Housing starts and pipeline in Toronto
Receipt . Last reviewed 2026-05-07 . Next review 2026-06-07
“Year over year, as recently as September, we're down 81% in terms of housing starts in the city.”
Brad Bradford, Toronto City Councillor (Beaches-East York), 2026 mayoral candidate, Sync or Swim Podcast Episode 89, 2025-02-12.source.retrieved 2026-05-04
“We are now effectively shovels down on projects here in this City of Toronto, no housing starts.”
Brad Bradford, Toronto City Councillor (Beaches-East York), 2026 mayoral candidate, Sync or Swim Podcast Episode 89, 2025-02-12.source.retrieved 2026-05-04
“The City's bold decision to waive costs for builders is a tremendous success. Over 7,000 units of rental housing are being approved.”
Olivia Chow, Mayor of Toronto, 2024-12-17.source.retrieved 2026-05-04
The receipt
The mayoral race is forming around two competing reads of Toronto's homebuilding record. Bradford argues that starts have collapsed and that the city is, in his words, "shovels down." Chow points to a rental incentives program that produced thousands of approvals after development charges were waived. The CMHC, City of Toronto, and federal housing data offer a way to test both claims. The receipt below tracks starts, approvals, completions, and the affordable pipeline against the verbatim record.
Exhibit 1.Toronto CMA housing starts collapsed in 2025, falling well below 2024 levels.
Bradford's directional claim is supported by full-year CMHC data. Toronto CMA starts in centres of 10,000 or more population fell from 37,718 units in 2024 to 26,087 units in 2025, a 31 percent year-over-year decline. The slump was driven by a roughly 60 percent drop in condominium apartment starts as investor demand pulled back. Bradford's specific "81 percent" figure refers to a single month (September 2024 versus September 2023) cited on Feb 12, 2025, not the full annual figure, so it overstates the trailing twelve-month picture even as the directional finding holds.
2024 starts 37,718 units; 2025 starts 26,087 units; YoY change -31 percent (CMHC, all Toronto CMA centres 10,000+).
T1CMHC, "Housing starts up 5.6% in 2025 from 2024," news release, January 2026 (link)
Caveat.CMA boundaries include municipalities outside the City of Toronto. Monthly figures are volatile. December 2025 starts were up 151 percent versus December 2024, signalling some late-year momentum.
As of 2026-01-31
Exhibit 2.Per-capita homebuilding in Toronto in 2025 fell to its lowest level in nearly three decades.
CMHC reports that on a per-capita basis, Toronto's homebuilding activity fell to its lowest point since 1996, and Toronto reached the lowest per-capita level among the seven largest Canadian CMAs in the first half of 2025. This anchors Bradford's broader supply argument while complicating any "things are fine" narrative.
Lowest per-capita starts since 1996 (Toronto CMA, H1 2025); ranked last among 7 largest CMAs on per-capita starts.
T1CMHC, "Slowdown in Toronto, Vancouver leave national housing starts flat in first half of 2025," 2025-09-09 (link)
Caveat.Per-capita comparisons depend on the population denominator chosen (CMA versus city). The slump is concentrated in condo apartments, not in purpose-built rental.
As of 2025-09-30
Exhibit 3.Chow's claim that the rental incentives stream "approved" over 7,000 units understates one window of activity but maps to a larger, separate funnel.
The City received 75 applications proposing more than 32,600 new rental homes (including more than 7,400 affordable rental homes) under the Purpose-Built Rental Housing Incentives stream. As of the December 17, 2024 release, council action was advancing roughly 7,000 net new rental homes through the first round. The program's stated cap is 20,000 new rental homes, of which a minimum of 4,000 must be affordable, with construction targeted to start by the end of 2026. So Chow's claim is true at the program-tranche level (roughly 7,000 approved), and the broader pipeline of applications is much larger.
75 applications proposing 32,600+ rental units (7,400+ affordable); approximately 7,000 units approved in initial council action; 20,000-unit program cap.
