---
title: "Toronto's 2026 federal housing partnership: which of the 18 projects were already announced or under way, and why announced homes cannot be added up"
kind: "Article"
topic: "Housing"
date: "2026-10-18"
url: "https://canopticon.com/articles/torontos-2026-federal-housing-partnership-which-of-the-18-projects"
author: "Chris Telford"
license: "CC BY 4.0"
---
On August 5, 2026, Ottawa and the City of Toronto announced a partnership to unlock 18 projects with more than 5,600 rental homes. Most of those homes were already coming. Checked project by project, 13 of the 18 projects, about 3,800 of the 5,605 homes (about 68%), had been announced by the city or had work under way on site before that date, and about 2,300 of the homes (about 41%) were in projects where demolition, excavation or a groundbreaking had already happened.
None of that makes the federal money fake. The point is narrower and more useful: Construction loans are real, and they may be what kept these projects alive. But the announcements cannot be added up as new supply.
The reason is how the counting works. The city counts a building when it approves and funds it. Ottawa counts it when it lends or grants money to it. The Housing Accelerator Fund counts it when a permit is issued. Each of those counts can rise in a year when fewer homes start construction, and the same stalled projects can be announced again each time a new government puts money in.
## Five ways to count a home, and only one of them is construction
Canadian housing announcements use at least five different units, often reported as if they were the same: money committed, homes "supported" or "unlocked", building permits, construction starts and completions. The second is the one in most headlines, and it is the loosest. A home counts as supported or unlocked if it is part of The full unit count of a project that receives any government money, whether or not the money decided whether the project went ahead.
Toronto's Housing Accelerator Fund agreement shows how far apart these units can drift. When it was signed, the federal government described a $471 million deal that would fast-track nearly 12,000 new housing units over the next three years. The city's own target is 60,980 net new permitted homes between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2026, of which its application estimated about 11,780 would be permits issued above what would otherwise have happened. The federal number and the city number describe the same thing in different words: So the federal figure of nearly 12,000 is an estimate of incremental permits, not housing units built or started.
Permits went well. Toronto reported 22,849 permitted homes in 2024. Starts did not follow. The Parliamentary Budget Officer found Toronto-area starts fell sharply over October 2024 to April 2025 while permits barely moved, and concluded that the city's decline in starts appears to be driven by economic conditions. The design explains the split. The program pays for permits and process reform, which the city controls. Whether a permitted building actually starts depends on presales, financing and interest rates, which the city does not control.
The federal construction-loan programme has the same layers. CMHC describes the Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP) as a $55 billion fund to support more than 131,000 rental homes by 2031–2032; actual loan commitments stood at $29.45 billion for more than 74,600 rental homes as of December 2025. Those are commitments, and CMHC's releases do not say how many committed homes have started or been completed.
## The 18 projects in the August partnership, checked against earlier announcements and site work
The federal backgrounder lists 5,605 homes: 1,885 in nine Build Canada Homes projects on city land, and 3,720 in nine ACLP projects. For each one, [the project-by-project check](doc:announced-vs-started-how-many-of-toronto-s-federally-announced-homes-were-already-coming) looked for an earlier public announcement and for the state of the site on or before August 5, using city releases, developer releases and UrbanToronto's site photography.
| Project | Homes (federal list) | Earlier public record | Physical status before Aug 5, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 72 Perth Ave (ACLP) | 255 | City Rental Housing Supply Program (RHSP) project; zoning approved May 2025 | Groundbreaking May 22, 2026; "Construction is underway" |
| 49 Ontario St, East + West (ACLP) | 1,226 | Dream/CentreCourt rental development | Demolition and excavation since early 2026 |
| Toronto Coach Terminal, 610 Bay + 130 Elizabeth (ACLP) | 827 | City/CreateTO announced Nov 21, 2024: 873 homes, 290 affordable | Excavation under way; crane up by Aug 12, 2026 |
| 1552 Weston Rd (ACLP) | 50 | City list, May 2024: funded, starting construction 2024–2025 | Not established |
| Greencedar Commons, 3379–3385 Lawrence Ave E (ACLP) | 155 | City list, May 2024: funded, starting construction 2024–2025 | Not established |
| 55–75 Brownlow Ave (ACLP) | 733 (incl. 121 replacement units) | Not checked | Not established |
| 7 St. Dennis Dr, Phase 1 (ACLP) | 474 | Not checked | Not established |
| Bloor-Islington (BCH) | 301 | Housing Now Phase One, Jan 2019 | Not established |
| 158 Borough Dr (BCH) | 425 | Housing Now Phase Two, May 2020 | Not established |
| 405 Sherbourne St (BCH) | 301 | Housing Now Phase Two, May 2020; planning permission approved | Not established |
| 150 Queen's Wharf Rd (BCH) | 268 | Housing Now Phase Two, May 2020 | Not established |
| 805 Wellington A, 15 Denison, 1113–1125 Dundas W, C1 Bayside, Parkdale Hub (BCH) | 590 | Not checked | Not established |
caption: Homes in the August 2026 Canada–Toronto partnership, by what had already happened before the announcement
- All homes in the partnership | 5,605 | 100 | #cfc9bb
- In projects already announced or with work under way | 3,808 | 68 | #2f7d52
- In projects past demolition, excavation or groundbreaking | 2,308 | 41 | #2f7d52
note: Both coloured bars are lower bounds: several projects were not traced, and some may also have earlier announcements.
