2024 City of Toronto Confronting Anti-Black Racism (CABR) unit and CP Planning TAP
Preserving Black Communities Apartment Affordability around Transit in Toronto: Focus on the Jane Finch Community
Billions of dollars of public investment in transit infrastructure and tower renewal in recent years means long-term benefits of faster, more convenient travel choices and energy-efficient, resilient buildings. Yet this investment can have severe consequences, among them displacement and loss of affordable homes for private apartment renters, particularly lower-income Black populations.
In March 2024, ULI Toronto and the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing convened a panel of housing, planning, environmental, academic, and community leaders from Canada and the US to tackle this issue. The panel focused on the Jane Finch community as an archetype for other Black communities facing the consequences of transit investment and renter displacement.
The panel flags the need to apply an anti-Black racism lens to transit-oriented development (TOD) and tower renewal (TR) – to recognize a history of systemic underinvestment and exclusion from home ownership pathways in Jane Finch and other Black rental neighbourhood community assets, and to address present and future TOD and TR vulnerabilities for Black renter populations.
Thank you to the 60 people who informed this report, with special thanks to the Jane Finch community leaders who shared their time, experience, and wisdom.
Among the panel’s recommendations:
Land acquisition and ownership changes begin as soon as transit projects are announced, so equitable transit-oriented development (ETOD) – including policies, mapping, and target-setting – needs to happen in the initial stages of planning to preserve more existing affordable housing and to enable new non-market housing development. Also establish a task force, inclusive of Black resident leadership, to address speculative displacement and loss of affordability.
Respect, collaborate and invest with the Jane Finch community including involving the community in decision-making, building capacity, funding the Jane Finch Community Hub and Centre for the Arts, and piloting a voluntary ETOD program with public and private apartment owners/developers in Jane Finch.
Ensure policy initiatives do not compete with each other (decarbonization, housing affordability and preservation, and transit expansion). Examples include continuing decarbonization and electrification program guidelines to include no Above Guideline Increase (AGI) provisions and providing a Toronto Hydro “Fast Lane” for approval of permits for low-carbon, affordable TOD rental projects.
