Housing In Toronto Research Articles

A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery

While traditional forms of gentrification involved the conversion of rental units to owner-occupation, a new rental-tenure form of gentrification has emerged across the globe. This is driven by financialization, reduced tenant protections, and declining social-housing production, and is characterized by the replacement of poorer renters with higher-income tenants. Many poorer renters are in turn being displaced out of the inner city and into older suburban neighbourhoods where aging apartment towers had provided a last bastion of affordable accommodation, but which are now also targeted by large rental housing corporations. These dynamics are increasingly dominated by what we call ‘financialized landlords,’ including those owned or run by private equity funds, financial asset management corporations, and real estate investment trusts (REITS). Such firms float securities on domestic and international markets and use the proceeds to purchase older rental buildings charging affordable rents, and then apply a range of business strategies to extract value from the buildings, existing tenants and local neighbourhoods, and flow them to investors. This paper documents this process in Toronto, Canada's largest city and a city experiencing both sustained gentrification and advanced suburban restructuring. The financialization of rental housing in Toronto was enabled by neoliberal state policies to withdraw from social housing, deregulate rental protections, and decontrol rents – creating an affordability crisis for tenants and an opportunity for investors to profit. The paper maps out the history and locations of buildings that have been purchased by various financial investment vehicles, and analyzes the various strategies that such firms have adopted. We document two key strategies for extracting value, which we call squeezing, and gentrification-by-upgrading and show how these two strategies are conceptually and spatially linked in speeding up the restructuring of the social geography of the city.

Sediments of Time: Environment and society in Chinese history

While traditional forms of gentrification involved the conversion of rental units to owner-occupation, a new rental-tenure form of gentrification has emerged across the globe. This is driven by financialization, reduced tenant protections, and declining social-housing production, and is characterized by the replacement of poorer renters with higher-income tenants. Many poorer renters are in turn being displaced out of the inner city and into older suburban neighbourhoods where aging apartment towers had provided a last bastion of affordable accommodation, but which are now also targeted by large rental housing corporations. These dynamics are increasingly dominated by what we call ‘financialized landlords,’ including those owned or run by private equity funds, financial asset management corporations, and real estate investment trusts (REITS). Such firms float securities on domestic and international markets and use the proceeds to purchase older rental buildings charging affordable rents, and then apply a range of business strategies to extract value from the buildings, existing tenants and local neighbourhoods, and flow them to investors. This paper documents this process in Toronto, Canada's largest city and a city experiencing both sustained gentrification and advanced suburban restructuring. The financialization of rental housing in Toronto was enabled by neoliberal state policies to withdraw from social housing, deregulate rental protections, and decontrol rents – creating an affordability crisis for tenants and an opportunity for investors to profit. The paper maps out the history and locations of buildings that have been purchased by various financial investment vehicles, and analyzes the various strategies that such firms have adopted. We document two key strategies for extracting value, which we call squeezing, and gentrification-by-upgrading and show how these two strategies are conceptually and spatially linked in speeding up the restructuring of the social geography of the city.

Chinese elderly in public housing: A challenge for mainstream housing and community service providers

This study documents Chinese seniors' perceptions of access to the services of public housing and community agencies in Metropolitan Toronto, Canada. Interviews were conducted with a random sample of 306 seniors from nine Metro Toronto Housing Company apartment buildings where Chinese elders represented the majority ethnic group. Guided by congruence theory, linguistic and cultural barriers experienced by the Chinese seniors in accessing services were analyzed and their implications were discussed for the design of housing and community programs.

The trigonometry of escher’s woodcut “circle limit III“

During the 1954 International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam, my wife Hendrina introduced me to M. C. Escher, with whom we became close friends. On one of the occasions when he was visiting his son George in Nova Scotia, he gave an illustrated lecture in the Art Gallery of Ontario and spent a few nights with us in our Toronto house. He gave us four original prints; including one of Circle Limit III, which inspired this article, as well as an earlier one. In contrast to the other three Circle Limits (I, II and IV), this employs four colours in addition to black and white, and features arcs which are not orthogonal to the peripheral circle. In an earlier article [1], I used hyperbolic trigonometry for my analysis, but several years later I took up the challenge of using Euclidean trigonometry instead. My former student J. Chris Fisher kindly helped by reducing my expressions for the measurements to calculated numbers that could be compared with the actual print on my staircases wall. At first one of the six measurements seemed to be wrong by a few millimetres. (The diameter of the peripheral circle is 41 cm.) Rather than blame Escher, I asked Chris to check his computation again. When he admitted that the mistake was his, I realized that Escher’s intuition was completely justified. I still find it almost incredible that he, with no knowledge of algebra or trigonometry obtained accurately the centres and radii (r 1, r 2, r 3) of the three different circles to which the three different axes belong.

