Details Now Available on Investments in New and Enhanced Services in the 2026 City Budget

January 09, 2026

Late afternoon on January 8 the City of Toronto posted detailed budget notes, initial briefing notes, and additional budget documents. This followed the City’s budget presentation earlier in the day, for which we provided our analysis.

These new documents allow for a more in-depth look at this year’s staff-prepared City Budget. The budget includes $28.445 million in new and enhanced services, with $24.087 million supported through City revenues. These build on significant investments from the 2024 and 2025 budgets. According to the City of Toronto, almost two-thirds of City revenues for new and enhanced services will be used to advance Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy ($15.5698 million of $24.087 million).

Mayor Chow has noted that an increase to the Luxury Homes Tax (Municipal Land Transfer Tax increase on homes selling for more than $3 million) will help to support expansion of services during this difficult budget year.

2026 City Budget: New and Enhanced Services

The City has identified the following new and enhanced services as part of Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy:

Rent Bank

  • $2.6 million increase for the Rent Bank program which provides grants to low-income individuals and families behind on their rent or in need of help with a rental deposit

According to the Housing Secretariat Budget Notes: this is “an enhancement to meet current demand for services to bring the total budget for the Rent Bank Program to $10.800 million.” 

There’s a discrepancy in the City’s budget documents. The increase for the Rent Bank program is included on the City’s list of new and enhanced services, but the Housing Secretariat Budget Notes do not identify the increase as “new and enhanced”. Generally, a budget increase is considered “new and enhanced” when it supports the introduction of a new program or expands service levels of an existing program (e.g. serves more people or families).

The 2025 Housing Secretariat budget included funding for the Rent Bank program to provide 2,700 grants. Year-end figures show it reached about 100 more low-income individuals and families than anticipated, projecting approximately 2,800 grants will have been provided in 2025. This year’s budget increase will allow the Rent Bank program to maintain this service level at 2,800 grants provided in 2026.

RentSafeTO

  • $996,500 in additional funding for RentSafeTO program which “seeks to positively impact lower-income and vulnerable individuals and families by ensuring apartment building owners comply with building maintenance standards, thereby improving living conditions within apartment buildings.” The budget increase is fully funded by user fees paid by building owners.

According to the Municipal Licensing and Standards Budget Notes: “The additional investment to the RentSafeTO team will further strengthen enforcement of City bylaws, enhance tenant engagement and access to information, and promote proactive maintenance in apartment buildings to prevent the deterioration of critical housing stock. Additional resources for a new team include 1 District Manager, 1 Supervisor, 8 MSO [Municipal Standards Officers], and 1 Support Assistant B. The expanded team will also not only educate, respond to complaints and perform routine inspections, but they will also implement the new coloured audit signs for RentSafeTO. 

Colour-coded ratings for apartment buildings to increase accountability and keep buildings clean, safe and well-maintained. The Executive Director is authorized to establish an apartment building evaluation system based on the results of site visits, pre-audits, audits and/or any other inspection assessing an apartment building’s compliance with City by-laws and other applicable law, with such a building evaluation system including: (1) providing each apartment building an evaluation score which will be posted on the City’s website; and (2) developing a colour-coded rating system sorting apartment buildings into categories based on their compliance with City bylaws and other applicable law and providing each apartment building a colourcoded rating which the owner or operator must post in the apartment building.”

Air Conditioner Pilot Program

  • $1 million to expand the Air Conditioner Pilot Program, providing up to approximately 1,000 AC units to vulnerable households in multi-unit residential buildings 

According to the Environment Climate and Forestry Budget Notes: “Toronto is experiencing the effects of a changing climate, including more frequent, extended and extreme heat events. Excessive indoor temperature is a concern especially for tenants in multi-unit residential buildings with no air-conditioning or other provision for cooling. To address this vulnerability, the City is advancing policy development to establish a framework to address excessive indoor temperatures in leased residential premises. While this policy work is ongoing, the City proposes to expand on the 2025 Air Conditioner Assistance For Low-Income Seniors pilot program to provide air conditioning to a greater amount of vulnerable households in advance of 2026 summer season.” 

Funding will be used “to scale the deployment of supply, delivery, and installation of in-suite portable air conditioners (up to ~ 1000 units) to vulnerable populations residing in multi-unit residential buildings without existing cooling provisions”

Student Nutrition Program

  • $6 million to expand the Student Nutrition Program to “155 new school communities with an additional reach to 62,000+ students for phase 3 and phase 4 of the Universal Student Nutrition Program in Toronto, and to support sustainability of existing student nutrition programs facing a projected 1.9% participant growth rate for the 2026/27 school year.” 

