing for lower income people must compete with the priorities of real-estate developers and city planners.

Inglewood Arms is a rooming house on the edges of Regent Park that is being threatened with closure by the Minto Group, a large developer. This has implications for other rooming houses and developments, including some in the riding of Regent Park.

In the riding of Toronto Centre, where Regent Park, Moss Park, St Jamestown, and Cabbage Town are located, it is estimated that this area has the highest proportion of low-income people, the largest number of number shelters, drop-ins, and other social service agencies. Ten years ago when the revitalization of Regent Park began, it paved the way for a re-visioning of what city planning could do to ameliorate the social problems that had become embedded in that part of the city. Inglewood Arms is a rooming house on the edges of Regent Park that is being threatened with closure by the Minto Group, a large developer. This has implications for other rooming houses and developments, including some in the riding of Regent Park.

The revitalization also provided an opportunity for the developers of commercial housing (rental apartments and condominiums) to gain a foothold in what had previously been (60 acres of prime downtown real-estate) a singularly social housing complex. Regent Park is now a place where people what to move to, and there are more new buildings going up all the time. Unfortunately, these new buildings offer only market rate units. And so, while demand for new housing appears robust, it is primarily driven by a for- profit model, and is slowly displacing those who can no longer afford to live in this area. An appreciation of the need for affordable housing can be clearly demonstrated in the number of rooming houses in the riding of Toronto Centre, as of 09/01/2019 there were over 90 rooming houses in this area.

Across the spectrum of rental housing, rooming houses (which offer affordable living to a wide variety of people) have historically not received the same sort of protections as other forms of housing. Part and parcel of this problem rests on the fact that in some parts of the city rooming houses are illegal, while in other parts of the city they are better integrated performing a vital role in make-up of that community. A rooming house can be defined as a building that offers rental units; they may have a kitchen or a bathroom, but not both. And while the City of Toronto’s Housing Charter does state that: “All residents should be able to live in their neighbourhood of choice without discrimination,” a consistent approach to licensing, regulation and management has evaded most municipalities.

In the aftermath of these failings, what is left is a situation in which the tenants of rooming houses sometimes face living conditions that are unsafe and do not have the legal means to address them. At the Inglewood Arms a rooming house in Toronto tenants are concerned that their landlord, Minto Communities Canada, who is filing to have the property rezoned, is planning to tear down their build and put up 36-story condominium.

In June 2019, the City of Toronto adopted a policy known as the Official Planning Amendment (OPA) 453. The Amendment protects evicted rooming house residents by compelling developers to replace the lost rooming house units at the same rents that the tenants were paying before. The Minot group argues that their applications for development of the Inglewood Arms predates the Official Planning Amendment (OPA) 453, and therefore is not subject to the replacement of rooming house units.

The Minto Group is also advocating for the elimination of the Official Planning Amendment (OPA) 453. If they are successful, Minto would not have to extend the same protection to rooming house tenants as they would to regular tenants of any other residential unit.

While the case of the Inglewood Arms highlights the dilemmas faced by low-income people in the area, it also brings into perspective the need for a more comprehensive and expansive housing strategy, one that goes beyond the present models that isolate those who can live in, say, Regent Park, and those who cannot.

Crucial to the tenants at the Inglewood Arms, is that they do not wish to prevent the Minto Group from developing the site, but that they be afforded the right to return to the new development once it is completed and to resume “their lives in the neighbour of their choice without discrimination.”

by

Dimitrije Martinovic

Dimitrije is the Local Journalism Initiative journalist with the Focus Media Arts Centre.