Roughly 33,000 Torontonians in need of affordable housing have been granted a reprieve after concerns were raised about people losing their spot on the rent-geared-to-income (RGI) wait list if they didn’t sign up for the city’s new online system by the end of the month.
On Thursday morning, the city’s Planning and Housing Committee voted unanimously in favour of supporting a motion by chair Coun. Gord Perks to re-evaluate several changes to the RGI application system, most notably moving the Sept. 30 MyAccesstoHousingTO registration deadline to Jan. 31, 2024.
The motion called for council’s endorsement of a two-year grace period for non-registered individuals so that the day on which they last applied for RGI housing is maintained. Perks’ motion also included a provision to extend this timeframe, as needed, so that no one seeking and entitled to RGI housing loses their spot on the waiting list.
He went on to say that Toronto “lost a generation’s work” when the federal and provincial governments “essentially stepped out of the housing game” in the 1990s, and that the consequences of that are being felt today. A long-time outreach worker in downtown Toronto who works directly with highly vulnerable people, Cook raised concerns about the new system’s “digital divide” as many of the community members he serves don’t have consistent access to a cell phone or internet.
Lastly, advocates charged that there has been an insufficient effort to reach the “most vulnerable applicants on the RGI waiting list as letters are “likely not reaching people who have moved in the many years that they have been waiting, or who have no fixed address.”
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