This $6 million increase is considerably less than the $15.0197 million increase requested by the Toronto Board of Health to expand the Student Nutrition Program. The Toronto Public Health Budget Notes, prepared by City staff, indicate “adjustments to the phased expansion of the Student Nutrition Program and the removal of the Enhanced Food Safety Program, including the elimination of three new positions, due to affordability constraints.” Despite the difference in funding provided, the Budget Notes show the same number of children to be served in 2026 (327,884 students) and the same number of new school communities to be added to the program in 2026 (155 more school communities), as shown in the Toronto Board of Health’s budget submission. SPT will reach out to the City for more information on the impact of this funding difference.

The Toronto Public Health Budget Notes describe the impact of the $6 million increase: “This business case outlines a budget enhancement request of $6,000,000 to support the operational and start-up costs of up to 77 school communities to launch new student nutrition programs in the Spring of 2026 for the 2025/26 school year, and up to 78 school communities to launch new student nutrition programs in the Fall of 2026 for the 2026/27 school year, and includes a budget increase to provide service enhancements to existing programs facing operational pressures due to increasing program participation numbers to reflect a projected increase in program participants (approximately 4,600 students) for 2026, based on the 5-year annual participant growth rate of 1.9 percent reported (2021-2025). These two phases of the expansion will bring the total school communities supported to 763. Operational costs include purchase of nutritious food and consumables, while start-up costs include purchase of food service equipment and related supplies needed to ensure safe food handling.

To fulfill the 2025 vision and phased expansion strategy endorsed by City Council for achieving a universal student nutrition program in all Toronto school communities by the 2026/27 school year, additional outreach to the unfunded 155 public school communities is required. In preparation for Phase 3 and Phase 4 of the program expansion, outreach began fall 2025 to engage school communities and parent-school committees, assess school readiness, and support submission of grant applications for the 2025/26 school year and 2026/27 school year. Outreach is coordinated through the Student Nutrition Ontario-Toronto partnership which has program oversight for program operations and funding allocations in Toronto. Recent funding announcements by the federal and provincial government commit to supporting program expansion across the province, with details on the implementation in Toronto are pending and may impact the projected reach.”

The budget also includes a 3.8% inflationary increase to cover the rising cost of food.

New investment in recent years has substantially increased the reach of Student Nutrition Programs to the City’s children, advancing the City’s Universal Student Food Program. 

Source: City of Toronto, 2026 Toronto Public Health Budget Notes

CampTO Nutrition Program

  • $500,000 to expand the Universal Camp Nutrition Program to increase the number of participants and locations receiving a midmorning snack from 54,000 to 115,000 participants and from 89 to 185 camp locations. This funding will allow the expansion of the CampTO Nutrition Program to all of the City’s holiday and summer camp locations serving children and youth.

TTC Fare Capping

  • $3.0013 million for the introduction of the TTC’s fare capping program. The TTC also anticipates a revenue reduction of $3.1 million resulting from the introduction of fare capping.

TTCriders on fare capping: “Fare capping! Another victory for affordability. Fare capping replaces the expensive monthly pass with a cap on fares. Instead of paying $156 on the first of the month–the same day your rent is due–you will stop being charged after you tap 47 times in a month. This program is set to begin in September 2026, and there is a pledge to lower the cap to 40 taps in September 2027. We’d love all of this sooner, but we’ll take it.” Read TTCriders’ full budget analysis.

According to the Toronto Transit Commission Budget Notes: “The 2026 Operating Budget introduces Fare Capping effective September 1, 2026, as part of TTC’s affordability strategy. Under this model, adult, youth, and senior riders will pay for a maximum of 47 rides per month, after which additional trips are free. This initiative simplifies fare payment, removes the need for upfront monthly pass purchases, and improves equity for low-income and transit-dependent riders. Monthly passes for adults, youth, and seniors will be phased out, while the Adult 12-Month Pass and Post-Secondary Monthly Pass remain available…The implementation of this initiative estimates ridership to grow by 21.3M annual free rides by 2028.”

Toronto Community Crisis Service —TTC Pilot Program

  • $1.8035 million to support the Toronto Community Crisis Service—TTC Pilot program to increase crisis prevention services on the TTC

According to the Social Development Budget Notes: “The funding request is to increase the service coordination focused on TTC "U-Zone" and allowing TCCS [Toronto Community Crisis Service] crisis workers on TTC to respond to incidents of people experiencing a mental health crisis with a trauma-informed, harm-reduction, and consent-based service model and coordinating third party evaluators to track, monitor, and report out on pilot outcomes.

Embedded mobile TCCS-TTC teams will be strategically deployed to TTC stations with high numbers of Person in Crisis (PIC) incidents in the UZone of Line 1 (Yonge-University), ensuring timely on-site interventions where they are most urgently needed. While the pilot teams will be based in Union, Bloor/Yonge, and Spadina stations, they will respond to crisis calls at all stations within the U-Zone of line 1 (Yonge-University), as required. The pilot teams will be available 24/7 within the pilot area, with enhanced visible presence during peak incident times.”

