Plaguing Toronto: Affordable Housing

It is no secret that the housing market in Toronto has reached a tipping point. With the demand for housing increasing at a much faster than the supply of housing available, residents and newcomers to Toronto are being priced out of the city. Toronto Regional Real Estate Board’s Market Year in Review report stated that the average selling price of a home within in the city in 2020 will exceed $900K, which is nearly a 10 per cent increase from the 2019 average sale price of $819,319 and nearly a 45 per cent increase from the average sale price in 2015. Toronto has the highest immigration rate per capita in the world, with 43 per cent of new immigrants settling in the GTA.
Many Canadians, including millennials and new immigrants, are coming to see home ownership as less and less realistic. With the trends we have been observing over the past five years, who can blame them? The shortage of rentals available, the lack of affordable housing and the development of Toronto’s neighbourhoods by big-name developers are certainly not helping the situation. Join the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs, the CITY Institute and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies on March 16 at 7 p.m., to discuss the changing real-estate landscape of our City and what should be done moving forward. We will be joined by panel members Nemoy Lewis from the University of Toronto, Scott Leon from the Wellesley Institute, Bria Hamilton from HOUSE and Michael Kenny from York U. What are our representatives doing to address housing affordability? How are millennials and first-time home buyers being encouraged to purchase homes? Are the policies being put in place to assist us in attaining affordable housing effective? Are these policies counterproductive?
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/plaguing-toronto-affordable-housing-tickets-96154553859.