PROBLEMS — Housing & homelessness

Tier-1/2 problems in this domain have their own files: C1 Housing supply & affordability · C2★ Homelessness & encampments.

This file carries the housing-domain problems that sit around the two Tier-1 spine rows rather than inside them: the charges and approval clock that shape every unit's cost (C4), the rental system protecting the half of Toronto that doesn't own (C5), the stock quietly leaking into short-term rentals (C8), the newcomer/shelter cost the city absorbs when federal policy shifts (E4), and the research spine underneath homelessness itself — root causes and what actually ends it (I1/I2).

C4 · Development charges & approval timelines

The problem. Toronto's development-charge (DC) rates and permit/approval timelines sit inside every housing unit's cost math and every builder's feasibility case, and the province has repeatedly rewritten the DC framework mid-stream. The same charge that inflates a unit's price also funds the city's own growth infrastructure, so reforming it cuts both ways. The register itself flags this row as evidence-thin — no current DC schedule or approval-timeline receipt sits in the claims register yet, a real gap given how load-bearing DC reform is in nearly every housing debate. Full receipts: register entry C4.

What we're asking. What in the permitting, approvals, and development-charge stack is actually slowing supply and inflating cost — and who benefits from the friction staying invisible? - Where the friction really lives — could Toronto build homes the way it builds software: prefab, mass timber, 3D printing, robotic builds, open-source self-build co-ops — and what in the permitting/trades/financing stack ACTUALLY stops that today? (homes HM22) - The easy-land unlock — Toronto's 5,600 places of worship and thousands of schools could each house one household on land they already hold — what's the honest zoning/insurance/liability barrier stopping the easy win? (homes HM27) - Who the rulebook quietly penalizes — what in zoning, building code, and tax quietly penalizes the large, multigenerational household, and how do we remove those penalties? (homes HM55) - What is Toronto's current DC schedule, and how has it moved against inflation and construction cost across the last two council terms? - Each time the province has rewritten the DC Act mid-cycle, what happened to projects already underwritten on the old numbers — who absorbed the gap? - Does a public median-approval-timeline receipt (by project type) exist anywhere for Toronto, and how does it compare to peer cities that build faster?

• What does the whole approvals-and-charges stack add to the cost and timeline of one real Toronto project — walked end to end, fee by fee, month by month — and how does that same walk look in Houston, in Tokyo, in Auckland?
• Development charges fund real infrastructure — so what honestly replaces the revenue if they're cut? FOR and AGAINST, with the infrastructure bill named, not waved away.

The shelf. backgrounder · not published · brief · card.

Unexplored. Register gap: current Toronto DC schedule + timeline receipts; the province's latest DC amendments. The question bank itself is nearly silent here — only three tangential hits across every program searched, none aimed at the DC/approvals mechanics directly, which is its own finding.

C5 · Rental market & tenant protections

The problem. Roughly half of Toronto households rent, and the protection system is visibly behind: the Landlord and Tenant Board resolves cases within its own 90-day standard only 51–53% of the time against an 80% target, and one in five renter households nationally were in core housing need in 2021. New-lease rents softened through 2025 while rents on sitting tenancies kept climbing, so being forced to move carries its own financial penalty. Renters broadly are affected; hardest hit are tenants facing eviction into a market repriced above them. Full receipts: register entry C5.

What we're asking. What would it take to make the LTB actually work at the speed Toronto's renters need, and to see the rental market as it really is? - Seeing the market as it is — where is Toronto ACTUALLY at on real vacancy, real eviction filings — measured, not imagined, and who's allowed to see the numbers? (homes HM6) - The financialization question — is there a housing-data commons showing who actually owns the ownership records, the rent data, the REIT and financialization flows, handed back to the people so they can see who owns their city? (homes HM58) How do we surface corporate-landlord financialization under pointer-never-author rules, without turning individual landlords into targets? (homes HM59) - The landlord who isn't the target — a large share of Toronto's rental stock is owned by small landlords who are one bad tenancy from insolvency themselves; what's the honest deal for them so plugging the extraction doesn't crush the modest owner too? (livelihood L76) - What is Toronto's current eviction-filings count and trend, set against the LTB's own missed 80%-within-90-days target? - How many above-guideline rent-increase applications are filed annually in Toronto, and at what average approved rate?

The shelf. backgrounder · not published · brief · card.

Unexplored. Register gap: Toronto eviction-filings receipt; above-guideline-increase volume. No receipt found anywhere in the corpus for renoviction/bad-faith-eviction (N12) rates specifically — an obvious added gap.

C8 · Short-term rentals

The problem. Housing stock leaks into short-term rentals (STRs) — a channel the city can license and enforce, or leave loosely policed. The register flags this as under-evidenced on its own terms: there is no solid current receipt for Toronto's registered-versus-estimated-unregistered STR split, so the true scale of the leakage is still an open question. Full receipts: register entry C8.

