TORONTO — The teardown trend in Toronto's rental stock now has numbers attached to it. New data is revealing how many rental buildings and units across the city have been approved for demolition, and organizers are calling on city councillors to act, according to CTV News Toronto reporting on Tuesday.
For tenants, a demolition approval is not an abstract planning file. It can mean the loss of some of the city's remaining comparatively affordable homes, in a market where replacement rentals are routinely built at far higher rents. Organizers say the wave of applications shows the issue is no longer a handful of isolated sites but a pattern running across neighbourhoods.
The call lands in the middle of a municipal election campaign in which housing has been a central fight, with the mayoral race tightening in its final week. Candidates have traded competing promises on homes and jobs, and the demolition figures give tenant advocates fresh ammunition to press every candidate — and every sitting councillor — on what protections displaced renters should have.
City rules on rental demolition and conversion are meant to balance new supply against the loss of existing homes, but advocates argue enforcement and replacement requirements have not kept pace with the volume of applications. The new data, they say, is the baseline the next council should be judged against.
