January 21, 2026 at Etobicoke Civic Centre
Greetings Budget Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Kim Adlard, I’m a disabled, white settler residing in Toronto Centre and coordinator of the GTA Disability Coalition. The GTADC is a systemic advocacy project convened by the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto. We work in collaboration with organizational partners to advance disability poverty reduction, deeply affordable AND accessible housing, and accessible transit.
I’m going to speak to the critical need for the city to increase deeply affordable AND accessible housing. Toronto is home to 100s of thousands of people with a range of disabilities and along with Deaf residents, we are represented within all cultural communities, and live in all neighborhoods across Toronto, and we vote!
Distressingly, disabled renters pay an average of 44% of their income on housing, compared to 35% for non-disabled residents, yet we remain largely invisibilized within many of the city’s housing initiatives. Even though we experience poverty and housing disparity at a higher rate. More so for disabled Indigenous People and other disabled racialized residents, queer and trans disabled folks, and disabled youth.
In fact, findings from Covenant House’s recent Youth Homelessness report indicates that inaccessibility is one of key barriers to obtaining equitable housing, including vital shelter space for disabled youth.
We appreciate the City’s expansion of the Luxury Homes Tax that will support poverty reduction and housing programs like RentSafe and Rent Bank. In addition to raising individual Rent Bank funding amounts, the city must increase the number of available grants to adequately meet growing need, and increase MURA funding, especially for accessible units.
Furthermore, it is urgent that the city direct additional investment into primary prevention by increasing the number of new units that are deeply affordable AND accessible so disabled Torontonians are justly housed! It is troublesome that many of the city’s housing announcements include mention of affordable units but rarely, if ever, do you clearly state how many accessible units there will be.
For MURA sites, while disabled people are named as a priority tenant population, I cannot locate any information about how many units are accessible across all properties, nor if the city expects that all projects embed accessibility in their planning. And from what I have reviewed, there is not even a mandatory section in the MURA submission to indicate accessible upgrades.
Unfortunately, the City’s own Housing TO Action Plan Dashboard doesn’t even include accessible units as reported data.
These are fixable exclusions, so why wait?!
Because tracked data is essential to program and policy improvement, I ask the city to direct some the 2 million yet to be allocated toward research that will assess the status of accessible housing, where the gaps are, and the actions the city must take. This research must include disabled Torontonians as well as the knowledgeable leadership of disability organizations.
To recap my asks:
- Increase the number of Rent Bank grants and MURA funding.
- Boost and the number of city funded units that are deeply affordable AND accessible, and increase funding for accessibility retrofits.
- Immediately act on current disability and city housing data!
To end, I recognize that Toronto is navigating a housing crisis, but to be clear, it is a crisis of deeply affordable housing and more so, accessible housing, that will only lead to rising inequity and harm, if left un–addressed.
Let’s ensure that 2026 is the year that the city chooses to advance a truly affordable AND accessible Toronto through a right to housing – human rights lens so that Deaf residents and disabled Torontonians are sufficiently housed in the way you all expect to be.
This is equity, this is justice, this is, a “Toronto for all”.
Thank you.