Toronto mayoral candidates to debate affordable housing at Regent Park meeting

Candidates for Toronto mayor have been invited to discuss the need for affordable housing in the city at a meeting in Regent Park on Tuesday morning.

Mayor John Tory, however, will not be there. He has told organizers he has prior commitments. 

The meeting is set for 10 a.m. to 12 noon at 246 Sackville St. The meeting is for tenants of Toronto Community Housing buildings. Eleven mayoral candidates are expected.

Marcel Pereira, a housing advocate, said he organized the meeting because he believes affordable housing is a major issue in the Toronto municipal election. The meeting will focus on the need for more deeply affordable housing in Toronto and how the problem can be corrected, he said.

"I was compelled to do this when I saw that there was no housing meeting for the mayoral candidates at all," Pereira said on Sunday night. "Housing is the most important issue in this campaign."

Pereira said he thinks that tenants have not been a big part of the conversation around housing during the campaign. He said there are only three tenant directors on the 13-member board of Toronto Community Housing and he is going to propose that the number be increased to six.

"What we should be talking about in this election is advancing the topic of equity in Toronto housing that is affordable and contains tenants with seats at the decision-making tables," he said.

He said housing can provide people with "a place to retreat from the storm of life."

Pereira said candidates will be asked: Do you support the statement that housing is a right? If elected, would you work toward expanding the building of more deeply affordable housing? And how would you do that? 

He added that more rent-geared-to-income housing is needed and he hopes candidates will discuss how to find more revenue streams for the city to build affordable housing.

Scott Leon, affordable housing researcher at the Wellesley Institute in Toronto, agreed that affordable housing should be one of the top considerations in the election.

Leon said there is a need for more funding, building and acquiring of affordable housing for low-to-moderate income Toronto residents.

"We're seeing hundreds of thousands of households struggling with housing affordability. We're seeing homelessness on the rise. We're seeing evictions displacing people from their homes and from their communities," he said.

When it comes to Toronto Community Housing, he said the social housing provider has been largely neglected by the city.