Toronto 2026 issue

Housing

Homes, affordability, supply, renter protections, and homelessness.

Issue explainer

A plain-language explainer for this issue will appear here once editors add the long description in Payload.

Candidate answers

councillor

Chiara Padovani

What specific housing action would you advocate for in your ward and at council?

In the ward, I'd champion legalizing multiplexes as-of-right on every residential street, full stop, and pair it with a fast-track approval stream so a fourplex doesn't take longer to permit than a subdivision. At council, I'd advocate for the city to use its own land first: surplus parking lots and underused civic properties should go to non-profit and co-op housing providers at below-market lease rates before anything else. We can't subsidize our way out of this crisis, but we can stop making it illegal to build the missing middle.