TORONTO — A handful of Toronto community groups buying properties across the city in an effort to keep rents low say the upcoming municipal election could determine whether they’re able to secure thousands more units in the years to come as the ongoing demand for housing shifts focus.

The groups, called community land trusts, say the October election marks an opportunity to lock down — and ideally boost — funding for a municipal program that allows them and other non-profits to buy at-risk rental buildings and keep them affordable for residents.

The multi-unit residential acquisition program launched in 2022 with $10 million in funding, a sum that has since increased tenfold to $100 million.

Community land trusts are now calling on city council to double that amount to $200 million, which they say would allow the city and their organizations to collectively preserve 4,000 units over four years.

They’re also urging officials to rally behind another proposed program that would provide grants to help communities facing displacement due to gentrification as well as the loss of culture that often follows. The proposed cultural districts program is set to go before city council this month.

But approval is only the first step, the groups say; the next fight will be getting funding for the program and ensuring communities have a hand in determining the type of initiatives it supports.

Anyika Mark, managing director of the Little Jamaica Community Land Trust that focuses on Eglinton Avenue West, said that if the mayor and council champion the cultural districts program, she believes organizations such as hers “can make leaps and bounds over the next few years.”

Housing is a perennial concern in Canada’s most populous city, with both its availability and affordability emerging as key issues in the last municipal election and the mayoral byelection that followed a year later.

This time, housing itself may not take centre stage, but rather its role in the overall affordability crisis, said Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute and professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto.

That’s partly because the housing market has shifted since then, the professor said. Rents have started coming down a bit, and there’s “less frenzy” in the market than there was three years ago, he said.

“It feels like housing is always there as one of the key parts of the story but I think actually there’s been a sharper focus on the type of housing we need,” he said.

Market housing is privately priced, with costs rising and falling based on supply and demand, while non-market housing is subsidized or regulated, with rents tied to residents’ incomes rather than market forces, he said.

“There’s a growing recognition that while we absolutely need an increase in the total supply of housing … market housing is not going to be the fix for all of our housing challenges and that there is a growing role for the non-market sector,” Siemiatycki said.

Community land trusts are part of the non-market sector, acquiring properties to serve community needs rather than generate profit, and preserving spaces for residents and businesses.

About a dozen of the member-run organizations are now operating or in the process of forming in Toronto, more than in any other Canadian city, according to the The Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts.

Each group serves distinct needs based on its neighbourhood, they say. The Little Jamaica land trust led by Mark, for instance, emerged in response to the 15-year Eglinton Avenue light rail project, which drove out many of the area’s Afro-Caribbean businesses and residents.

Still, the organizations share a common goal: ending the displacement of community members through publicly supported, community-owned land.

“To acquire or rent a building takes about six months, and we get permanently affordable housing. To build a new rental building takes three to five years and costs double, sometimes triple as much,” said Joshua Barndt, director of strategy and portfolio development for the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust.

“We don’t need new things. We need the existing working programs to be adequately funded,” he said.

Land trusts are not opposed to building new affordable housing.

Last November, the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust was chosen by the city to develop a planned building with 175 rental units and community space in the west-end neighbourhood.

“It just shows that community land trusts are here to respond to the crisis,” Barndt said.

The groups also want to see the next wave of elected officials communicate more effectively with residents about the availability of funding, including with messaging in the languages communities actually use.

In the lead-up to the Oct. 26 vote, the organizations plan to meet with mayoral and council candidates to ensure they understand the challenges communities face and what supporting housing alternatives in each area would look like if they were elected.

“We are helping the city deliver on its responsibility to house its citizens and protect neighbourhoods,” said Dominique Russell, co-director of the Kensington Market Community Land Trust.

“We’re really hoping that whoever forms the next government will see us as partners and help us navigate this bureaucracy,” Russell said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2026.

Monique Kasonga, The Canadian Press