Last week Bill 7, Promoting Affordable  Housing Act, 2016, passed third reading and received Royal Assent.  Bill 7 is part of the government’s Long‑Term Affordable Housing Strategy.

The province’s news release describes Bill 7 as a way to increase the supply of affordable housing and modernize social housing in the following four ways:

• By giving municipalities the option to implement inclusionary zoning, which requires affordable housing units to be included in residential developments;
• By making secondary suites such as above-garage apartments or basement units in new homes less costly to build, by exempting them from development charges. Secondary suites are a potential source of affordable rental housing and allow homeowners to earn additional income;
• By giving local service managers more choice in how they deliver and administer social housing programs and services to reduce wait lists and make it easier for people in Ontario to access a range of housing options;
• By encouraging more inclusive communities and strengthening tenant rights by preventing unnecessary evictions from social housing and creating more mixed-income housing; and
• By gathering data about homelessness in Ontario by requiring service managers to conduct local enumeration of those who are homeless in their communities, so that Ontario can continue to work towards its goal of ending chronic homelessness by 2025.

The bill was passed, but not everyone is thrilled with it and the sticking point seems to be the inclusionary zoning option.  (Regular readers of our blog will know that inclusionary zoning is an approach that we’re interested in and something we’ve blogged about before.)   At Tuesday’s debate, the NDP’s Percy Hatfield expressed the concerns of Toronto Councillor and strong housing advocate, Ana Bailao, and of the co‑op sector’s Harvey Cooper.  Both are worried that as it’s presented, inclusionary zoning will force municipalities to make hard choices between housing and other community improvements like daycare and parks, so called “section 37 benefits” .    As inclusionary zoning will be optional for municipalities, time will tell what the uptake is and where it is adopted, how effective it is as a tool to expand the affordable housing stock.

More immediately though for our clients, Bill 7 amends the Residential Tenancies Act to clarify that neither a landlord nor a non‑profit housing co‑op can give an eviction notice “on the ground that the member has ceased to be eligible for, or has failed to take any step necessary to maintain eligibility for, rent-geared-to-income assistance as defined in section 38 of the Housing Services Act, 2011.”  These amendments, in force immediately, are found in the RTA at section 58(3) (for landlords) and section 94.2(3) (for housing co‑ops).