Two cautions keep the tally honest. Demolition and excavation are not necessarily a CMHC "start". CMHC records a start at a defined construction milestone, so site work can come months before the start is counted. And the 121 replacement units at 55–75 Brownlow replace homes that already exist, so they are not net new.
## 72 Perth Avenue: one building, three announcements in ten weeks
On May 22, 2026, the City of Toronto marked the start of construction at 72 Perth Avenue, a 255-home rental building in the Junction Triangle. The city's release credited its Rental Housing Supply Program and about $16.5 million in city capital funding and incentives, including an indefinite deferral of all development charges and a 15% property-tax reduction, and named the Davenport MP, Julie Dzerowicz, among those at the groundbreaking. The developer's release that week said: Construction is underway, with occupancy targeted for 2028.
Ten weeks later the federal backgrounder listed 72 Perth among the projects the partnership would unlock. It gave the building 104 affordable units, while its own note on the project reads: The 51 affordable units required under the Rental Housing Supply Program, will be managed and operated by Woodgreen Community Housing. The city and the developer both say 51. Neither release explains the other 53 units in the federal count. They may carry a separate affordability condition attached to the federal loan at a different rent level, but no public source says so.
## The Coach Terminal and 49 Ontario Street: site work before the announcement
The two biggest ACLP projects were visibly in progress. At 49 Ontario Street, 1,226 homes in two towers, demolition and excavation had been under way since early 2026. The Toronto Coach Terminal had been announced by the city in November 2024 as a 100 per cent purpose-built rental project, delivering 873 new homes including 290 affordable rental homes. The federal list gives it 827 homes and 218 affordable. The design may have changed between 2024 and 2026, but neither government explains why the affordable count fell by 72 between their two announcements. One week after the federal announcement, the site had quickly moved from demolition into construction, with a crane up at 130 Elizabeth.
## Toronto asked for this money in 2024 for projects it had already approved
In May 2024 Toronto's Housing Secretariat proposed $351,515,142 in city capital funding for 18 affordable-rental projects that had been approved under earlier city programs and were stuck. The city expected them to bring more than 2,600 affordable homes and 3,380 market and rent-controlled homes, almost 6,000 in total, into construction in 2024 and 2025. In June 2024 the city asked Ottawa and Ontario for $2.6 billion in low-cost financing and $165 million in funding for those homes.
The August 2026 partnership committed more than $1.8 billion in ACLP financing and more than $310 million from Build Canada Homes, with up to $600 million more in ACLP capacity held back, for 18 projects with more than 5,600 homes. On the check's reading, which it marks as an inference, the size, the project count and the number of homes all closely match the city's 2024 request. The city's 2024 project list is a confidential attachment, so the match cannot be confirmed building by building. 72 Perth is the one overlap documented in public, and two more ACLP projects, 1552 Weston Road and Greencedar Commons, were on the city's separate May 2024 list of funded projects expected to start construction in 2024–2025.
A separate review of federal supply programmes in the Toronto area reached the same worry from the other side, noting that 72 Perth delivers units under the city's own programme. Those homes would then be counted by several governments at once.
## Four Build Canada Homes sites were designated under Housing Now in 2019 and 2020
Housing Now, launched by the city in January 2019, puts affordable housing on City-owned land. Bloor-Islington was in its first phase; 158 Borough Drive, 405 Sherbourne Street and 150 Queen's Wharf Road were added in May 2020. The city's programme page set out a two-to-four-year delivery model and said: Construction on some of the sites is expected to begin in 2022. All four now sit in the Build Canada Homes portfolio, where together they make up 1,295 of its 1,885 Toronto homes, due for substantial completion by March 2031, 11–12 years after designation.
Federal money may be what finally makes these sites work, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer's estimate that Build Canada Homes will add about 2.1% to national completions over five years fits that kind of finishing role. But these homes have been in the city's announced pipeline since 2019–2020, and they are not new to it. The agency was built the same way at the level of programmes: its September 2025 launch release said it would leverag[e] existing resources and expertise within the government's housing toolkit, with a land base drawn from the existing Canada Lands Company portfolio.
“The same pipeline of long-stalled city projects is announced again at each new stage of funding, and each government counts it.”
## CMHC headlines groundbreakings at buildings already under construction
The August partnership is not unusual. CMHC's routine Toronto releases attach loan announcements to buildings already being built. In January 2024 it announced $235.9 million in ACLP loans for 494 rentals at Valhalla Village, 300 The East Mall, and in the same release the developer's spokesperson said Breaking ground at Valhalla Village is a critical first step; the city's May 2024 list put that project among those already under construction. In July 2025 CMHC announced $81.5 million for 159 rentals at 3101 Bathurst and wrote: Construction is underway and expected to be complete by the Fall of 2027. In June 2026 it announced more than $112 million for 217 homes at 383–389 Cleveland Street under the headline Canada announces the groundbreaking of 217 homes in Toronto.
