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Toronto Star
3 days ago
- Business
- Toronto Star
Rental developers are offering a new perk for Toronto tenants — private health care
It's always a perk having a pool, gym or parking space in your apartment building. But how about free virtual health-care services? Now, residents in Toronto have access to that niche offering in select rental buildings. Toronto purpose-built rental developer Fitzrovia has partnered with Cleveland Clinic Canada exclusively for 10 years to offer its virtual care services in three of their Toronto buildings — downtown's Elm-Ledbury and Waverley, and Parker in midtown — with a fourth building, Sloane, near Yorkdale mall, coming this fall. 'We help provide that essential service and have partnered with a strong health-care provider so that our residents don't have to go to a walk-in clinic ever again,' said Adrian Rocca, CEO of Fitzrovia. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The intersection of housing and health care is an emerging trend in the rental market. There's already been an expansion of companies offering privatized virtual-only health care services in Ontario workplaces, with more employers offering them to workers. But now developers are partnering with private health-care companies to offer these services as a perk to thousands of GTA tenants. Developers say these health-care services improve resident satisfaction, attract new tenants, and help newcomers navigate the health-care system. They also offer a competitive edge, especially as the rental market faces downward price pressures and rising vacancies. But further expansion of private virtual-only health care into the rental space doesn't address the root of Canada's family doctor shortage, a health-care professional warns, and could detract from finding real solutions in the province's public health system. 'It's important to recognize the crisis in primary care,' said Dr. Danyaal Raza, past chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, adding that more than two million Ontarians don't have access to a family doctor. 'People are desperate for care. So the question is what do we do about that? And how do we get people good care?' Developers and private health-care providers partner up Fitzrovia isn't the only developer dabbling in the health care space. For several years, Hazelview Properties has partnered with Maple, a Canadian virtual health-care company, to expand access to essential services for its residents across the country. In the GTA, Maple is available to seven properties — with the program expanding to another building in midtown Toronto this month. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Real Estate Nearly half of Canadian low- and moderate-income renters surveyed lack air conditioning National tenant union ACORN Canada is calling for national standards on cooling access and heat A few years ago, Hazelview formalized its social impact strategy and 'engaged with residents on what their socioeconomic needs were, and found that health and wellness was a priority,' said managing partner Colleen Krempulec, head of sustainability and brand. 'As a housing provider we asked ourselves, what more can we do?' Tenants must sign up to connect with health-care professionals. Residents access services through the Maple platform on a mobile device or computer and are paired with a health-care professional in minutes, Krempulec said. At Fitzrovia, residents also sign up for the service and have access to nurses who can diagnose up to 120 common ailments. Residents can access the virtual care appointment through their own personal devices or in the 'care room' in their building, which has diagnostic tools such as a blood pressure machine and a medical exam kit that can remotely review heart rate and temperature. To date, 30 per cent of Fitzrovia's residents have signed up for the health-care services, Rocca said. Rocca emphasized the service especially helps new immigrants, who typically rent when first moving to Canada and often struggle to access a family doctor. 'We want to do things right and commit to our civic duty as a long-term owner of the building,' Rocca said. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW From developers to insurers At both Fitzrovia and Hazelview, tenants do not pay out of pocket nor is it included in their rent. Instead, the developers almost act like a private insurer, covering the virtual appointment costs for residents — or in Hazelview's case, up to a limited number of free appointments. For Hazelview tenants, depending on the program they have access to, they have anywhere from two to six free sessions with a health-care professional covered per year, Krempulec said. Once a resident has used all sessions available in their plan, they can access care through Maple at their own cost, directly via the platform, a Hazelview spokesperson added. At Fitzrovia, Rocca said the cost is covered by Fitzrovia. Joanne Kearney, spokesperson for Fitzrovia, said that just as employers play a vital role in expanding access through health benefits plans Fitzrovia believes it can contribute to the well-being of their communities in a similar fashion. Around 30 to 60 per cent of Fitzrovia residents are newcomers to Canada and are subject to the mandatory three-month waiting period before qualifying for OHIP coverage, she said. 'This is before even starting the search for a family doctor, which can take several months to many years. Other residents, such as international students, may not be eligible for OHIP at all,' she said in a written statement. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Expanding private health-care comes at a cost The Canada Health Act prohibits people paying for medically necessary care delivered by a doctor or in a hospital. That leaves many areas open for private payment — such as paying a nurse practitioner for primary care — that have allowed private virtual health clinics to grow, with people signing up on their own or companies acting like private insurers. Real Estate 'Financial landlords' more aggressive on raising Toronto rents than other landlords, study finds Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), asset managers and private equity firms raised rents Private virtual-only walk-in clinics are growing rapidly as they're less expensive to operate with minimal overhead costs, said Raza, who's also a family physician at St. Michael's Hospital. There's a risk that virtual-only privatized services are drawing family doctors, nurse practitioners and other professionals away from publicly funded, in-person care that 'needs to be the backbone of our system,' he added. Having publicly funded primary care teams in all communities across the province is where investment and focus should be, he said. That means people are never more than a 15-to-20-minute journey from a health-care clinic with physicians, nurses and specialists they can access with ease. Raza said in his practice he uses a combination of in-person and virtual care, but when people use virtual-only care it can lead to higher rates of emergency department use. 'Primary care in Ontario is at a crossroad,' he said. 'We don't want to blame individuals (such as tenants) for doing what they can to get care. However, we do need to hold organizations and decision-makers accountable to make sure at the system level we make the right decisions, not the wrong ones.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Krempulec said Hazelview's partnership with Maple is not politically motivated. 'We absolutely believe in Canada's universal public health-care system,' she said. 'Offering our residents virtual care through Maple is not about undermining that principal. It's a complementary option, especially helping those who face a barrier to access to the publicly funded system,' she said. Fitzrovia's Kearney said the service can be vital for some residents, given the Ontario public system is scaling back its support for virtual care. Real Estate Ford government scrapped Toronto affordable housing requirements after pushback from three REITs, documents show Two of the REITs suggested the quotas for converted employment lands could result in no new In 2022, a new agreement in Ontario between doctors and the province came into effect that adjusted the fee codes for virtual care, with the aim of reducing the use of specific 'walk-in' virtual visits and to encourage virtual care in conjunction with in-person care. 'For individuals with physical disabilities or those facing mobility challenges, this is a serious setback. On-demand virtual care addresses some inequities by making access to care easier for those who have difficulty getting to a clinic, or difficulty finding a brick-and-mortar walk-in clinic,' Kearney said.
