On August 5th, the government of Canada announced a partnership with the City of Toronto to unlock 18 housing projects that will deliver more than 5,600 rental homes across Toronto, including a subset that will be affordable, supportive, or rent-geared-to-income units.
Build Canada Homes (BCH) will provide $310 million for 1,885 rental units on City-owned land, with 739 of those units defined as ‘affordable’ under BCH rules. These developments will be carried out by supportive housing operators, Toronto Community Housing, Indigenous-led housing providers, and the Parkdale Neighbourhood Community Land Trust. More than half of the units announced will be managed by private developers provided with low-cost federal loans through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)’s Apartment Construction Loan Program.
The funding for non-market housing is welcome, as is the approach to working directly with local governments to use government-owned land, but much more must be done to address Toronto’s housing crisis.
About half of Toronto’s 1.16 million households are renters. Twenty-nine per cent of them live in core housing need, meaning they live in housing that is unaffordable, overcrowded, or in need of major repair – and they cannot find suitable housing that is less than thirty per cent of their income. The number of unhoused Torontonians has dramatically increased in recent years; the 2025 Street Needs Assessment found over 12,000 people living without a home. The loss of lower-rent housing has been directly linked to increases in homelessness in communities across Canada.
To advance the right to housing, new government housing investments need to meet the needs of those most deeply impacted by housing insecurity and homelessness. Rents need to be deeply affordable in perpetuity, supports need to be adequately resourced and respond to the diversity of peoples’ needs, and there needs to be clear targets and minimum standards to provide fully accessible homes that meet the needs of disabled people with diverse accessibility needs.
Many of the proposed units have time-limited affordability requirements, and many of the ‘affordable’ rents are still out of reach for Torontonians living on low or very-low incomes, who can afford a maximum rent of no more than $425-$1,063. While the guidelines mandate all housing developments to be at least visitable with barrier-free common areas, it is unclear if projects funded under this partnership contain mandatory accessibility requirements, or if developers can simply opt out of accessibility guidelines under the ACLP.
Build Canada Homes
In 2025, CCHR participated in a major pan-Canadian consultation around the development of the new federal agency BCH. This involved submitting recommendations for the protection, promotion, and fulfillment of the right to adequate housing, as required by the Government’s obligations under international and Canadian law, specifically the 2019 National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA).
CCHR’s recommendations focused on three key areas:
- Prioritize and maximize investments in the community housing sector
- Uphold all elements of the right to adequate housing
- Commit to robust monitoring and accountability mechanisms
NHS 2.0
The announcement of greater non-market housing investments by the federal government, in collaboration with other levels of government, is timely given that it arrives during ongoing consultations with housing stakeholders, civil society and rights-holders on the renewal of the National Housing Strategy (NHS) in 2027.
CCHR remains steadfast in its call for the federal government, in partnership with other levels of government and civil society, to integrate a human rights-based approach into the renewed NHS and BCH operations. Human rights standards and principles must also be embedded across all housing laws, policies and programs, particularly those related to affordability, security of tenure, accessibility and non-discrimination.