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A recent federal housing decision is raising concerns among Toronto Metropolitan University students and recent graduates about access to affordable housing near campus.
The concern follows a Jan. 16 announcement, during which the federal government said it is cutting $10 million from Toronto’s Housing Accelerator Fund after city council failed to allow city-wide sixplex zoning without restrictions.
“When the federal government cuts housing funding, it just feels like students are getting pushed away even more,” said Eliza Cerda, a fourth-year biology TMU student. “We already can’t afford to live near campus, so hearing about decisions that slow down affordable housing just makes it feel like we aren’t being considered at all.”
Toronto signed the Housing Accelerator Fund agreement in 2023, which allocated $471.1 million to help the city speed up the review and approval of new housing developments, aiming to build 60,980 new homes over three years.
The federal government has previously warned Toronto that failing to meet the terms of the agreement could result in reduced funding. In a letter sent to Mayor Olivia Chow last March, then federal housing minister Nathaniel Erskine-Smith said Ottawa could withhold funding if key commitments were not met.
The federal government repeated that message after city council voted on sixplexes.
“As previously stated, I will underscore the possibility of reduced funding if the City of Toronto does not present solutions that ensures the spirit of the agreement is met,” Housing Minister Gregor Robertson wrote in a July 21, 2025 letter to Chow.
While sixplexes are technically permitted across Toronto, the federal government has said cities are expected to expand as-of-right zoning to meet the terms of the Housing Accelerator Fund.
That’s “a key federal expectation,” Robertson’s letter noted. “Our expectation is that larger cities facing greater housing supply challenges would go further, like what we have seen in Vancouver and Edmonton.”
According to David Amborski, a professor emeritus at TMU’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, the funding reduction and the city’s sixplex decision both affect the potential supply of affordable housing.
“There are two aspects to this issue,” Amborski said. “The additional $10 million could have been used to increase the supply of affordable housing. Therefore, losing it will have an impact, not necessarily large, on the supply of affordable housing.”
Amborski said the city’s decision not to expand sixplex zoning city-wide also limited opportunities to add new affordable units.
“The fact that the city didn’t expand its sixplex policy eliminated the potential for the number of affordable units to be provided via this change in policy, again reducing the potential to increase the supply of affordable housing,” he said.
Other housing researchers have also pointed to the scale of the funding reduction when assessing its potential impact.
Carolyn Whitzman, an adjunct professor and senior housing researcher at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, said the $10 million cut represents a small portion of Toronto’s overall Housing Accelerator Fund allocation.
“The very minor cut to the HAF allocation to Toronto ($461 vs. $471 million) shouldn’t have a huge impact on anything and is entirely generous by the federal government, given that the City of Toronto didn’t do what it was supposed to do in return for the funding,” Whitzman said via email.
Housing costs continue to affect post-secondary students across Toronto. More than 350,000 post-secondary students are enrolled across the city, and many are struggling to find affordable housing, according to a City of Toronto strategy report from March 2025.
“Students aren’t looking for luxury condos, we’re looking for places like sixplexes and smaller apartments that are close to campus and transit,” said Cerda, the TMU student.
A new report released on Jan. 20 by consumer insights group Studenthaus also shows a gap between student rent in Toronto and the rest of the country. The findings show that TMU students pay an average of $1,640 per month for housing, compared with a national student average of $1,146 — making Toronto among the most expensive cities for post-secondary renters.
In a survey of 3,950 Ontario university students from March 2025 by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, almost 80 per cent said they were worried about having enough money to complete their education.
For some recent graduates, those pressures have already shaped their academic plans.
“I was going to stay in Toronto to get my master’s, but once I added up all the tuition and rent, it just wasn’t happening,” said Matthew Martin, who graduated from TMU last fall.
“Even if I was working part-time, there would’ve been no way I could afford both school and housing without taking on a huge amount of debt,” he said.
Martin said the funding cut feels like another barrier for students and recent graduates already struggling with housing costs.
“When funding gets pulled from housing that’s supposed to increase supply, it feels like students and recent grads are being pushed out of the city,” he said.
“Affordable options near campus are already limited, so cuts like this just make it harder to imagine staying in Toronto to continue your education.”
No AI tools were used in the production of this piece.
