Thank you, Chair.

I'm pleased to be here today to speak to the committee's study on federal housing investments.

I'm in Toronto today, so I'm joining from the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. This place is now home to many diverse first nations, Inuit and Métis people. I also want to acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

The City of Toronto and its people are facing massive challenges across the whole housing continuum, including 11,000 people in Toronto who are experiencing active homelessness as of May 2024. This is combined with a shelter system that is operating at maximum capacity on a daily basis and a lack of supportive housing to move people out of chronic homelessness and into permanent housing.

We have nearly 87,000 applicants on our wait-list for social housing as of Q1 2024. We house only 3,000 of them per year. We have insufficient affordable housing supply to manage current demand and future needs. As income levels have not kept pace with housing costs, many in our city are in core housing need and nearly 80% of full-time minimum wage households cannot afford to live in Toronto.

The federal government's immigration targets of close to 500,000 new permanent residents each year from 2024 to 2025 are something we can support. However, we need to set up these newcomers for success, including ensuring they have access to affordable housing and a good quality of life.

These significant housing and homelessness crises are complex, with various contributing and intersecting factors, including rising rents and home ownership costs, as well as low social assistance rates and insufficient access to physical and mental health supports and social supports, as well as structural racism and discrimination. Nonetheless, these crises are decades in the making and have not occurred in a vacuum. A lack of sufficient housing investments from all levels of government in recent decades has combined to compound a dire housing situation in Toronto.

The majority of purpose-built, private and publicly owned rental homes were built more than 35 years ago. Beginning in the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the construction of purpose-built rental housing and non-profit co-ops rapidly declined, while provincial and federal investments in housing lessened and housing responsibilities were downloaded to municipalities. Today, over 80% of all rental housing is privately owned, with the balance of the remaining stock managed by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and other non-profit housing providers.

In response to the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis, the city aims to increase the overall supply of housing, and it's essential that we also grow the stock of affordable and supportive housing so that we address the full housing continuum. That is why Toronto's city council has approved a new increased target of 65,000 rent-controlled homes, including 6,500 rent-geared-to-income homes, 41,000 affordable rental homes and 17,500 rent-controlled market units, all to be delivered by 2030.

The city has already taken steps to unlock housing supply through housing-enabling policy changes such as removing parking requirements and expanding housing options across Toronto, including laneway homes, garden suites and multiplexes of up to four units as of right, as well as six storeys as of right on major streets in our city. The City of Toronto is ready to work with private and non-profit partners to get shovels in the ground faster and create new homes that meet residents' needs in all neighbourhoods across the city.

Investing in housing-enabling infrastructure, as well as public transit, is critical as the city is advancing due diligence on over 50 city-owned sites that have been identified for housing development. With the right type of investment, these sites can create mixed-income, mixed-use, transit-friendly communities that will benefit current and future residents for generations to come.

Along with our partners, the city stands ready to build new homes faster to deal with decades of pent-up demand. Toronto's city council has previously requested an allocation of grants between $500 million and $800 million per year and low-cost loans of between $900 million and $1 billion, annually, from each order of government so that we can, together, advance new supply under a public developer model. This guaranteed application would provide certainty for projects for immediate advancement.

To achieve a generational change and systemic shift in building homes faster, the city knows that we must work closely with our partners, with the federal and provincial governments and with indigenous, non-profit and private sector organizations to develop bold and innovative ideas across the housing continuum.

Recently, the federal government has made important investments in Ontario, and in Toronto specifically, including the housing accelerator fund. We are encouraged by the policy and financing changes the federal government is considering that would enable more projects to advance at a faster pace.

I would encourage the committee, in its review of the past, to document lessons learned so they can be effectively leveraged today to address what is one of the most pressing national issues.

I will just finish by saying that the need for significant action, investment and leadership at a federal level cannot be understated. Work with us at a portfolio level, not just at a project-by-project level. We look forward to the Canada builds program being launched in Toronto.

Thank you.