What we're asking. How much of Toronto's housing stock is actually leaking into short-term rentals, and is the city's licensing regime catching it? - The platform-co-op alternative — is the citizens' platform also economic infrastructure for delivery, rides, and short-term rental — locally owned rather than run through an extractive platform, and what would make ours the rare co-op exception that didn't stay small? (livelihood L13) - How many STR listings in Toronto are licensed versus unregistered right now, and what enforcement capacity stands behind that gap? - What share of active STR units were previously long-term rental stock, and does any receipt exist for net units actually removed from the rental market? - Have other Canadian cities' STR crackdowns (Vancouver, Montreal) measurably returned units to the long-term market, and by how much — a shameless-copy candidate if the evidence holds?

• Amsterdam caps nights and enforces with data; New York's registration law returned thousands of units to the long-term market. What did each regime actually cost, catch, and return — and what would the same enforcement seriousness return in Toronto?

The shelf. backgrounder · not published · brief · card.

Unexplored. Register gap: scale receipt for Toronto's current registered/estimated-unregistered split. The question bank is essentially silent on STRs specifically — one tangential hit in 1,234 rows.

E4 · Newcomer settlement & shelter pressure

The problem. Federal policy sets how many people arrive and on what status; the city absorbs the resulting cost. Refugee claimants made up 51.6% of Toronto's shelter-system population at the 2024 Street Needs Assessment, and Ottawa then cut Toronto's federal refugee-response funding roughly 68% for 2026 ($300M to $97.1M) — a $202.9M hole the city either backfills or converts into service cuts. Claimants themselves are hit first; every other shelter-system user competing for the same beds is hit second. Full receipts: register entry E4; see also C2★ Homelessness & encampments for the shelter-system side of this same population.

What we're asking. Now that Ottawa has cut Toronto's federal refugee-response funding roughly 68% for 2026, who fills the $202.9M hole — and what happens to the shelter system if nobody does? - The pace-vs-capacity debate, held honestly — since immigration levels and selection are federal, not municipal, how does the city engage the real, documented debate over the pace of arrivals versus housing/healthcare/services capacity without scapegoating — and what does the city DO, what does it DEMAND of the province, of the feds? (newcomers N47) - What are the 2026 in-year actuals on the federal funding cut — has the $202.9M hole been backfilled, absorbed as service cuts, or left unaddressed? - Of the 51.6% of the shelter population who are refugee claimants, what share are single adults versus families — does that change what "solving" the shelter-pressure side of this problem actually requires? - What does Peel's overflow-hotel-contract spending say about the region-wide shape of this cost, beyond Toronto's own books?

The shelf. backgrounder · not published · brief · card.

Unexplored. Register gap: 2026 in-year actuals once budget variance reports land. Worth flagging: the newcomers program's own question bank is rich (50+ questions) but clusters almost entirely on integration and credential recognition (see X07 in the economy domain) — it is close to silent on the shelter-funding mechanics that are this row's specific register angle.

I1/I2 · Homelessness root causes & solutions evidence

The problem. Not a separate lived problem so much as the knowledge layer underneath C2: I1 traces the documented federal and provincial funding withdrawals that built the current crisis, and I2 assembles the Housing-First and peer-jurisdiction evidence base for what actually ends it. Both are scored under C2 in the ranked list and live at full depth inside the homelessness flagship book — this entry exists so a reader arriving through "why" and "what works" from the housing side has a door in, not just one from the homelessness side. Full receipts: register entry I1/I2; full scoring and the population-figure contradiction sit under C2★.

What we're asking. What actually caused the crisis, and what actually ends it — documented, not assumed? - The shameless-copy list (I2) — CLTs, co-ops, Vienna's social housing, Singapore's HDB, Finland's Housing First, the Philippines' bayanihan house-raising — what do we shamelessly copy, what does nobody dare copy, and why is the daren't-copy list the more interesting one? (homes HM21) - On Finland's Housing First results specifically: what's the apples-to-apples comparison against Toronto's own shelter-system cost structure — does housing-first cost more or less per person housed here, not there?

The shelf. I1 (root causes): backgrounder · not published · brief · card. I2 (solutions evidence): backgrounder · not published · brief · card. Deep surfaces: flagship CH3 Root Causes · CH5 Housing Everyone · CH8 Who Has Done It.

Unexplored. The register scores this row's gaps under C2 in full (chiefly: resolve the population-figure contradiction before any publish) — see that file for the complete claims register. This entry's own added gap: the tension between the shameless-copy list and the daren't-copy list is named but never resolved anywhere in the corpus searched.

Across this domain — steal from the world, collect everything, find the best minds

• Who fixed the pieces this domain holds — Auckland's upzoning with measured rent effects, Houston's permitting speed, Amsterdam and New York's short-term-rental enforcement regimes, jurisdictions whose tenancy tribunals actually run at the speed renters need — what EXACTLY does each do, and which piece does Toronto steal for its approvals stack, its LTB problem, and its STR leakage?
• Collect ALL of it: every development-charge study, tenant-protection review, STR-regime evaluation, and newcomer-shelter recommendation already made for Toronto — the full pile, synthesized honestly, before deriving anything new?
• Who are the best minds and organizations on housing delivery and homelessness prevention anywhere — and who inside Toronto's own sector is already world-class at the exact seams (eviction prevention, newcomer transition) this domain names?

Source tags like (homes HM12) mark questions carried from the project's own question banks (QUESTION_HARVEST.csv); untagged questions were raised in the 2026-08-11 rewrite.