By Michael Shapcott September 18, 2013 - Toronto’s affordable housing wait list has grown to a staggering 90,060 households as of the end of August, according to Toronto Housing Connections (which maintains the list). Those households include a total of 165,723 women, men and children – an increase of 4% in the past year. If the Toronto affordable housing wait list was a separate community, it would be the 24th largest city in Canada (just behind Abbotsford, and ahead of Sudbury and Kingston).
A few notes on the latest wait list numbers:
- A total of 2,016 households added their names to the Toronto wait list in August, but only 281 households were housed from the list.
- Of the new applicants, about half were people without dependants and the remainder were divided among families with children or seniors.
- About half of the households that were housed were from the special requirements list, which includes women fleeing violence, terminally ill people and people who are homeless.
The final report of Toronto’s Street Needs Assessment was released earlier in September. The report notes that while there has been a slight increase in the number of people who are homeless sleeping in shelters and on the streets, fully 93% of homeless Torontonians want to move into housing. The biggest challenge they face, according to the Street Needs Assessment, is the lack of affordable housing.