The release of the City of Toronto’s Mayor’s Budget 2024 proposes much-needed investments into areas that are key to advancing health equity in the city. Wellesley Institute welcomes the increased funding towards improving and expanding access to critical services for tenants, preserving affordable housing units, and speeding up the development of the Scarborough busway. These new investments will, if passed, represent crucial achievements.
However, as a non-profit and non-partisan institute that works on research and policy to improve health and health equity across the Greater Toronto Area, Wellesley Institute provides the following suggestions to further improve this and future budgets. Achieving success in addressing these social determinants of health is needed to deliver on the promise of health equity for everyone in Toronto.
Housing
The City of Toronto must commit to doing its share to end chronic homelessness within 10 years. While this budget includes some funding to expand shelter services, such as new dedicated beds for refugees and funding the Winter Services Plan, it does not sufficiently demonstrate how the city will help those most in need.
In the short term, there should be funding for an adequate amount of emergency shelter spaces for all those who require it. Ultimately, the goal should be to provide healthy, safe and affordable housing for all. We have previously called upon the City of Toronto and the Mayor to reduce, through municipal action, the net number of persons experiencing homelessness by at least one-third by 2033. This and future budgets should include the targets and methods by which the city will reduce homelessness by 3.3 per cent every year until that goal is achieved.
Additionally, this budget does not include adequate action towards meeting Toronto’s needs for supportive housing units. The Toronto Supportive Housing Growth Plan estimated that 18,000 new supportive housing units would be needed in Toronto alone by 2030. Although this is a shared responsibility among other levels of government, the City of Toronto should lead on coordinating success and commit to take on some of that burden with municipal action and necessary funding.
Public Transit
The proposed funding for the development of the Scarborough busway is an important step forward in advancing equitable access to public transit in areas with poorer, inadequate service. Still, the City of Toronto must act to build a truly equitable transit system that can benefit everyone regardless of where live in the city. Public transit should be adequately funded so that those who need it the most, including those who are racialized, low-income, living with disabilities, and newcomers, can get to where they need to go in a reliable, safe and timely manner.
The city budget should demonstrate how public transit will be adequately funded, with municipal targets for transit expansion in city-identified underserved areas. Development must be centred around ensuring that more people have access to essential, health promoting resources such as affordable housing, employment and education, nutritious food and childcare.
Poverty
There remains much more to do to address rising poverty in Toronto. Although the additional funding for critical services such as drop-in centres, youth programs and community recreation will provide much-needed support to many, it is not enough. Torontonians have seen significant increases in the cost of living which has impacted many people’s ability to pay rent, buy nutritious groceries, participate in social activities and more. The current crisis disproportionately impacts structurally disadvantaged communities, particularly low-income residents. Poverty reduction must become a central focus of the development of this and future city budgets.
To that end, the city should immediately fully fund and dramatically improve the Toronto Poverty Reduction Strategy. This includes fully implementing the Fair Pass Transit Discount Program so that it provides transit access to all low-income residents. Other programs that address additional social determinants of health such as affordable housing, food access and quality jobs and incomes should also be improved and expanded.
Mental Health and Well-being
Wellesley Institute partners with other community organizations as Thrive Toronto, a multi-sector advisory group consisting of senior leaders actively engaged in the mental health field. Thrive Toronto’s mental health plan is centred on improving mental wellness and psychological health in Toronto. The plan identifies the need for a coordinated, multi-sector approach to addressing the systemic causes of poor mental health and well-being, such as poverty, income, housing security and racism.
The City of Toronto can be a municipal leader and develop and fully fund a sustainable and collective mental health and well-being strategy that implements community-based initiatives to improve the mental health and well-being of residents and acts on the social determinants of health to build a resilient city.
Conclusion
Although this budget takes bold steps toward supporting residents and advancing equity in key areas, there is much more work that needs to be done to build a city that is resilient, mentally healthy and equitable for all. Wellesley Institute looks forward to improvements on this budget before it is finalized, as well as to continuing the ongoing work of building a Toronto that is socially and economically stronger having achieved health equity for all.