On the eve of the February 11 Council meeting to determine the Toronto's 2025 City Budget, 50 community and faith-based organizations co-signed a letter to Mayor Chow and the members of Toronto City Council urging them to support key investments in affordable housing, transit, youth employment, poverty reduction, and more.

Read the full letter below. Send your own letter to Council using the template provided, and join us tomorrow at City Hall for the Fund Our City Rally. 

Dear Mayor Chow and Members of Toronto City Council,

The 2025 City Budget builds on the record level of new investments included in last year’s budget. We recognize and appreciate the important work that the Mayor, the Budget Committee, and all members of Council have been doing to increase investments in critical services and infrastructure. 

Across the city, Toronto residents are grappling with the high cost of rent, food and other essentials, and the dire shortage of affordable housing. More than a quarter of Toronto’s children are now living in poverty. Far too many of our neighbours are unhoused, with hundreds unable to access even a shelter bed at night. Community organizations are under pressure to meet the growing demand for services, with limited resources to do so.

We urge City Council to dig deeper to invest more in programs and services that prioritize upstream initiatives that enhance neighbourhoods and address the root causes of poverty, namely:

• protecting tenants facing homelessness, safeguarding and expanding affordable housing, assisting unhoused residents (particularly women+ and people with disabilities), boosting drop-in services, reducing homelessness, and supporting our neighbours and workers affected by the provincial closure of supervised consumption sites;

• supporting community-based agencies, specifically grassroots groups and organizations focused on Black, Indigenous, and other racialized and newcomer communities, including expanding access to employment, training and mentoring opportunities for youth;

• Making life better for low-income families and workers by investing in the school food program, increasing childcare subsidies, freezing transit fares and recreation fees, expanding ibrary hours with staffing levels to meet the needs of our communities, and ensuring workers in recreation, long-term care, and child care are adequately paid.

Many of us, alongside the residents we serve, participated in pre-budget consultations and Budget Committee deputations, sharing the very real impact of living in an unaffordable city. What we see in this year’s proposed budget is a clear commitment to investing in the programs that matter most to those struggling to make ends meet.

As organizations rooted in our communities, we are calling on all members of City Council to support the Mayor’s budget, including the 6.9% property tax increase and the service enhancements, and to maximize all available resources to further support our most marginalized neighbours. The property tax increase is set at a reasonable and responsible rate and will be essential for supporting critical programs, particularly with the expansion of the property tax relief and water and solid waste rebate programs for low- to moderate-income seniors and people with disabilities.

As Canada faces a potential trade war, we know that low-income communities and workers—and the community organizations that work with them—will be feeling the impacts most acutely, and will be relying on the City to deliver strong municipal services and funding for the sector. On February 11, City Council has an opportunity to build a better, more affordable, more equitable, sustainable, and livable city. Communities are counting on your leadership.

Signed,