Toronto Public Library Programs

  • $2.239 million, including $565,000 from City revenues, for three Toronto Public Library programs: introduction of the Reducing Seniors’ Social Isolation program, expansion of the Financial Empowerment Service, and expansion of the Social and Crisis Support Service. The Social and Crisis Support Service expansion is funded through City revenues. Funding to introduce the Reducing Senior’s Social Isolation and expand the Financial Empowerment Service is provided by donations from the Toronto Public Library (TPL) Foundation. 

The Toronto Public Library Budget Notes describe these new and enhanced services:

Reducing Seniors’ Social Isolation: This is a new program that will expand “library services in community-based locations where seniors live, to help seniors remain independent and connected. This program is funded over five years through donations generated by the TPL Foundation.”

“TPL Community Librarians will travel to NORCs (naturally occurring retirement communities), including Toronto Community Housing and community locations in a new service model supported by community outreach vans equipped with programming equipment to provide library services that support healthy aging, health equity and aging in place. TPL will work with medical and health link providers to create awareness and provide referrals to non-clinical interventions for seniors through access to TPL programs and services. Social prescribing will address barriers that seniors often experience in accessing referrals and serve as a bridge to essential social supports in the community. TPL will introduce dedicated programming and library staff training on the importance of social connectedness and reducing isolation developed and designed in collaboration with health sector partners.” 

Financial Empowerment Service: “TPL's Financial Empowerment Service is a City of Toronto Poverty Reduction Strategy initiative developed in partnership with Prosper Canada, a national charity.” Funding is requested to “expand service to two additional library branches. This service provides one-on-one, in-person support from community agency expert partners providing in-depth and personalized counselling to Torontonians on topics such as filing taxes, savings and debt levels, credit and budgeting, all within library branches. Customers also have access to curated online resources and opportunities to engage with library staff and partner agencies for additional supports.

This enhancement will allow TPL to expand service to two additional library branches. Outcomes from the first six months of 2025 service operation in 2 library branches and one month of expanded service in 3 additional branches resulted in TPL customers successfully accessing over $2M through the processing of tax-returns and benefits applications. Financial Empowerment counsellors delivered over 500 one-on-one sessions and offered 32 free tax clinics from January 2025 to July 2025.”

Social and Crisis Support Service: Funding is requested to “expand services that bring essential mental health and crisis supports directly to vulnerable library customers.  In partnership with Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS) anchor partners, this service expansion will expand service to library branches in Scarborough and outside the downtown core. TPL's current service level in partnership with TCCS anchor partner, Gerstein Crisis Centre, places Gerstein's Community Crisis Intervention Workers providing service in 12 downtown TPL branches. Crisis Workers provide short-term counseling, mental health supports, referrals for health and housing supports, wellness checks and other crisis interventions as well as specialized programming to address proactive mental health planning and coping strategies.

The 2025 service level expansion with Gerstein Crisis Centre in downtown library branches resulted in over 1,800 one-on-one crisis worker consultations with TPL customers, which included 1,302 crisis interventions, and over 4,000 participants in 590 group wellness and addictions recovery programs offered over just January 2025-July 2025.”

The Toronto Public Library budget also includes funding to implement TPL’s third and final year of the Open Hours Plan to 17 more libraries, with all 100 branches to be open 7 days per week by the Summer of 2026. Library open hours are expected to increase in 2026 to 323,187 total hours, from a projected 296,311 total hours in 2025. This funding increase is not categorized as “new and enhanced” as the Open Hours Plan was approved by the TPL Board in prior years. 

Toronto Zoo

  • $100,000 for complimentary school trips for Toronto students to the Toronto Zoo

According to the Toronto Zoo Budget Notes: “As part of the 2025-2027 Guardians of Wild Strategic Plan commitments of Belonging and Wow for Good, your Toronto Zoo proposes to remove financial barriers for classes from TDSB and TCDSB schools to visit and participate in education programming at the Zoo. Currently students and classes participate in fee for service programming, with some having fees waived on a case-by-case basis where barriers exist and upon formal request. 

Consistent with Motion MM33.34 adopted by Council at its meeting of October 8 and 9, 2025, it is proposed that your Toronto Zoo, an important City asset, develop and implement a Legacy of Learning program offering complimentary field trip visits by students attending Toronto schools on non-summer weekdays. The program will support Toronto students to build their experiences and understanding of environmental issues and sustainability while growing community literacy of Toronto’s Ravines, Environment and Net Zero Plans.

A pilot of the Legacy of Learning program is proposed in 2026 to align with the opening of the Zoo’s new Community Conservation Centre, located at Zoo’s front entrance. Funding of $100,000 is requested to support an initial pilot with priority schools in the Fall of 2026. Based on pilot outcomes the Zoo may request additional funding to continue and/or expand the program through future budget submissions.”

Other New and Enhanced Services

The following City divisions and agencies include funding for new and enhanced services that are not part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy:

Find the full list of new and enhanced services here.