Today, Mayor Olivia Chow, Council Speaker Frances Nunziata (York South-Weston) and Angus Palmer, General Manager of Wigwamen Inc., announced the purchase of an 11-unit residential building on Hotspur Road and celebrated the purchase and operation of a 12-unit building on Keele Street.
The two sites were acquired through the City’s Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition Program (MURA), which allows non-profit housing providers such as Wigwamen Inc. to quickly acquire affordable rental housing, improve building conditions and protect Toronto’s existing housing stock. These homes will be secured as affordable housing for at least 99 years.
With support from the City and Miziwe Biik Development Corporation (MBDC), Wigwamen Inc. has completed renovations on eight homes at the Keele Street location and anticipates completing renovations on the remaining homes by early 2024. Wigwamen Inc. will also make building improvements at the Hotspur Road site in the coming months.
The City continues to seek opportunities to expand the MURA Program. Immediate additional funding of $22.4 million from other orders of government and philanthropists would enable the City to advance five additional approved proposals, securing 129 more permanently affordable rental homes.
More about the MURA Program
The MURA Program provides funding to not-for-profit housing providers to preserve existing affordable rental housing stock to help achieve the City’s target to approve 47,500 new affordable rental homes, including 18,000 supportive homes and a minimum of 2,500 rent-geared-to-income homes. Since its 2021 launch, the MURA Program has provided funding to not-for-profit agencies to secure approximately 261 permanently affordable homes in neighbourhoods across Toronto.
Twenty per cent of MURA Program homes will be tenanted by households on the City’s Centralized Waiting List for Rent-Geared-to-Income housing, who will be provided with monthly housing benefits.
To further Toronto’s commitment to truth, justice and reconciliation, a minimum of 20 per cent of the annual MURA Program funding allocation is dedicated to support acquisitions by Indigenous housing organizations for Indigenous peoples. Two of the five non-profit housing agencies that received 2023 MURA funding are Indigenous, with proposals representing 33 homes. To date, 30 per cent of MURA Program funding has been allocated to support the acquisition of 45 affordable rental homes by Indigenous housing groups.
SOURCE City of Toronto
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