Toronto’s disappearing mid-century architecture is increasingly dwarfed by glass-and-steel condos built for investors, not occupants. Photo by Can Pac Swire/Flickr.

I’ve previously written for Canadian Dimension about a housing struggle I am involved in around a vacant site in Toronto’s Downtown East. Our community-based organization, 230 Fightback, is challenging the developer KingSett Capital’s plans to build luxury housing at 214-230 Sherbourne Street, and demanding that social housing be created instead.

Faced with relentless community pressure and a faltering housing market, KingSett offered to sell the site to the city but only at a price that would cover the costs of its speculative antics. For its part, city hall adamantly refused to apply the kind of pressure that could compel the company to reduce the price.

For over a year now, despite our best efforts, the impasse has continued and this property, located in an area with the most pressing housing needs, remains vacant, as it has done for the past 17 years. This glaring injustice flows from a situation in which housing is provided on the basis of greed, speculation and profit-making, rather than rationally meeting the needs of communities.

We often speak of a “housing crisis” and it is certainly true that profit-driven housing provision means rapidly intensifying hardship for hundreds of thousands of people in Toronto alone (and millions Canada-wide). However, the beneficiaries of upscale redevelopment and parasitic speculation are now experiencing a crisis of their own, as the speculative bubble they’ve created bursts spectacularly. Two housing crises are unfolding in one city.

Last July, Royal LePage’s 2024 Canadian Renters Report found that almost a fifth of tenants in Ontario, and especially the Greater Toronto Area, were devoting half their income or more to paying their rent. At the same time, 36 percent of Ontario tenants had to hand over between 31 and 50 percent of their income to landlords. As BlogTO

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