An actually affordable housing project is rising in a former Kensington Market parking lot

Housing advocates have just secured a small victory in the ongoing battle to keep Kensington Market for everyone. Construction is officially underway on a new affordable complex at the site of a former Green P parking lot just north of Bellevue Square Park. Scheduled for completion in the fall of 2026, it will add 78 units to the neighbourhood, with each tenant guaranteed access to social support services.

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Mayor Olivia Chow first announced the development a year ago as part of her promise to build 65,000 rent-controlled homes on city-owned sites by 2030. When the build is completed, the non-profit Kensington Market Community Land Trust will lease and operate the complex. In May of 2023, that organization made waves when it successfully purchased two Victorian buildings on Kensington Avenue earmarked for affordability.

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“Everything I love about the market was fought for,” KMCLT co-founder Dominique Russell told Toronto Life then. “There’s an activist tradition here, and there’s something beautiful in the idea of a land trust that will outlive us all.”

Montgomery Sisam Architects designed the Bellevue project to do right by both its residents and the planet. There will be a shared kitchen, laundry room and courtyard as well as a mass timber frame, a green roof lined with solar panels and Corvette-like red metal siding.

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Mayor Chow isn’t the only one with shovels on her mind. Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to build 500,000 new homes across the country each year, taking advantage of developments in mass timber, prefabricated materials and modular tech. Money from Ottawa has not yet been earmarked for any housing in Toronto proper, but Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy has said he’s confident that federal dollars will flow to the provinces with fewer conditions under the new PM.