New Neighbours: A Case Study of Cooperative Housing in Toronto. MATTHEW COOPER and MARGARET CRITCHLOW RODMAN

<i>New Neighbours: A Case Study of Cooperative Housing in Toronto</i>. MATTHEW COOPER and MARGARET CRITCHLOW RODMAN

'Blacks in near‐ghettos?’ black visible minority population in metropolitan Toronto housing authority public housing units

Abstract Concern has been expressed in Toronto since the 1970s about the ‘ghettoisation’ of black tenants in Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority (MTHA) public housing. Very little specific evidence exists, however, about the incidence of blacks in MTHA housing. The objectives of the present study are to provide a more detailed perspective on the incidence of blacks in MTHA housing compared to the rest of Toronto and the segregation of blacks within the MTHA system. The results indicate that the proportion of black tenants in MTHA housing increased from 4.2 per cent in 1971 to 27.4 per cent in 1986, a much greater increase than for blacks in the rest of Toronto. Explanations include the recent black Caribbean immigration to Toronto, income constraints, family composition and supply, cost and discriminatory constraints in Toronto's rental housing market. The evidence also suggests that there is some concentration of blacks within MTHA housing, especially in suburban high rise developments. The most likely explanation is a form of ‘constrained choice’.

"This is Not a Company; It is a Cause": Class, Gender and the Toronto Housing Company, 1912–1920

Historians of public housing have recently drawn attention to the ways in which housing designs are not merely reflections of societal attitudes, but rather, form part of the dominant ideological and political agenda. This article takes its cue from these insights by exploring an early Canadian state-assisted housing venture, the Toronto Housing Company (THC). The purposes, development, layout and internal design ofRiverdale Courts, the major site of the THC endeavour, evolved through the interplay of class-specific and gendered practices, revealing reformers' recognition of the desire to rectify a perceived crisis in social order. The concentration on the quality and internal ordering of workers' homes went beyond purely economic grounds: the ideological role housing could play in regulating social consent was also a pivotal concern. This early case of social reform represents one facet of the state's and the reform movement's increasing engagement with the daily lives of workers through the attempt to shape a proficient, contented and internally-divided workforce.

Local Strategies in Resale Home Financing in the Toronto Housing Market

Most analyses of mortgage lending within cities have provided only a partial view of home finance. In this paper a typology of home finance is developed and the incidence and spatial patterning of home finance types are evaluated for Metropolitan Toronto in 1976-77. The evidence suggests a clear spatial differentiation of home finance types and confirmation of hypothesised relationships between finance types and neighbourhood characteristics. In contrast to many UK and US cities, the availability of privately funded second mortgages allowed undercapitalised buyers, particularly European immigrants, to purchase inner-city housing with relatively low down payments. This was an important factor contributing to the lack of physical decay and abandonment in central Toronto during the period after World War II.

The Uneven Development of Capitalist States: 2. The Struggle for Cooperative Housing

In this paper a Marxist theory of the uneven development of capitalist states is used (presented in the previous paper) to help to explain how changing modes of social regulation through the state have influenced struggles over cooperative housing programmes in postwar Canada. It is argued that this process of regulation constitutes an important facet of state development in specific conjunctures. A second facet of uneven state development is also examined: the production of specific experiences of state regulation within localities. Results from case studies of cooperative housing in Toronto are used to illustrate the role of local political relations in shaping people's experiences of state regulation.

The Sociocultural Production of Urban Space: Building a Fully Accessible Toronto Housing Cooperative

The Sociocultural Production of Urban Space: Building a Fully Accessible Toronto Housing Cooperative

Explaining Local Experiences of State Formation: The Case of Cooperative Housing in Toronto

In this paper a Marxist theory of political reproduction in localities is developed and is used to help to explain recent experiences of state-assisted cooperative housing in Toronto. Different experiences of state formation are linked to changing forms of state regulation, and to the array of political relations and practices concerning housing and redevelopment issues that help to constitute a given locality.

Price Effects of Rent Control on Controlled and Uncontrolled Rental Housing in Toronto: A Hedonic Index Approach

This paper examines the price effects of rent controls with exemptions on rent controlled and non-rent controlled housing in Toronto. A model of rent determination in the controlled and uncontrolled markets is presented. The paper then applies a hedonic pricing technique to develop indices of the uncontrolled rent relative to the controlled rent for standardized sets of housing characteristics. Approximately one-half of the difference in observed rents is attributable to quality differences between markets and one-half to the effect of rent controls.

The Toronto Housing Company, 1912–1923: The Pitfalls of Painless Philanthropy

BY THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, Canadians had come to recognize the urban environment as an organic whole. The city had become, in the words of one contemporary, 'a spider's web pull one thread and you pull every thread. 'x In recognition of the mutual interdependence of city dwellers, an urban reform movement had developed, seeking to assure their health, happiness, and well-being, • One of the many concerns of reformers was that of housing; the unsanitary conditions of slum areas were seen as threats to the health and morals of all city residents. Searching for solutions, Canadian reformers turned to the British model of co-partnership housing, commonly referred to as 'philanthropy and five per cent.' With an emphasis upon the activity of private individuals, referred to by J. Tarn 3 as 'the only way that the newly fledged social conscience, brought up against a strictly laissez-faire background, was able to conceive its role,' the model provided that private investors and prospective tenants would buy shares in a company, using the combined revenue to build homes. The rent paid by tenants covered operating expenses, built equity in their homes, and returned to the non-tenant shareholder a dividend lirated by legislation to four or five per cent. As such dividends were lower than those available on speculative investment, support for the scheme was restricted to investors who were disposed to philanthropy hence the name 'five

House Project

Describing a project in which the artists of the women's collective The House Project produced works for each room of a Toronto house, the group's writers examine each installation of the exhibition in light of the common objective: a revision of the female experience of the private sphere. Biographical notes. 9 bibl. ref.