{"id":196815,"date":"2025-06-19T09:46:21","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T09:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196815\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T09:46:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T09:46:21","slug":"non-profit-housing-tower-in-etobicoke-stalled-over-employment-lands-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196815\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-profit housing tower in Etobicoke stalled over \u2018employment lands\u2019 conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Renderings of the development proposed for a plot of land in Etobicoke. The project would consist of four condo towers containing 1,819 apartments. One of those towers, with 342 apartments, would be conveyed to the not-for-profit Community Affordable Housing Solutions group.Community Affordable Housing Solutions<\/p>\n

A planning application proposing one of the largest privately owned affordable-housing developments in Toronto<\/a> has been stalled amid differences between provincial and city policies on converting land once zoned for industrial and commercial use to residential.<\/p>\n

The proposal filed in late 2024 seeks to turn a plot of land in Etobicoke into four condo towers containing 1,819 apartments. If approval is given, one of those towers, with 342 apartments, would be conveyed to the not-for-profit Community Affordable Housing Solutions (CAHS) group, which combines members from affordable housing organizations such as Habitat for Humanity GTA and St. Clare\u2019s Multifaith Housing Society.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would own it and those units would be affordable in perpetuity. It\u2019s exactly the type of housing the city wants,\u201d said Joshua B\u00e9nard, a board member with CAHS and vice-president for real estate development for Habitat for Humanity GTA. <\/p>\n

The city has 120 days to make a decision after an application is complete on the request to convert the property, which the city deems to be \u201cemployment land\u201d to residential use. That should have meant a decision in early May, but there has been silence from a department of city planning said to be reviewing the matter. \u201cWe\u2019ve been kinda stonewalled. \u2026 I don\u2019t know what to make of it, I\u2019m very frustrated by it,\u201d said Mr. B\u00e9nard.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Renderings of the development proposed for a plot of land in Etobicoke. The project would consist of four condo towers containing 1,819 apartments. One of those towers, with 342 apartments, would be conveyed to the not-for-profit Community Affordable Housing Solutions group.Community Affordable Housing Solutions<\/p>\n

According to advocates for the proposal and land-use experts, the source of the tension appears to be Toronto\u2019s long-standing desire to protect hundreds of hectares of employment-zoned land<\/a> from residential redevelopment, and a provincial government that, since 2023, has been making it easier for landowners to apply for conversions of that same land.<\/p>\n

New builds drive rent decreases, but also leave tenants vulnerable to steep hikes, experts say<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2023\u2019s Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, Ontario narrowed the definition of \u201cemployment area\u201d so that lands used for retail and commercial office space would no longer be covered (with some exceptions, such as attachments to larger warehousing or manufacturing facilities). In 2024, the Provincial Policy Statement kicked away other bureaucratic hurdles that allowed cities to avoid considering conversions of employment land.<\/p>\n

Despite this new landscape, the CAHS team said the only objection to its proposal seems to be related to an outdated view of employment lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey refused to recognize that this is not an area of employment. They somehow thought it should regenerate for employment uses,\u201d said David Charezenko an urban planner and principal at Bousfields Inc. who made the application on behalf of CAHS and the landowners. He said that, early on, he knew there was opposition from some parts of the planning department but believed the merits of the application would win out. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit frustrating. It really has been like we\u2019re caught in a bigger conversation on employment areas, and we\u2019re not getting to the point of what this proposal is about: affordable housing,\u201d Mr. Charezenko said.<\/p>\n

The city didn\u2019t make anyone from the Planning Department available for an interview, but provided a statement that reflected that tension: \u201cAffordable housing is a major priority for the City of Toronto, and the City must weigh that against the need to protect stable employment areas that provide thousands of local jobs and ensure long-term economic viability, while creating complete communities for Torontonians,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n

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According to background documents provided by city staff, as of 2023, employment areas hosted 21,900 enterprises that provided 26 per cent of all the jobs in the city (almost 400,000 people), and were responsible for almost 27 per cent of the city\u2019s $195-billion GDP. The area around the CAHS site, the \u201cSouth Etobicoke Employment Area,\u201d is the second largest cluster of employment land in the city, responsible for 40,900 jobs in 2024.<\/p>\n

For Mr. B\u00e9nard, it\u2019s not a matter of disagreeing with those goals but of recognizing that not all employment lands are the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not Triple-A employment lands: It\u2019s a parking lot next to a Golf Town [retail store] and the adjacent lots are single-family homes,\u201d said Mr. B\u00e9nard. \u201cWe do need to protect the right employment lands \u2013 this site isn\u2019t one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city does exist in a bit of a period of limbo with some of its employment areas,\u201d said David Bronskill, partner in the municipal and land development group at Goodmans LLP, who on June 3 filed an appeal with the Ontario Land Tribunal to break the logjam and get the application moving. In an interview, he noted that, in part, the city\u2019s planning policies have yet to catch up to the new provincial direction after its first attempts to update its official plan were rejected by Ontario\u2019s Minister of Municipalities and Housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor better or for worse, the lands they designated employment permitted office and general employment permitted large-format retail,\u201d Mr. Bronskill said. \u201cThat\u2019s a significant portion of the lands in Toronto that wouldn\u2019t meet the new provincial definition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the appeal is somewhat unusual, given that a key protection in Ontario\u2019s Planning Act says that land owners can\u2019t appeal decisions related to employment area conversion applications. According to Daniel Artenosi, a lawyer with Overland LLP, there is a view among land-use experts that the city\u2019s most recent attempt to bring its official plan into alignment with the new provincial definitions on employment land (which is currently awaiting approval at the provincial legislature) is an attempt to preserve that appeal-denying power for most of its existing employment areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Planning Act allows cities to keep employment areas providing the use was \u2018lawfully established\u2019 prior to October, 2024,\u201d he said. Toronto staff, according to Mr. Artenosi, have hinted at various times that they will interpret even nonconforming employment areas \u2013 with historical office or retail use permissions, in opposition to provincial definitions \u2013 as \u201clawfully established\u201d and side-step all the province\u2019s redefinitions. \u201cWe think they are saying: \u2018We used to permit these, therefore they were lawfully established\u2019 \u2026 this exercise is trying to revive the status quo,\u201d he said. There\u2019s also the possibility that the city could limit its own options if it succeeds in preserving all its current employment lands, since it could no longer approve office or retail uses in those areas if they didn\u2019t meet provincial definitions.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s statement on the CAHS application offered more nuance.<\/p>\n

\u201cCity Planning balances the provincial direction to protect economically vital employment areas with the City\u2019s housing objectives,\u201d the statement said. \u201cOver the last few years … staff reviewed over 150 requests for conversion on employment lands and recommended 64 conversions to allow residential uses to Council, which typically have affordable housing requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Renderings of the development proposed for a plot of land in Etobicoke. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,897,24789,3715,79896,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-196815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-noastack","11":"tag-real-estate","12":"tag-the-listing","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114709396642602758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}