Last weekend, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) awarded 27 “top-performing” municipalities across the country with roughly $74 million in bonus funding through the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), and Toronto was not one of them.
The HAF, an incentive-style fund created by the federal government, is meant to encourage municipalities to take actions and implement initiatives that will result in more housing being built quicker. This includes things like ending restrictive zoning, speeding up permitting, and adding greater density, especially near transit and post-secondary institutions.
In order to access the funding, municipalities were required to submit detailed action plans to CMHC that laid out what they hoped to achieve and when. The plans contain three- and ten-year goals, each made up of a number of “milestones” with their own due dates.
Once CMHC and a municipality come to an agreement, the city or town is granted funding in the amounts needed to achieve said milestones. When Toronto secured their agreement in December 2023, for instance, they were granted the largest sum of all the municipalities: $471 million, with 25%, or $117 million, to be delivered up front and an additional 25% delivered as the City reached predetermined milestones over the coming years.
In an interview with STOREYS after the agreement was reached, Housing Minister at the time Sean Fraser shared that it took two tries for Toronto to secure the agreement after the first proposal “simply did not meet the level of ambition” that Fraser had for the HAF. Later, Mayor Olivia Chow took it upon herself to submit a new proposal that was “significantly more ambitious,” Fraser had said.
As part of its HAF agreement, Toronto pledged to spur housing construction through actions that included creating more affordable rental options, expediting the approval of new development applications, and expanding missing middle housing.
Now, a year into the HAF, municipalities that are meeting their goals (and then some) are being rewarded.
“This extra funding of almost $74 million will help these communities go even further to accelerate housing, fast tracking an additional 2,219 housing units over the next two years,” said CMHC in a press release. “To be considered a top performer, communities met their unit forecasts and delivered on their HAF Action Plan commitments for the first year. They also proposed additional initiatives to accelerate housing making them eligible to receive up to 10% of the value of their original agreement in additional funding.”
Other large cities like Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary are receiving additional funding in the considerable amounts of $4,375,000, $17,484,000, and $22,843,000, respectively, but Toronto was not included in the list of recipient municipalities.
In a progress update shared with City Council in early February, the Deputy City Manager of Development and Growth Services reported that, in their first year, the City achieved 37.5% of their target of attaining 60,980 net new permitted homes over three years, between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2026. Additionally, they have completed 21 of the 35 milestones outlined in the agreement.
But while many of the outlined milestones were achieved, several with implementation timelines that ended in March of last year have yet to be completed. These include half of the milestones necessary to expand missing middle housing options and allow increased density (Initiative #7).
Specific milestones that have yet to be completed include City staff reporting to Council on requirements to permit more missing middle type housing through as-of-right zoning by-laws across Toronto, including permissions for four-storey multi-unit residential development; simplifying design guidelines and built-form models; and delivering a “Post-secondary Affordable Housing Strategy” to ensure parking will not limit the delivery of multiunit student housing.
STOREYS contacted the City of Toronto and CMHC to confirm these shortcomings were behind the city not receiving the HAF bonus financing, but both CMHC and the City did not confirm or deny this was the reason.
Looking to the future, the City confirmed they are on track to meet upcoming longer term goals.
“The City’s commitment with CMHC under HAF extends until the end of 2026,” said a representative from the City in an emailed comment. “The City is continuing to work towards delivering the eight initiatives and 35 accompanying milestones outlined in the three-year HAF agreement period.”