Kensington Market parking lot being converted into 78 affordable housing units

A City-owned parking lot in the heart of Kensington Market will soon be the site of 78 new affordable housing units.

“We are having a housing crisis and people are dying on our streets in just sheer desperation,” Mayor Olivia Chow told reporters as she visited the site on Monday.

The proposed building located at 35 Bellevue Avenue will consist primarily of studio and one-bedroom apartments and is just steps away from a parkette where dozens of people are living in tents.

“Some of the folks that are living in Bellevue Square probably are on our waiting list and we would like to build a lot more supportive housing,” Chow added. “We need many, many more projects like this one.”

A second site located in Parkdale at 11 Brock Avenue is also part of the City’s rapid housing initiative. In total, 120 people will be housed between the two developments.

The mayor says this is the first time in several decades that the City has taken on the role of the developer.

“We are now back!” Chow says. “We are now back building and in fact, this is just the beginning.”

The City is also partnering with several organizations, including the Kensington Market Community Land Trust and St. Clare’s Multifaith Housing Society to run the buildings and provide supportive care for future tenants.

Officials say construction on the site will proceed despite the need for more provincial funding. The mayor says the City has requested $12 million a year from the Ford government to help pay for the operating cost at each site.

“What you don’t want is people cycling in and out of housing because each round of homelessness is worse than the last time,” Andrea Adams, executive director of St. Claire’s Multifaith Housing Society, told CityNews Toronto. “You need the support that goes with it for the tenant to be successful.”

The City says the new apartments will be offered to tenants for no more than 30 per cent of their income, with a goal of building 6,000 similar units by the end of the decade.

Currently, more than 26,000 people are in line for supportive housing. Meanwhile, the waitlist for rent-geared-to-income homes is about 90,000 long.

“Things need to move faster undoubtedly,” Dominique Russell, co-chair of the Kensington Market Community Land Trust, said. “I think if we look at the problem of how many people are on the waitlist, it’s an insurmountable problem, but the solution is going to be one sliver at a time, one community at a time.”

Constructions on these sites will begin in the coming months and the building in Kensington Market should be move-in ready by the fall of 2025.