• The west side of Allen Road could do with some linear apartment buildings to buffer this area from the noise of Wilson Subway Yard - given that's TTC/City land, shouldn't be an issue to add that, right? Also would help to urbanise Allen Road, too
Existing arterials, if they will remain arterials, should not necessarily be targets to be urbanized. It's fine for roads to be roads. If there is no need for fast through traffic, that's fine. Otherwise, we should be looking for other streets to be urban and leave Allen to be a road. As it stands, there is very little that accesses Allen directly in that stretch, and that's as it should be.
 
Existing arterials, if they will remain arterials, should not necessarily be targets to be urbanized. It's fine for roads to be roads. If there is no need for fast through traffic, that's fine. Otherwise, we should be looking for other streets to be urban and leave Allen to be a road. As it stands, there is very little that accesses Allen directly in that stretch, and that's as it should be.
Also it's a little overkill in my view adding another three signalized intersections in that area.
 
Interviewed for a NRU Toronto article today - "Adjusting for Affordability: Could Allen East District Accommodate More Density?"


“We would like the city to be looking at this large transit-oriented site with 2021 eyes, which means looking at it in the context of Downsview Airport closing in 2023, so those height limits caused by the runway area likely won’t exist past 2023,” Richardson told NRU. “Putting the residential lands into the Housing Now program rather than the old [Build Toronto] model means you’re leasing the land for 99 years and you’re guaranteeing at least a third of the units are affordable rental.”

 
As passed yesterday at NYCC - "City Council to request the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to consult with CreateTO and the Housing Secretariat to consider bringing the Housing Now Initiative's affordable housing model to a section of the Apartment Neighbourhood and Mixed Use Neighbourhood during Allen District Plan's phases 2 and 3."

NOTE : The language was pretty weak at NYCC - but we will try to get more TEETH (and more LAND) included when it goes to full-council in a couple of weeks...

LINK - http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2021.NY25.6

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The language was pretty weak at NYCC - but we will try to get more TEETH (and more LAND) included when it goes to full-council in a couple of weeks...
Why was the language so weak, given that it’s widely acknowledged that Toronto is facing an affordability crisis (even if people don’t agree on solutions?)
 
Why was the language so weak, given that it’s widely acknowledged that Toronto is facing an affordability crisis (even if people don’t agree on solutions?)
...because the Chair of NYCC is also the Local Councillor for that Ward... and the folks from the Banting Park Homeowners' Association and Bathurst Manor Action Group will be local-voters in the OCTOBER 24, 2022 Council seat elections - but nobody hoping to live in the Allen East district will be...
 
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As passed yesterday at NYCC - "City Council to request the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to consult with CreateTO and the Housing Secretariat to consider bringing the Housing Now Initiative's affordable housing model to a section of the Apartment Neighbourhood and Mixed Use Neighbourhood during Allen District Plan's phases 2 and 3."

NOTE : The language was pretty weak at NYCC - but we will try to get more TEETH (and more LAND) included when it goes to full-council in a couple of weeks...

LINK - http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2021.NY25.6

View attachment 330171
Will the additional recommendation push CreateTO for more affordable housing? Right now the plan is something like 300 out of 3,500 units would be affordable. Less than 9% seems pretty low for City-owned land.
 
Will the additional recommendation push CreateTO for more affordable housing? Right now the plan is something like 300 out of 3,500 units would be affordable. Less than 9% seems pretty low for City-owned land.
Yeah, that is the PROBLEM that we are trying to correct. All of the current ALLEN LAND policy pre-dates the HOUSING NOW program (Jan. 2019).

From our letter (and deputation) to NYCC this week.

We would ask this Council to direct CreateTO to consider all of the residential-lands in the Allen East District for inclusion into the Mayor’s HOUSING NOW program for City-owned lands to ensure that the following criteria are applied to these lands –
  • All residential and mixed lands are leased for redevelopment for 99-years, not sold.
  • Require that a minimum 1/3rd of total-units are developed as Affordable-Rental.
  • Period of required-affordability on the Affordable-Rental units is 99-years.
The motion from NYCC is not very "firm", lots of wiggle-room in words like request, consult, consider, etc. Our goal is to get ALL of the Residential lands included - including Phase-1 "Neighbourhood" lands, and to apply all those HOUSING NOW policies above to the lands.
 
The Deputy Mayor for Housing fixed some of the Weak-Language at Council to give Staff and Local-Councillor(s) less "wiggle room"...


Hopefully, we can expect some kind of Mayoral announcement there BEFORE next next round of elections, just to "lock-in" those 50+ acres of City-Owned lands for the HOUSING NOW program.
 
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