As Toronto continues to battle its affordable housing crisis, the City says it is now actively seeking to identify partners, sites, and properties that may be suitable to support the goal of creating up tens of thousands of affordable rental homes over the next decade.

Following the announcement that the City will receive $203.3 million through the Government of Canada’s Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI), the City says work is "well underway" to compile a list of properties and sites that could potentially be purchased or rapidly developed to quickly create new permanent housing options.


This would include the creation of 40,000 affordable rental homes, including 18,000 supportive homes over the next 10 years.

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To build upon the City's existing list of properties that would be appropriate for building modular housing and renovation and/or conversion to housing in 2021 and beyond, the City is now inviting government, private, institutional, non-profit, co-op, charity, and multi-faith organizations and other landlords to identify vacant sites that could be used for modular housing development; non-residential properties that could be converted to residential; and buildings that are in disrepair and in need of repair and rehabilitation to be used for residential purposes.

The City says it's now requesting information on sites available for acquisition that meet the following criteria:

  • Modular: Vacant, flat, unencumbered sites approximately 25,000 square feet to 30,000 square feet (or 0.57 acres to 0.68 acres) in size, with no material environmental concerns that are located in a Neighbourhoods, Apartment Neighbourhoods or Mixed-Use area (Official Plan Designation).
  • Conversion/Renovation: Commercial/institutional/non-residential sites that result in new housing stock (including previous housing sites that have been removed from the rental housing stock), 15,000 square feet to 50,000 square feet, that can support between 20 to 70 individual units (each 200 to 600 square feet).
  • What's more, all sites must be in close proximity to existing and planned transit and social services (such as community and employment centres, libraries, health facilities) and be available in the immediate/short term in order to allow for occupancy within 12 months.

    Any interested parties can learn how to submit a proposal here. All proposals must be submitted to the City by Monday, November 16 at 4 pm.

    Affordable Housing