VIEW THE PDF: Community voices on the transformation of Moss Park
Executive summary
Community voices provide insight to the needs and concerns of local communities. They are especially important when private investments drive urban development – particularly in Toronto’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, where the concerns of marginalized residents are often unheard or dismissed.
This City Research Insight reports on the Moss Park Coalition survey, which was conducted by the Moss Park Coalition with support from the Housing Justice Lab at the School of Cities in 2024. The survey provides key priority areas identified by members of the community and documents the lived experiences of residents as their neighbourhood undergoes changes. The Housing Justice Lab’s study shows how researchers, planners, and policymakers can work with the community to understand the value and meaning of their neighbourhood’s assets and how best to protect and support them.
Project team
- Dr. Prentiss Dantzler, Department of Sociology, PI; Director, Housing Justice Lab
- Marie-Aminata Peron, Department of Sociology, Research Assistant
- Michelle Nadon Bélanger, Department of Sociology, Research Assistant
- Dr. Cameron Khalfani Herman, ARTPOWER, Research Manager
- Mohamed Dasu, Department of Sociology, Research Lab Assistant
Moss Park Coalition Survey 2024
With assistance from the Housing Justice Lab at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, the Moss Park Coalition conducted a survey with attendees of community events in the neighbourhood in 2024. Applied over three waves, the survey asked participants to identify and rank five priority areas among a list of ten recurring issues identified by the coalition as key concerns for residents. The survey also gave participants the ability to identify any other issue not included in this list as well as include more than one issue as their number one priority
The survey included questions about respondents’ demographic characteristics, including whether their primary residence was in Moss Park, their residential status, whether they were a Toronto Community Housing (TCH) resident, the number of people in their household and – if they currently lived in Moss Park – for how long they had done so. In total, 87 responses were collected. Among those 87, 51% were Moss Park residents and 48% lived in TCH. Approximately 38% of respondents were both Moss Park and TCHC residents. Other respondents either worked, had lived, or currently lived in Moss Park and surrounding neighbourhoods.
Key concerns for residents in Moss Park
- Affordable housing
- Protection for tenants
- Community safety
- Parks and green spaces
- Employment opportunities
- Food access
- Better community consultations
- Community spaces and resources
- Affordable commercial spaces
- Procurement opportunities
Moss Park
Moss Park is a residential neighbourhood situated in downtown east Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Lodged south of Dundas Street, between Jarvis Street and Parliament Street, it is one of the most economically diverse areas in the city with a mix of low- and high-income residents. In 2020, 23% of the population made less than $20,000 and 26% reported above $80,000 in individual income, according to the 2021 census.1
The neighbourhood and park have been home to individuals facing homelessness, mental health challenges, and substance abuse, and they have hosted many social services and shelters.2 In addition to its high percentage of low-income residents, unemployment, and homelessness rates, Moss Park sees a concentration of units owned and operated by TCH – a City of Toronto-owned social housing provider.
The Moss Park Coalition
The Moss Park Coalition is a member of the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN), which aims to ensure that local residents are included in the development of their neighbourhoods through strong community-labour partnerships. People who live in areas impacted by development construction should benefit from the opportunities that urban development creates, such as labour and workforce inclusion, training, and involvement in procurement. The TCBN focuses on the development of transit infrastructure through many neighbourhoods, committing to a goal of sustainable communities where neighbourhoods and the environment are improved with new infrastructure.
The Moss Park Coalition promotes equitable development in the neighbourhood by prioritizing residents’ needs. Through community consultation processes, the Coalition brings the local community together to discover common goals and work toward them, to shape public and private developmental priorities that benefit them economically and socially. The Coalition has hosted community information sessions, participated in the city’s community councils, and held meetings with Metrolinx (a provincial agency tasked with coordinating and integrating transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area) and other key stakeholders – consistently aiming to keep institutional actors accountable for development plans’ impact on current, rather than future residents.
Neighbourhood transformation
Over the last few decades, Moss Park has seen alternating waves of both state disinvestment in social services and reluctance to address the needs of the area’s most marginalized, as well as inflows of market- and state-led reinvestments. These have taken the form of residential, commercial, and mixed-use infrastructure and the ongoing construction of the Ontario Line transit line.3 These processes have given rise to an increase in surveillance and policing, the disintegration of public services, and the depletion of affordable housing stock, resulting in the acceleration of the poverty that has been historically concentrated in the area.4
Such market-driven urban trends align with a gradual move toward the idea of mixed-income communities, or social mixing, popular in Western planning.5 In Moss Park, as community activists note, this concept has resulted in the city approving development projects that aim to meet the needs of an idealized future population that does not currently reside in the neighbourhood.6
Community voices
“Come together and talk as a community”
– Moss Park TCH resident survey response
Community voices are essential in shaping development and neighbourhood transformation, yet too often engagement is reduced to procedural participation – ritualized and performative consultations that give the appearance of inclusion without sharing power or changing outcomes.
