Rental regime change and the geography of poverty in Toronto, 1971–2006

Abstract

Explanations of urban segregation by income must look to the housing system, alongside local factors. In welfare capitalist countries, the respective roles of private and social rental cannot be assumed. This study draws on policy literature as well as census and administrative data to explain how a shifting housing policy and market regime shaped the evolving segregation of low-income renters in Greater Toronto, 1971-2006. A huge postwar private-rental apartment building sector, and greatly expanding social housing, almost equally shaped this geography. The postwar regime created a ‘mixed economy of rental’, mixed-income suburbs, and two decades of sustained central-city mix despite gentrification. Social housing at 10-12 percent of total housing production—departing from long-run trends in liberal-welfare Canada—absorbed half of low-income demand, with large mitigating impacts on neighbourhood change. After 1980, neoliberal trends of declining rental incomes and production directly fed more segregation, inner-suburban ‘decline’, and less-mixed outer suburbs. Spatial patterns arose from distinctive national and local influences as well as reflecting international trends. The study confirms the significance of metropolitan growth in small-area trends, and of dispersed rental production in spatial income mix. The findings have relevance internationally in contexts of mixed social and private rental systems and surging ‘built-to-let’ production.