What broke Toronto’s rental market?

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Toronto used to build a lot of apartment buildings and this chart proves it hundreds of thousands of units were constructed between 1960 and 1979 but the number of new apartments began to slow down in the mid 70s and by the late 90s that slow trickle came to a grinding

Halt but here’s what was being built condos at first only a few but then lots and lots and lots of them so why did Toronto go from a Powerhouse of new rental development to a sea of Condominiums and what does that mean for renters today Toronto’s Golden Era of apartment buildings was the 1960s demand was high thanks to Baby Boomers those babies are now 18 19 20. they’re leaving the parents home and Builders were getting extra encouragement from the government so almost all rental housing built in Canada from 1945 to the end of the

Programs in 1984 actually was subtracts and lots of people don’t realize that we had a very very favorable tax system that gave significant tax advantages to developers of rental housing and so you basically had an industry that was Keen to build uh people that were Keen to you know providing the demand that

Combination of lots of demand plus government incentives meant that between 1960 and 1979 more than 220 000 rental units were built in the GTA plus Supply was also come coming from social housing now that’s housing built for low-income renters with Government funding eventually over 300 low-caused homes

Will cover this area and we were building the about 20 000 social housing units annually for three decades 1965 to roughly 1995. so that was a lot of Supply so if you were a renter in the 1960s and 70s things were good But in the 80s and 90s that started to change foreign in the mid 70s and early 80s tax breaks for Builders went away and so did those modest subsidies all during a time when it was costing more to build and because life was getting expensive for everyone the federal government asked provinces

To adopt rent control measures which many of them did so basically now you’ve suppressed the increase in rents at a time when costs are going up so you kind of get this mismatch between the cost of building and the revenues you’re going to generate in the long run you know

Downstream oh and remember those baby boomers they were getting older starting families and they wanted to trade apartment living for white picket fences so you had a bit of weakening demand so you had higher costs unfavorable environment for taxes and that was kind of the death nail in the in the rental coffin

But while rental construction was slowing down condos were picking up now there was a market of people who wanted to own Apartments the condo product even though the legislation was created in 1969 it took a while for it to be accepted in the marketplace and the idea

Of buying an apartment versus buying a house which people had traditionally been used to so we really didn’t sort of see a significant growth in condominium construction really into the 1990s condo buildings took off and Rental building trickled to a halt but that switch it didn’t change much for renters at least

Not right away that’s in part because in the 90s and early 2000s lots of people were becoming homeowners they were leaving the rental market which made space for other renters to come in we had this offsetting release of pressure on the rental market by ability to access the homeownership market and

Eventually condos also started to feed into the rental market too with more investors buying units and putting them up for rent I vote 90 of new Rental Supply in the GTA comes from the condo sector we’ve been kind of spoiled by the fact that we’ve had so much demand from

Investors buying condos and renting them out in the GTA that there wasn’t really a whole lot of attention paid to the fact that we haven’t been building purpose-built rentals in the GTA for for really 40 or 50 years foreign to today and Toronto is suddenly in dire

Need of more rental buildings so I think what we really need is just a dramatic drastic substantial huge increase in purpose-built rental being constructed we’re projecting rental demand in the GTA to increase by over 300 000 units in the next 10 years it’s pretty clear we

Need to do something to ramp up that level of construction and do it now so why has that changed why does it all of a sudden feel like we need more rentals in Toronto well for one we stop building social housing in the late 80s early 90s both the federal and provincial levels

Of government got out of the housing business and we’re this you know burden of uh building and maintaining the existing stock really sort of fell on municipalities without any you know Revenue tools to actually to do that also owning a home is now completely out of reach for many so in

The past where you would have a steady number of renters becoming homeowners more of them are staying in the rental market now combine that with more people moving to Toronto and the need for rentals is at an all-time high right now for the foreseeable future is it’s a

