This story is part of Maclean’s annual Year Ahead guide. Read predictions for the rest of 2023 here.

A Kitchener, Ont.-based architect sees plenty of opportunities for mass timber to help solve the affordable housing crisis.

Long-time Toronto developer Leith Moore has in recent years been working on mass timber mid-rise townhomes, and laneway suites made with prefabricated parts. Despite recent advances in timber structures and building codes, “there’s still a lot of mystery around wood,” he said.

St Paul’s Italian United Church on Ossington Avenue in Toronto’s Davenport Village area was declared surplus by the United Church of Canada in the first century of the new millennium, and was converted to affordable housing, with 20 apartments having opened within the renovated building in 2012. Now, another 25 units could be brought to the site in a new development that is proposed to be constructed by R-Hauz on the property.

Pictured is a cross-laminated timber (CLT) affordable housing pilot project being carried out by R-Hauz in East Gwillimbury, Ont. R-Hauz is working with Windmill Developments and Leader Lane Developments on a massive project in Toronto that will see three CLT buildings in one community. R-Hauz was looking for a long-term partnership such as this to create missing middle housing.

For the launch of its fifth season,Intended Consequences returns with an episode dedicated to a major concern for Ontarians going into the upcoming provincial election: housing and the politics of development.

Posted with permission of the publisher of NRU Publishing Inc. Original article first appeared in Novae Res Urbis Toronto, Vol. 26, No. 17, Friday, April 29, 2022.

Today, Mayor John Tory, joined by Deputy Mayor Ana Bailão (Davenport), Chair, Planning and Housing Committee and Councillor Joe Cressy (Spadina-Fort York) announced a pilot program that will bring new affordable rental housing to the City-owned site at 1113-1117 Dundas St. W. (Dundas Street West and Ossington Avenue), currently operating as a Toronto Parking Authority parking lot.