Item - 2015.CD5.7

The Community Development and Recreation Committee recommends that:

1.  City Council request the General Manager of Shelter, Support and Housing Administration to thank the boards and volunteers of the more than 240 non-profit and co-operative housing providers for their commitment to affordable housing and their contributions to housing stability for City residents.

2.  City Council request the General Manager, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration (SSHA), to report to Council in the third quarter of 2016 on the proposed quality standards and performance measures for social housing, including Board development and Board accountability, developed in consultation with stakeholders.

3.  City Council request the General Manager, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration (SSHA), to report to Council in the first quarter of 2016 on a new partnership framework for housing providers whose operating agreements are expiring, including incentives for them to continue and expand their role in providing affordable housing, such report to include consideration of how to ensure that all providers have sustainable governance structures.

4.  City Council request the General Manager, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration (SSHA), to report to Council in the first quarter of 2016 on the final recommendations for the capital repair financing strategy to support capital renewal of non-profit and co-op housing in Toronto.

5.  City Council request the Province to support the long-term sustainability of social housing by:

a.  reassuming funding responsibilities for social housing and developing new financing vehicles for capital repairs and renewal;

b.  modernizing affordability assistance by eliminating Service Level Standards based on rent-geared-to-income (RGI), simplifying RGI rules and providing greater flexibility to use a range of affordability options to meet local needs;

c.  giving Service Managers more flexibility to re-purpose social housing assets to respond to evolving housing needs and sustain social housing over the long term; and

d.  taking steps to protect public investment in social housing through a new regulatory framework to enable and encourage housing providers to continue as affordable housing after operating agreements expire and to prevent sale of assets to for-profit enterprises.

6.  City Council request the federal government to continue funding social housing at existing levels to preserve affordability for non-profit and federal co-operative housing providers with expiring operating agreements, and provide new, long-term funding for social housing capital repairs.

For many decades social housing in Toronto has provided affordable housing to hundreds of thousands of families, couples and single people and contributed to creating vibrant mixed income neighbourhoods. In the absence of this legacy our city would not be what it is today. This report outlines the need for all governments to work together to maintain this legacy and recommends measures to transform the social housing system well into the future.

The social housing system is currently at risk due to a range of pressures that have intensified over the past decade. The challenges facing the social housing system include the declining federal and provincial funding and transfer of funding responsibility to the City of Toronto; increasing demand and complexity of client need; aging buildings with large capital repair backlogs; potential loss of public investment and stock through expiry of operating agreements; and challenges to providers’ capacity to deliver quality housing and services. In addition, the current provincial regulatory framework hinders innovation and limits the City’s ability to address poor performance or reward excellence.

Many of these challenges to the ongoing sustainability and quality of social housing were identified in a 2007 report to City Council, entitled "Tied in Knots: Unlocking the Potential of Social Housing Communities in Toronto". The report's recommendations included a three-part strategy of requests to the federal and provincial governments to address these capacity, funding and regulatory issues. Since then, the Province has made some regulatory changes to provide more flexibility in some aspects of social housing administration, but the majority of these issues have not been addressed, and the situation has worsened.

The system is now at a pivotal moment. Unless these pressures are finally addressed, the City will see the erosion of its social housing system, limiting the City's ability to meet the needs of low income households or to ensure quality housing and services even as the municipal funding share increases.

To maintain social housing in Toronto the City requires the federal and provincial governments to meet their funding and regulatory responsibilities. In this regard the federal government must re-invest the savings from the expiry of operating agreements back into social housing, while the provincial government must look to re-assume responsibility for a share of the cost of social housing.

At the same time the city is looking to move forward in an effort to maintain and transform elements of the City's social housing system. The overall goal of this effort is to ensure that social housing continues to be well-governed, well-managed and sustainable, with the capacity to meet residents' housing stability needs and to preserve, improve and, where possible, create affordable housing options.

This report sets out directions which will transform the City's social housing system to ensure that it is sustainable over the long term and that it better contributes to the City's housing stability and affordability goals, outlined in the Housing Opportunities Toronto Affordable Housing Action Plan 2010-2020 and the 2014-2019 Housing Stability Service Planning Framework. These directions include initiatives to develop quality standards and performance measures for housing providers; new partnerships with providers whose operating agreements are expiring; and a capital repair financing strategy for non-profit and co-operative housing providers.

The report also provides Council with an overview of the legislative and other changes required from the Province to support system transformation.

The initiatives in this report complement and build upon efforts that are already under way to address the capital needs of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) and to set a new direction for the TCHC as the City's largest social housing provider. They are also consistent with and support the City's current "Close the Housing Gap" public education campaign.