Planning and Housing Committee approves more affordable housing and density for “Villiers Island."
UPDATE: City Council approved more density and affordable housing for "Villiers Island" on June 27th, 2024.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TORONTO - A groundbreaking plan to add density and build more affordable housing on Toronto’s future island waterfront community took a big step forward today.
The Planning and Housing Committee approved a series of staff proposals to add the needed density to support an increased affordable housing target for "Villiers Island", the working name for the island being built as part of the Port Lands Flood Protection Project, to 30 per cent.
This comes after extensive resident feedback and many years of work by Councillor Fletcher: “This milestone is exciting and a long time coming” said Fletcher. “Everyone should be able to afford to live on our transformed waterfront, not just the wealthy.”
The updated plan will see increases of up to 2,700 affordable units and 9,000 overall housing units. This would support 15,000 residents, 6,500 more than originally planned for “Villiers Island”, which will receive a permanent Indigenous name later this year.
To achieve these increases, the net density level would be boosted to 7.7 island-wide, 60 per cent more than the 2017 Villiers Island Precinct Plan.
More density is required to meet an increased affordable housing target and allow for a truly mixed community of co-operative, rent-geared-to-income, seniors and mid-range rental housing in the Port Lands.
“This groundbreaking, community-supported plan leverages city-owned land and forward-thinking planning policies to create much-needed purpose-built affordable housing on this impressive new waterfront site" added Fletcher.
The plans for the transformed Port Lands and our new island community come after a decade of consultations and extensive public buy-in. This includes three consultation sessions in the last year on the increased density and affordable housing targets approved today.
The increased density and affordable housing targets will go before City Council on June 26th for final approval.
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