Residents bring critical lived knowledge of housing insecurity, displacement pressures, and cultural belonging that cannot be captured by survey data alone. Moving beyond procedural participation toward genuine decision-making power ensures that transformation is not imposed on communities, but shaped with them, in ways that foster stability, equity, and collective self-determination.7
“More community collab.”
– Moss Park TCH resident survey response
Insights
“It’s not easy getting a job if you’re not born here”
– Moss Park TCH resident survey response
1.
Affordable housing is the top priority for respondents
- Over 80% of respondents considered affordable housing as their chief priority in Moss Park, followed by community safety, prioritized by 68% of respondents.
- Protection for tenants and employment opportunities also emerged as critical areas of concern with 54% of respondents respectively identifying them as their number one priority.
- These figures varied slightly among those participants who currently lived in Moss Park. For instance, while affordable housing remained the top priority for everyone, Moss Park residents placed community safety higher than non-residents.
2.
There is strong attachment but apprehension about affordability and safety
- Residents of Moss Park stressed urgent needs for affordable housing, good jobs, and safety supports. Rising rents and homelessness were top of mind, with some calling for “more shelter for homeless”, while others were concerned about the placement of existing shelters. Many also emphasized the importance of community voices, urging the City to “commit to participatory budgeting” and stressing “we need to come together and heal together”.
- Respondents also pointed to the need for more accessible and welcoming community spaces along with better communication between tenants, landlords, and local organizations.
- These findings show a neighbourhood under pressure, where residents are navigating unstable housing conditions and a lack of responsive infrastructure to everyday challenges.
“Public developer for affordable housing”
– Moss Park TCH resident survey response
3.
Moss Park is not unique
- What is happening in Moss Park is not an isolated case. Like other North American neighbourhoods currently experiencing the brunt of policies that destroy their structures and cultures, Moss Park residents are faced with compounding inequalities and urban challenges that guide their perception and experience of the neighbourhood.
- Past studies have shown that housing affordability, safety, and employment opportunities – key concerns in Moss Park – respectively have roles to play in neighbourhood satisfaction for lower income urban residents.8
4.
The Moss Park coalition survey is a starting point
- This survey, though limited, uncovers some of the additional challenges studies on neighbourhood satisfaction have so far failed to adequately consider. For instance, food access – which ranked fourth in the survey responses – is a notable omission that future studies should take into account.
- This brief study points us in the direction of what gets missed when urban scholars solely focus on housing. It invites us to go beyond infrastructure to consider a variety of urban challenges that compound the struggles faced by local communities such as Moss Park.
“Safety is most important”
– Moss Park TCH resident survey response
Implications and recommendations
Municipal leaders
Municipal leaders should prioritize binding Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) in all major development projects to ensure residents share directly in new investments.
- Strengthen protections against renovictions and demovictions, expand affordable housing programs, and fund services like food access, employment training, and community safety. This will help to counteract displacement pressures.
- Establish living timelines and alert systems to highlight progress and possible project disruptions, making information transparent and easily accessible to local community members.
- Embed equity mandates into planning and funding decisions. This will demonstrate accountability to current residents rather than catering only to future populations.
Local law enforcement & community safety officers
Police and community safety officers should shift away from surveillance-heavy approaches toward community-centred safety strategies that prioritize trust-building and harm reduction.
- Partner with local organizations to support non-policing interventions for drug use, mental health crises, and violence prevention. This ensures that safety initiatives are co-designed with residents.
- As an example, the local fire station conducts fire safety trainings, which helps to reduce stigma while building relationships between community members and local public services. Such visible investments in restorative practices, rather than using punitive enforcement, can help address residents’ concerns about violence while reducing the fear and stigma that policing has historically reinforced in Moss Park.
Renovictions
are evictions driven by renovations. Landlords evict tenants to perform extensive renovations on existing property.
Demovictions
are evictions driven by demolitions. Landlords demolish housing to develop new apartments or condominiums.
Both cases present housing instability and increasing affordability challenges for renters.
Urban planners
Urban planners must treat consultations as genuine co-decision-making processes, where residents’ voices shape project design and implementation.
