Tell City Council to Invest in Housing & Supports

Right now, Mayor Chow and City Council are deciding on the 2024 budget and it’s their opportunity to invest in solutions to help address the housing crisis. We need the Mayor and City Council to be bold to prevent renovictions, protect affordable homes, and provide adequate services to those experiencing homelessness.

Use our petition to send your message to Mayor Chow and your local councillor:

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What is MURA?

MURA is the Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition Program (MURA). 

The City of Toronto MURA Program provides dedicated funding to non-profit and Indigenous housing organizations, including community land trusts, to facilitate the purchase and conversion of at-risk private market rental housing to permanently affordable rental homes. It allows the City to purchase properties to be operated by the non-profit and Indigenous housing sector. MURA also helps to improve the condition of affordable housing acquired. But right now MURA needs more funding.

Prevents Renovictions
Toronto’s housing market is competitive and properties move quickly. MURA allows non-profit organizations in partnership with the City to move fast to purchase affordable housing before it is sold off for redevelopment.

Improve Housing Conditions
Many privately-owned buildings that provide affordable rents across the city are in desperate need of repair. The MURA program can be leveraged to acquire these properties, take them off the market, and transition ownership to non-profit, Indigenous housing organizations, and the City. The program also provides renovation funding to significantly improve housing conditions for existing and future tenants.

Make sure that in 2024, MURA gets more funding:

What are drop-in centres?

Drop-in centres are one of the most popular and utilized services. They provide a welcoming space for those experiencing homelessness during the day—they offer meals, health care, service support, recreation, and more. In 2020 they provided over 1 million meals to those who need them.

While drop-ins are an integral part of an effective homelessness strategy, for nearly a decade their funding has been frozen. That means that they have been expected to provide more services to more people without even inflationary increases to their budget.

That’s why we are calling on the City to increase the funding by $1 million to begin to address the massive gaps in its funding. This increase will support drop-ins to deliver necessary services.

What is the Rent Bank?

Rising rents and increasing unaffordability is causing many people to be behind in their rents. The Toronto Rent Bank is able to provide grants to tenants who are behind in their rents or need help with a rental deposit.

The Rent Bank is an important program that has helped thousands of households avoid eviction. Send your message to the Mayor and your City Councillor calling on them to increase the Rent Bank so it can help 600 more households in 2024:

What is EPIC?

As Toronto’s rents get more expensive, thousands of people are at risk for evictions. Many do not know their rights or where to access information. The City’s Eviction Prevention Intervention in Community (EPIC) program provides resources to tenants to help them navigate appeal processes and negotiate with landlords. Increasing funding for this program to reach more households will prevent evictions and homelessness.