T1City of Toronto / Mayor's Office, "City of Toronto unlocks more than 7,000 net new rental homes through purpose-built rental housing incentives stream," 2024-12-17 (link)
Caveat."Approved" and "incentivized" are not the same as "started" or "completed." Construction must still begin, and CMHC start data does not yet reflect the full impact of these incentives.
As of 2024-12-31
Exhibit 4.Toronto's affordable pipeline is producing a measurable, but modest, number of completed homes per year.
The City completed 632 affordable homes in 2024 and projects roughly 863 affordable rental and rent-geared-to-income homes by the end of 2025. Nearly 1,000 new affordable homes started construction in 2024. As of end of 2024, the City reports it has approved nearly 30,000 new rent-controlled homes, equal to about 46 percent of its 10-year HousingTO target. City-led and supported projects accounted for 65 percent of housing starts from January through August 2025.
632 affordable homes completed (2024); approx. 863 expected (2025); approx. 1,000 affordable starts (2024); 30,000 rent-controlled units approved against a 65,000 target (46 percent); 65 percent of Jan to Aug 2025 starts city-led or supported.
T1City of Toronto, "Unlocking affordable housing: City of Toronto provides annual progress update on Housing Action Plans," 2025-10-30 (link)
Caveat."Approved" units are not yet built. The 65 percent figure reflects the collapse of private condo starts, which mechanically inflates the public share. Targets in the HousingTO 2020 to 2030 plan and the 2022 to 2026 Action Plan use different baselines.
As of 2025-10-31
Exhibit 5.Toronto's inclusionary zoning regime, intended to secure affordable units near transit, was approved in 2025 and then paused by the province.
On August 15, 2025, the Province approved 110 of 132 Major Transit Station Areas and Protected Major Transit Station Areas adopted by Toronto Council in 2022, activating inclusionary zoning in 89 PMTSAs. Developers in those areas were required to deliver up to 5 percent of units (or floor area) as affordable for 25 years. On January 29, 2026, Ontario filed Regulation 15/26, which paused IZ implementation in Toronto until July 1, 2027. Net IZ-secured units realized by mid-2026 are therefore close to zero.
89 PMTSAs activated August 15, 2025; up to 5 percent affordable requirement, 25-year affordability period; provincial pause to July 1, 2027 (Ont. Reg. 15/26).
T1City of Toronto staff report, "Major Transit Station Areas and Protected Major Transit Station Areas"; corroborating Stikeman Elliott, "Inclusionary Zoning Takes Effect in Parts of Toronto" (link)
Caveat.The provincial pause is outside the Mayor's authority. Pre-pause IZ secured-unit counts have not yet been reported in detail.
As of 2026-02-28
Exhibit 6.Toronto trailed Montreal in 2025 starts and posted the worst per-capita performance among Canada's largest CMAs.
While Toronto starts fell 31 percent year-over-year in 2025, Montreal posted a roughly 58 percent annual increase, supported by record purpose-built rental starts. Vancouver was flat at about minus 3 percent and saw a 13.4 percent drop in condo starts in H1 2025. Toronto ranked last on per-capita starts among the seven largest CMAs in H1 2025.
2025 YoY starts: Toronto -31 percent; Montreal +58 percent; Vancouver -3 percent. Toronto ranked 7 of 7 on per-capita starts (H1 2025).
T1CMHC, monthly housing starts release, January 2026; CMHC H1 2025 release (link)
Caveat.City-to-city comparisons mask differences in product mix, land supply, provincial policy, and pre-existing pipelines. Montreal's rental boom is partly attributable to federal Apartment Construction Loan Program flows and Quebec's distinct cost structure.
As of 2026-01-31
What the data cannot settle
Whether Bradford's proposed 25 percent cut to development charges would, on its own, reverse the condo-side collapse, since CMHC attributes the drop primarily to investor demand and project feasibility, not municipal fees alone. Whether Chow's "city as developer" approach can scale beyond the current CreateTO sites (11 Brock, 35 Bellevue, 494 unit midtown project, 448 unit Mount Dennis project) at the pace required to hit a 25,000 rent-controlled unit target. The realized (built and occupied) yield of inclusionary zoning, given the provincial pause.