- Extend planning beyond housing to include food access, employment opportunities, and safe public spaces, which are issues that Moss Park residents identify as equally urgent. Examples include preserving supportive programs and services which allow residents to more effectively stay in place amidst redevelopment.
- Highlight community assets and cultural contributions, such as the transformation of underutilized building spaces into spaces of worship or community gardens, integrating them into neighbourhood revitalization strategies to foster pride and stability. This will contribute to resisting territorial stigmatization.
Developers & private investors
Developers and private investors have a responsibility to practice equitable development by dedicating portions of new housing to deeply affordable units, ensuring affordability protections endure over time, and offering commercial opportunities to local entrepreneurs.
- Partner with community groups to create procurement and job pipelines for local residents while maintaining transparent communication to mitigate displacement concerns. Combined with CBAs, accountability measures should result in greater public investment. These commitments build trust and support sustainable, inclusive growth.
Social service providers
Social service providers should coordinate and expand their focus beyond crisis response to include coordinated, proactive supports across housing, employment, food security, and mental health.
- Establish safe and accessible community spaces particularly for youth, seniors, and households with accessibility needs. This can strengthen social cohesion while reducing isolation and related health issues. Partnering with organizations such as Houselink and Mainstay Community Housing provides an invaluable resource in the increasing absence of other social supports.
- Expand mediation and advocacy services to address maintenance and safety issues, keeping residents securely housed without relying on punitive measures.
The future
The Moss Park Coalition continues this work by creating consistent spaces for residents to engage, deliberate, and set priorities for their neighbourhood. Rather than treating participation as a one-time event, the Coalition convenes regular meetings, builds relationships with tenant associations and service providers, and ensures that information about development timelines and disruptions is circulated in accessible ways. This ongoing organizing makes it possible for residents not only to respond to immediate redevelopment pressures but also to collectively shape longer-term visions for the community.
Moving forward, the Moss Park Coalition and the Housing Justice Lab will centre further research and action on deepening community voices in decision-making around neighbourhood change. They will ground policy engagement in amplifying this knowledge in formal planning and housing policy arenas. Further engagement will prioritize reciprocity, transparency, and tangible benefits for the community, being mindful that many residents feel over-researched and underserved. The goal is to push for structural shifts that recognize residents as decision-makers, not just consultees. The dual approach of community-led research and policy advocacy would elevate resident voices and create durable pathways for equitable neighbourhood transformation.
- City of Toronto, “Neighbourhood Profile Detail”, City of Toronto, 2022, https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/neighbourhoods-communities/neighbourhood-profiles/find-your-neighbourhood/neighbourhood-profile-detail/; David J. Roberts and John Paul Catungal, “Neoliberalizing Social Justice in Infrastructure Revitalization Planning: Analyzing Toronto’s More Moss Park Project in Its Early Stages”, Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, no. 2 (2018): 454–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1365589.
- Keisha St. Louis-McBurnie, Nikki Mary Pagaling, and David J. Roberts, “The Work of Crisis Framing: Claims of Social Justice Obscuring a History and, Likely Future, of Uneven Investment in Moss Park, Toronto”, Journal of Urban Affairs 45, no. 1 (2023): 17–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2020.1863816.
- St. Louis-McBurnie et al., “Crisis Framing”, 22.
- Doreen Fumia, “Divides, High Rise and Boundaries: A Study of Toronto’s Downtown East Side Neighbourhood”, Ethnologies 32, no. 2 (2011): 257–89. https://doi.org/10.7202/1006312ar.
- Martine August, “Social Mix and Canadian Public Housing Redevelopment: Experiences in Toronto”, Canadian Journal of Urban Research,17, no. 1 (2008): 82–100.
- Ariel Tozman, “Advocates Say Moss Park Improvements Risk Displacing Current Residents.” The Bridge News, November 7, 2024, https://thebridgenews.ca/advocates-say-moss-park-improvements-risk-displacing-current-residents/.
- Vanessa A. Rosa, Precarious Constructions: Race, Class, and Urban Revitalization in Toronto (UNC Press Books, 2023).
- Patricia Ciorici and Prentiss Dantzler, “Neighborhood Satisfaction: A Study of a Low-Income Urban Community”, Urban Affairs Review 55, no. 6 (2019): 1702–30, https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087418755515; and Daniel Silver, Prentiss Dantzler, and Kofi Hope, “Residential Preferences, Place Alienation, and Neighborhood Satisfaction: A Conjoint Survey Experiment in Toronto’s Inner Suburbs”, Journal of Urban Affairs 47, no. 6 (2023): 2023-2047, https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2023.2260511.
