Statement By Eric Mariglia, Director of Public Affairs
Toronto, ON – WoodGreen Community Services welcomes the Government of Ontario’s announcement that the City of Toronto will receive $114 million in funding through the Building Faster Fund.
WoodGreen is pleased to see that this investment will help stimulate the development of more housing. We call on the City of Toronto to ensure that some of this investment will help support WoodGreen and other non-profit housing providers to develop affordable housing for low-income and vulnerable populations including seniors, essential workers, newcomers, youth, individuals with disabilities, psychiatric survivors, and people with long histories of homelessness.
We look forward to working with the City of Toronto to accelerate the supply of affordable housing. While we applaud these actions, much more still must be done to speed up and scale new affordable housing supply in Ontario and Toronto.
WoodGreen continues to call for an Affordable Housing Equity Fund. Despite WoodGreen’s significant successes in developing affordable units, WoodGreen and non-profits require upfront capital to launch feasible development plans for affordable housing projects.
WoodGreen looks forward to continuing to work with all levels of government to introduce further solutions and models that will accelerate affordable housing supply.
WoodGreen — with close to 1,500 deeply affordable housing units — is one of Toronto’s largest non-municipal affordable housing providers, offering safe and affordable homes to seniors, newcomers, youth, individuals with disabilities and people with a long history of homelessness. Our organization has an ambitious plan to own and/or manage 3,000 units within the next ten years.
ABOUT WOODGREEN COMMUNITY SERVICES (woodgreen.org): WoodGreen is one of the largest social service agencies in Toronto, serving 37,000 people each year. We offer over 75 programs and services tackling the social determinants that affect the health and well-being of individuals in our community.
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For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact: Jen Mayville, Senior Communications Manager; [email protected]; (437) 226-8091 (cell).