Dr. Peter Warrian, Chair Wellesley Institute, the Board of Directors, and Rick Blickstead, CEO, are pleased to announce that Toronto’s newest park located on the former site of the Wellesley Central Hospital has been designated by Toronto City Council as the “Wellesley Magill Park”. It honours the hospital’s men and…
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Ontario to Toronto: No quick sell-off of TCHC homes will be allowed
…has been growing steadily since the former Ontario public housing stock was downloaded to the City of Toronto a decade ago without adequate capital reserves. The Mayor doesn’t mention in his letter that the wait list for affordable housing in Toronto, including TCHC homes, has set a new record every…
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Toronto City Council Debates Equitable Access to Good Health and Health Care for Uninsured Residents
City Council will be considering recommendations from the Toronto Board of Health regarding health care for uninsured residents of Toronto. We and a number of progressive health care providers and researchers had appeared before the Board to support a Toronto Public Health Report. Uninsured populations currently face serious and damaging…
Winter in Toronto is not an emergency: why treat it like one?
![TTC Street Car in the stormy winter weather](https://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Screen-Shot-2016-12-19-at-10.29.13-AM-750x300.png)
Winter is finally here and city services and non-profit agencies prepare for an influx of people seeking shelter from harsh weather. Toronto’s Cold Weather Plan lays out a number of different options for ensuring that Toronto’s most vulnerable residents are protected from the health impacts of cold weather. These include…
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TO adopts housing plan! Next step: Inclusionary housing plan to require affordable homes in new developments
Toronto City Council caught up with hundreds of other Canadian and US cities earlier today and adopted a 10-year affordable housing plan called Housing Opportunities Toronto. Overall, the plan is projected to cost $483.7 million and is expected to provide practical support to 257,700 households. The Wellesley Institute launched our…
TCHC dollars and sense: Calculating costs of selling off 22 affordable homes
Toronto Community Housing Company’s one-man board – Case Ootes – meets Wednesday to consider a plan to sell 22 of the city housing agency’s scattered homes and possibly replace a handful of them with rent supplements in the private rental market. While a member of Toronto City Council, Ootes expressed…
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November 13 Event Speakers Announced
![Cityscape with making the connections icons on top](https://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Detailed-Twitpic-e1445970585156-750x300.jpg)
…Leisure. He was a Massey College Canadian Journalism Fellow in 2011-2012 and was the Toronto Public Library’s non-fiction writer in residence in 2013. Vanessa Ling Yu is the Founder of FoodSpokes, a startup addressing food system challenges, which now incubates caterToronto. caterToronto’s mixed-model composition includes 25 community-based caterers representing over…
Big win at TO Exec Committee on panhandling…
…re-double its efforts to ensure that there is adequate housing and services for those who need it. We’ve noted in our municipal budget submission that Toronto needs to ramp up its spending on housing and services, needs to re-double its efforts to convince senior levels of government to renew critical…
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Ensuring healthy housing: is enforcement enough?
![For rent sign on a lawn](https://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Screen-Shot-2017-03-22-at-8.32.05-PM-750x300.png)
…Toronto Renovates program offered forgivable loans for health, safety and accessibility upgrades to rooming houses, as long as properties maintained an affordable rental rate for 15 years. From 2014-2016, the Hi-RIS pilot program offered low-interest loans to owners of high-rise properties to help them fund energy and water conservation upgrades,…
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Public housing investments – generating jobs and other social / economic benefits
…(2003): “The severe shortage of affordable housing is one of the major issues facing the city. It is a longstanding concern of the Toronto Board of Trade and a key component of the Board’s call for a new deal for Toronto. In June 2000, the Board released Building Solutions to…
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