Terrible moment if you were to finish a sentence for us renting in Toronto is a nightmare yeah a nightmare so if torontonians need rentals now more than ever how come developers aren’t jumping at the chance to capitalize on that demand well that could be because

Right now the cost to build is too high so you can address the problem on on the on the cost Side by trying to create housing that’s that’s not as expensive but it’s impossible to to build for less than what it costs to build and therefore you know your minimum rents

That you have to set have it have to cover the costs of operating the building keeping the lights on hitting the units and paying the mortgage so there is a you know a flaw to which rents can actually come down for private developers it only makes sense to build

If they can make their money back and that means charging High rents but what happens when most people just can’t afford those rents the supply and demand isn’t operating properly it hasn’t operated on the rental side for many decades the market responds to what market demand not just Demand right it

Has to be keep up with enough money we now have a society and a city with more and more households without enough money to generate what’s called effective market demand effective market demand that means enough people with enough money to justify building more housing so if supply and demand is broken what

Can fix the rental market I think the writing has been on the wall for years and that is that the government needs to get back into the housing business or the government needs to you know provide greater funding to non-profit entities and Community Land Trust to where um we’re building more non-market

Housing the government steps in when there’s a market failure we did that with our health care System we sorted that one out so that people are not excluded from the Health Care system because of income but we haven’t done that for the housing system we need public housing affordable housing

Because all of the building that we’re talking about most a lot of people can’t afford it right here in this city we have 90 000 household waiting for affordable housing on a subsidized housing list those are the kind of housing we really need desperately because for two decades

We haven’t built any public housing we absolutely need to focus on rental purpose-built rental housing that is Affordable and the market will never build that so the longer we wait for the market to deliver the more of a crisis this is going to be Thank you

Toronto’s rental market is in dire need of more supply. But back in the 1960s and 1970s the city had a healthy stock of apartment buildings. So what happened? CBC Toronto’s Shannon Martin explores the timeline of when Canada’s biggest city started running out of rentals.

00:00 – Introduction
00:50 – 1960s/1970s rental building booms
02:26 – 1980s/1990s rental building decreases
03:20 – Condo takeover
04:50 – Present day rental stock
06:22 – Conclusion

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31 COMMENTS

  1. I wish they would've mentioned the other side of the coin, which is just as if not more important: lowering the cost to build at the municipal level. Yes, the federal and provincial governments need to invest large subsidies in social housing so that everyone can afford a home even when labor and material costs are high. But the municipalities first have to actually make building apartments possible. Zoning restrictions, complex/opaque/lengthy approval processes, endless community engagement that prioritizes the preferences of NIMBYs — these all make building apartments very difficult even with deep government subsidies. Medium density social housing should be allowed outright in all urban residential areas, with height bonuses to compete with market housing projects.

  2. IMMIGRATION is the HUGEST ISSUE!! No vetting? This issue wiill NEVER be fixed. In the 60's and 70s. the population in Canada was also half of what it is now. In 1970 the population was also about 21 million people.

    Immigrants have acess to all the services and use the system to their advantage? I seen immigrants post on social media they will be applying for social housing as soon as they arrive including refugees and landed immigrants. Crazy! I met someone who received social housing after 9 days of landing in Canada and stayed at a Welcome Centre for immigrants and does not even speak English! He brought his immigrant wife and child and still does not speak English. Others wait years and the people who live in these ''affordable housing" are mental health and refugess/landed immigrants mostly. Cities are congested and anxiety increases with increasing lacking social needs. Trudeau and other Liberals never cared for born and raised Canadians for over 40 years now and NOTHING is going to change as more immigration is utilized the social system and all aspects of the social system is collapsing including health care and other needs are being shut down or no longer offered any longer. It will NEVER be affordable and these ideas are a joke!

  3. Same song in many western nations. There seems to be an underlying theme of neoliberalism. May it be rich folk buying condos driving up unit prizes or that public/social housing projects were privatized and then run down or as here said not considered anylonger viable.

