What is ILEO’s Affordable Housing strategy?
Housing affordability is fundamental to economic opportunity. As massive redevelopments look to transform neighbourhood areas like the Greater Golden Mile and Greater Weston Mount Dennis, ILEO aims to ensure that residents living in these areas can remain there and thrive.
With three transit lines in the vicinity of the Greater Golden Mile under construction, the area will be well connected to the GTA and an ideal location to prioritize affordable housing options for current and future residents. Many newcomers are drawn to the Golden Mile and surrounding neighbourhoods for its relative housing affordability and community networks, both of which will be impacted by large-scale redevelopments.
ILEO is expanding our work to include Greater Weston Mount Dennis. We are identifying partners to work on affordability-minded retrofits projects in both neighbourhoods. Additional activities will include:
- Support for new and key policies to build affordable supply in low-income neighbourhoods;
- Purpose built rental: influence deeper affordability for selected proposed developments;
- Financial instruments: innovative stacking and;
- NFP building acquisition and housing development: mobilizing new funding
What we’re working on
Retrofits Taskforce
The Greater Golden Mile and Greater Weston Mount Dennis are undergoing significant redevelopment that will bring big changes to the neighborhoods. Generally, legacy towers have low vacancy rates, which creates upward pressure on prices, and such buildings are coveted for their relatively affordable rents.
With support from the Tower Renewal Partnership, ILEO, CMHC and United Way Greater Toronto co-convened the ILEO Retrofit and Housing Security Advisory Group to identify and evaluate tools and business models to preserve affordability after the retrofit process, with a view to piloting the recommended tools in the Greater Golden Mile. The core recommendation was to build a Combined Retrofit Remortgage Tool and Grant Program to incentivize private owners to conduct deep retrofits of their buildings while maintaining affordability and reducing emissions. Read more about the Retrofits project here: ILEO_RetrofitAdvisoryReport_June2023.pdf.
Mura Pilot
The main objective for this pilot is to test if and how financial support from the United Way Greater Toronto for the Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) program application development could make a difference for selected nonprofit organizations in building strong applications to securing MURA 2025 funding for their acquisition projects. It also aimed at increasing the stock of permanently affordable housing in the GTA. Here are the specifics:
- How funding is allocated and the impact it had on the organization’s broader real estate capacity
- The impact that is made on the ability to leverage this support and potentially re-purpose its building acquisition project idea towards additional funding and financing programs
- And whether the support has led to a successful MURA application
Affordable Housing Partners
BMO Financial Group
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)
RPIA
Ellis Don Community Builders
Dream
BentallGreekOak
McKinsey & Company
WoodGreen Community Services
The Daniels Corporation