Karlee Adams, CTV News, Toronto
Today, Toronto city council voted to amend the city’s housing bylaw to allow half a dozen typical rooming houses located along a strip of Toronto’s Jane Street to remain unlicensed.
The move stunned some in the community and added new confusion to a situation that had already spawned more than 100 similar illegal roomsing houses in the city. The specifics of this case — in a neighborhood that, for a long time, had been considered a hotbed of homelessness — prompted many residents to speak out.
A judge blocked Mayor John Tory’s first attempt to legalize the city’s 600 illegal roomsing houses earlier this year, ruling that the city failed to provide good grounds for allowing them to remain unlicensed.
Jill Sandel, associate professor of economics at the University of Toronto, said the mayor’s latest efforts to do away with the problem “were always going to be a losing proposition.” She said voters want the city to invest resources into housing supply and working with property owners to address problems.