Toronto Metropolitan University cancels student residence amid housing crunch

As much of Ontario deals with a housing crunch, advocates are questioning a decision made by Toronto Metropolitan University to cancel a long-planned student residence downtown.

“This is the embodiment of what we call lazy land. This is a university-owned surface parking lot in the middle of downtown Toronto. We have a housing crisis, if we’re going to solve our housing crisis we have to provide housing near where people work and we need to turn our surface parking lots into new housing opportunities,” Mark Richardson, the technical lead with the advocacy group HousingNowTO, said.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. If we screw this up now, we screw it up for the next 30 years.”

Richardson took CityNews to the site of the proposed 45-storey complex at the northwest corner of Jarvis Street and Dundas Street East for a tour. Since late 2018, Toronto Metropolitan University has been going through a rezoning process to clear the way for the tower.

According to the school’s website, the property at 202 Jarvis St. would have seen 13 storeys of institution space made up of labs, research spaces, classrooms, offices and retail. A further 29 storeys would have been used to create accommodations for around 570 students.

“In the last two months, all of a sudden, Toronto Metropolitan has decided that they’re going to have to remove the student residence,” Richardson said, leaving him and others scratching their heads.

“If you don’t build those student housing units here, those students don’t disappear. Those students end up competing for rents in these other towers that are going up around us here. They put a lot of additional pressure on the market and they drive up rents.

“The housing situation in Toronto is incredibly stressed at the moment.”

Toronto Centre Councillor Robin Buxton Potts said she supported the proposal.

“It’s an area where land value is going up very quickly,” she told CityNews.

“We thought this was a really great opportunity to help bring more young people into the area, more spaces into the area, really help revitalize.”

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When it comes to the need for housing in the area, she said it’s the top issue her office deals with — noting 70 per cent of the calls deal with housing in one form or another.

“We often hear people that are like, ‘Wait, I think this is a little bit too high,’ and this is the first time in my four years of city council where I’m really hearing from people saying, ‘Holy smokes, why aren’t we building taller? Why aren’t we building more density?” Buxton Potts said.

She went on to say not enough is being done to create homes for post-secondary students, especially for international students.

“They get here and they don’t actually have access to housing and I don’t think international students are being properly counted for in our growth targets,” Buxton Potts said.

CityNews contacted Toronto Metropolitan University multiple times on Wednesday and Thursday to ask for an on-camera interview to discuss the project, but those requests were declined.

However, in a brief statement, officials said they’ve filed an application for a minor variance with the City of Toronto to drop the residence, citing soaring construction costs and a finding that residence spaces could be created cheaper elsewhere.

Richardson questioned if the structure being built to house the classroom spaces could be engineered in a way to allow for further building in the future, but a spokesperson said that won’t be an option under the new design.

A spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities said student housing isn’t funded by the provincial government and that the ministry hasn’t been involved in this particular project.

CityNews also asked for those cost specifics and the other potential residence locations being considered, but responses to those questions weren’t provided.

Meanwhile, there are pleas to reconsider the decision and a push to find a way forward at the Jarvis site, including the exploration of funding from upper levels of government.

“The City can’t compel them to build more housing, but I really do hope the university can take this opportunity to hear some of the feedback,” Buxton Potts said.

“Pause and take a deep breath. You only get one opportunity to do this right,” Richardson added.