  4. It killed Vancouver too. Nothing but approval of luxury developments full of condos that no one can afford and that sit half empty rather than affordable apartment complexes being built. The urban planning idea of "Vancouverism" fueled the affordable housing crisis in cities like Vancouver. Just as these condo developments in Toronto. They fell for the idea that all these towers to help with density would "keep rental rates low", which unto itself sounds foolish and like total BS. Not sure how anyone fell for that crap.

  5. The government could have limited the number of Condos being built in the first place, but noooooo, everyone wanted to stay greedy. Can't wait for the homeless situation to triple this next couple of years! Bravo! ?

  6. Banksters with their printing of fiat money did it all all sorrows are from them.
    This was written in US Bankers Magazine, Aug. 25, 1924.
    “Capital must protect itself in every possible manner by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages must be foreclosed as rapidly as possible.

    When, through a process of law, the common people lose their homes they will become more docile and more easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of government, applied by a central power of wealth under control of leading financiers.

    This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of Capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance.

    Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.”

    “The modern banking process manufactures currency out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of slight hand that was ever invented…If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the banks create currency”.
    Lord Josiah Stamp, Former Director of the Bank of England (1880-1941)

  7. Talk about a media that does a poor job of informing the public and asking politicians tough questions. When this longterm trend was happening – very little of it was mentioned in the media. Now that it is a huge crisis – the public broadcaster is banging on about it every other night.

  8. Run Out RENTALS = 3.500 to 4.000 square feet only 2 person live in.
    We will always run out of RENTALS.
    Why noone ask how can survive in the 1970 with less housing ??
    We can do it in the 1970 we can do it 2090 or another 500 years, by BLOCKING – Foreign Investors and Taxes on the 2 or more Properties.
    It's won't happen which the Liberal Governments are owning 2 or more RENTALS Properties (which you heard on the CBC News – Minister Housing)
    GREED = CORRUPTION

  9. Studio .loft.1bedroom 2bedroom . Condo 2bedroom. Condo 3 bedroom . Then houses . Should all be priced n capped .if u got money to buy land n build a custom house for the rich go for it but don't be buying up lower income places

  10. Mass immigration, went from an average over many decades of 200k per year to 1.7-2 million. End of video. It's not a supply issue, it's a demand issue. The media know this and are lying to you. It's not entirely Trudeau and the liberals fault, th eocnstruction industry is not nearly large enough to bring supply in line with demand, again CBC and the media are lying to you

  11. In the end, the housing crisis could cost taxpayers over $2.5 Trillion to build 6 million units of shoebox-size homes, and on the other hand, the private sector won't invest even a penny in this National Project and will slow down the process in order to keep the home inventories LOW and home prices UP.
    Like food, water, and healthcare, "Home is a Basic Life Necessity" and it should NEVER become an "Investment Commodity", Corporate GREED is behind the DEVASTATING Housing Crisis.

    – All 3 levels of governments

    – Bank of Canada

    – Financial Institutions

    – CMHC

    – CREA

    – And Mainstream Media

    Are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the DIRE and DEVASTATING Housing, Affordability, Cost-of-Living, and Inflation Crises in Canada.

  12. That is exactly what we need – more rental apartments, but they also need to be under rent control, and Doug Ford, needs to put new apartment units back under rent control, otherwise the problem will still exist because new apartments won't be affordable either!

  13. The concept of a home ownership society is flawed. Homes as financial assets because of their scarcity and exclusivity has become a racial, generational and class privilege which is unearned, and undemocratic. Homes are not banks, or casinos. The spread of the real estate-financial complex created a value model which underpins fictional wealth, pubic dependency, economic instability, and decline in social trust. It has turned half of the country into individualistic, anti-social property barons. This model distorts politics, creates an economy that rewards rent seeking, resulting in stagflation. Wealth by asset inflation and hereditary privilege with a underclass of serfs as labourers and servants was literally the feudal order that freedom was supposed to have replaced a century ago.

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