Recent article
http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/articlePrint/772198
Unlikely partners are bringing low-income suites to prime location
February 27, 2010
Jennifer Brown
Special to The Star
Low-income earners strolling along King Street, east of Spadina, probably wouldn't think their next apartment could be in a new 36-storey highrise in such a prime location. But thanks to some innovative thinking from some unlikely partners, four units in the
Great Gulf Homes project on Charlotte Street will rent for between $482 and $600 when the building is completed in January 2012.
That's largely due in part to efforts of Trinity-Spadina Councillor Adam Vaughan, developer Gary Switzer, president and CEO of Tricon Development Group, and Kehilla, a non-profit agency that works to develop affordable housing for the Jewish community in the Greater Toronto Area.
Last year, Great Gulf, which Switzer represented at the time, gifted Kehilla with four condos in exchange for additional density from the City of Toronto. Kehilla will retain ownership of the units and under an agreement with the city, will ensure that the apartments remain affordable. Vaughan championed these units to be offered within the building, meeting his goal of inclusionary zoning.
The project was recently the focus of Kehilla's Bagels to Bricks Symposium at the University of Toronto, which attracted the developer community as well as lawyers, non-profit agencies and city planners, to discuss opportunities to create new affordable housing in the city.
The partnership between the city, Great Gulf and Kehilla started about a year ago when Switzer went to the city asking to add four storeys to the plans for the then-32-storey Charlie condo, designed by architects Diamond and Schmitt.
To get approval for the extra floors, Vaughan proposed that instead of taking his request to the Ontario Municipal Board, Switzer consider making four units available for affordable housing.
The 314-unit condo building, when completed, will feature a studio apartment, a one bedroom, one-bedroom den and two-bedroom suites, which will be owned and operated by Kehilla. The rents will vary from $482 for a 408-square-foot studio, up to $558 for the one-bedroom, 544-square-foot unit. The rents meet the established affordable housing median income objectives. If purchased, the four units would be valued at more than $1 million. The market value of the units is in the neighbourhood of $214,000 and up.
Switzer knew Singer and decided it was the right group to bring into the project.
"What has to be emphasized about what we did is we achieved it through partnerships, many of them unlikely," says Nancy Singer, executive director at Kehilla.
The issue of developing creative ideas for affordable housing, such as the Charlie project, is one Vaughan says must receive more attention not only from the city, but also with the help of developers. He says there has been a 37 per cent increase in the population in the downtown core in the last decade, and while 15,000 units of housing have been built in his ward in the last 15 years, just one per cent of that is large enough to accommodate families.
"We have a sustained housing crisis in this city," says Vaughan. "If we as a city don't stand up and try and find ways to provide housing to a range of people, we won't be living up to our responsibility. The crisis of the last 15 years is still with us."
He says affordable housing is "being chased from the downtown core."
"What we have is affluent housing for singles or couples in the downtown core," says Vaughan. "Eventually, they do have children, and effectively the affluent couples gentrify neighbourhoods east and west of the core, forcing working class families out of those areas and the couples and young people struggling in those buildings can't move to anywhere affordable for family and so they migrate to the 905."
Vaughan says the goal should be to incorporate affordable housing units within downtown buildings to help create greater economic diversity.
"We need to find ways to experiment with willing developers to create affordable housing in the downtown core on site. You have nurses who live in Scarborough but they can't get transit downtown on Sunday mornings.
"If we don't find a way to build an employee base into the hospital district and the core they (people working in service jobs) will live further and further away."
Vaughan says the city has been approaching buildings in the University Ave corridor to add inclusionary housing units when developers ask for changes to zoning.
"When they come asking for re-zoning and asking for four or five or six extra floors to a highrise, city council is asking them to add a layer of worker housing into the building," he says.
However, creation of affordable housing can't just happen with the construction of new units, largely funded by new buyers through costs of development charges says Switzer.
"If we, as citizens, really believe in subsidizing new housing, all of us should be doing it, not just new purchasers."
Switzer says inclusionary zoning is how many other cities have created affordable housing.
"That is what we did with Charlie and the kind of direction this concept is really leading towards. Look at Vancouver and some American examples like San Francisco, which has inclusionary zoning and made it mandatory in some case — all units have to include five to 10 per cent affordable housing which relates to median income," says Switzer.