> **Objection: a construction loan is committed before the shovels go in, so the federal money may be the reason these buildings started at all.**
>
> That is right, and it is why none of this shows the money was wasted. The date of an announcement is not the date of the credit decision. CMHC may have committed the loan months before the ribbon-cutting. But the same fact undoes the announcement as evidence of anything: They show that a public announcement tells a reader nothing about whether the federal money was decisive, or when it was committed. Loan commitment dates are not public. The gap is the same across the federal toolkit: on the enhanced GST rental rebate, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it would be impossible to project how many units would be constructed solely due to the federal rebate enhancement. A headline that says "groundbreaking" invites a reader to count the homes as new federal output when that is exactly the thing nobody can show.
## The same building carries different affordable counts, and no ledger connects them
72 Perth Avenue sits in at least two totals at once, and probably three. The city counts it among the more than 44 projects under construction, which will deliver more than 11,000 new homes that it supports, with 51 affordable. Ottawa counts it among the 5,600-plus homes in the partnership, with 104 affordable. Its permits very likely count toward Toronto's 60,980 Housing Accelerator Fund target, since every net new permitted home in the city does, though no public source confirms it for this building.
Nothing lets a reader check. No public ledger links a project's city approvals, federal financing, HAF permit count and CMHC start. The city's project list is confidential, CMHC publishes starts by geography rather than by building, and federal releases name projects without saying whether they have started. So the same building can enter the record as 51 affordable homes or 104, and the same site as 290 or 218.
## Toronto's construction starts, the count that cannot double-count, fell
Adding city "supports", federal "unlocks" and accelerator-fund "fast-tracks" together overstates new supply. The only total that cannot double-count is CMHC's starts, and in the Toronto CMA it went down: 37,718 in 2024, 26,087 in 2025, and 17,397 through September 2026 against 20,129 a year earlier.
Rental is the one segment that grew. Toronto-area rental apartment starts rose 82% in the first half of 2026 and passed condominium starts for the first time since 1994, which CMHC credits to support from government financing programs, municipal incentives and the conversion of some proposed condominium projects to rental housing. Part of that surge is the same projects changing tenure: Urbanation's count of units added to the rental pipeline explicitly includes condo-to-rental application conversions. And it does not make up for what was lost. In CMHC's words, the decline in condominium starts is not offset by the record high number of rental unit starts. The City of Toronto started 156 condominium units in the first half of 2026, against an average of 7,000 a year over the previous decade.
Against that, the partnership promises construction on more than 4,500 homes before the end of 2026, and the backgrounder's own condition applies to the whole package: All of it remains subject to due diligence, underwriting and signed agreements. About 2,300 of the portfolio's homes were already in site work or past groundbreaking by early August, so a large share of that target was effectively met before the announcement. When CMHC's monthly figures for October to December 2026 arrive, they will show whether Toronto starts rise; they will not show how many of the partnership's starts were new.
## Outside Toronto, accelerator-fund payments continue while starts fall
The pattern holds where the money is paid for process rather than buildings. Brampton signed a $114 million Housing Accelerator Fund agreement in October 2023, paid in four annual instalments conditional on meeting its action-plan targets. Using city and Ontario tracker figures, the local outlet The Pointer reports Brampton's starts at 7,028 in 2023, 5,791 in 2024 and 4,759 in 2025, against a provincially assigned pace of 11,300 a year. Mississauga received its third instalment, $28.2 million, bringing its total to more than $84 million, in March 2026; the federal minister said the payment reflects the successful implementation of initiatives outlined in its Housing Action Plan. The PBO's July 2025 review had listed Mississauga among jurisdictions issuing fewer permits than their baseline projections.
Interim instalments appear to be paid for rezonings, incentive programmes and fee changes, and Toronto's agreement ties only the final payment to its permit target. The check reads this as an inference, and the Brampton and Mississauga figures rest on a local news report and a city release republished by the mayor's office. The logic is the same one that splits permits from starts: That design pays for policy change, which governments control, rather than for construction, which they do not.
## A Toronto housing announcement records a financing decision
Read as a record of money, the August partnership is coherent. Ottawa answered, two years late, a request the city made for projects it had already approved, and put its name on buildings at the stage it paid for: some on city land designated in 2019, some already behind hoarding, one with the local MP at its groundbreaking ten weeks earlier. That may well have been the right use of federal credit. Several of these buildings may not have gone ahead without it.
Read as a count of homes, it fails, and so does every total built the same way. The buildings it lists are already in the city's tally of projects it supports, very likely in the city's accelerator-fund permits, and eventually in CMHC's starts. Adding the announcements counts one building several times, sometimes with different numbers of affordable homes each time, and no public record says whether the federal money decided any of them. The words "unlock", "support" and "groundbreaking" describe a government committing money to a building. The number of homes Toronto is actually adding is in CMHC's starts, and through September 2026 that number was still falling.