Globe and Mail
16-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
As Toronto seeks low-rise apartments, bylaws requiring amenities may stand in the way
When Fitzrovia, the rapidly expanding rental developer founded in 2017 by Adrian Rocca, began building its three-tower 'Sloane' project four years ago, the company reckoned it needed to offer residents plenty of on-site amenities. Shoehorned onto a forbidding triangle of land next to the 401 off ramp to Yorkdale, the property's neighbours include a Honda dealership and several industrial buildings. The mall is nearby, as the crow flies. But to reach it, Sloane's tenants have to traverse Dufferin's six lanes and then Yorkdale's windswept parking lot. Understandably, Sloane offers something of an all-you-can-eat buffet of options for its tenants. Besides the typical high-rise features – pool, party room, gym, terrace – there's also a basketball court, a co-working space, a Montessori school, a movie room and a 'pet spa.' Such features, which figure prominently in Fitzrovia's promotional material, reflect a complicated mix of marketing and municipal goals. Developers use them to add some lustre to their projects but City of Toronto bylaws require builders to provide amenity spaces. The regulations specify two square-metres of indoor and outdoor amenity space per unit in buildings with more than 20 apartments (or 30 if the site is on a major street). Some of the indoor and outdoor areas need to be physically connected. With large-scale projects situated in areas that are notably lacking in community spaces and services, such as Sloane, the regulations make both commercial and policy sense. But what about for smaller-scale apartment buildings – those with five or six floors and perhaps 30 or 40 units – that council wants see developed along major streets? The formula the city uses is the same for any project with more than 20 apartments, but the economics and the space constraints are trickier with smaller buildings, according to planners and developers looking to build so-called missing middle housing. 'Amenity space is challenging to provide in places that make sense on small building,' says planning consultant Sean Galbraith. 'It makes sense to put it on the roof, because that's the best location.' But, he adds, the wrinkle is that the city may count it as an additional floor, which can scuttle an approval in a predominantly low-rise area. 'You either need to get planning relief for an additional storey, or you're going to lose a storey that actually makes you money.' Blair Scorgie, also a planning consultant, says city officials reviewing an application may also press the builder to add certain types of amenities, such as a pet-washing station or a playroom, even though the bylaws are silent about such choices. Beyond these technical considerations, the existing amenity space regulations for smaller buildings overlook a few basic urban realities about the types of residential neighbourhoods that council has deemed suitable for missing middle housing. One is that the older parts of the city have hundreds of small scale and generally desirable apartment buildings that were built without amenity spaces, except a laundry room. The other is that such communities typically have plenty of amenities, from local parks to storefront gyms, cafés filled with people working on their laptops, municipal pools and arts hubs. 'The city is the amenity,' says Abdur Chatni, president and co-founder of CLIP Homes, a missing middle design-build firm. He lives in a 1950s building on Bathurst Street, near Eglinton Avenue, with 70 units and no amenity spaces or security desk – just large floor-plate apartments. Despite that lack, there's always a long list of prospective occupants. 'There will always be tenants for this,' Mr. Chatni says, 'because the unit layouts are great. There are no extras. People know what they're paying for.' Such a building would not be approved under the current regulations. Builders, of course, are not disinterested participants in this conversation: the existing rules mean they have less 'saleable' floor space in a project. Large multiunit buildings, simply by virtue of their configuration, often contain areas that simply can't be used for residential living, including basements or spaces on the main floor. Some of these, says architect Naama Blonder, founder of Smart Density, can be turned into functional amenity areas, such kids' playrooms or stroller storage areas. 'They're the easiest to provide and actually useful when you raise kids in condos.' The same, however, can't be said of smaller projects, where space is at a premium and the developers can't count on economies of scale. Mr. Chatni adds that amenity features also add cost in the form of the monthly maintenance outlays that are tacked onto condo fees or rents. Indeed, for those who aren't interested in a small pool or prefer to work out with friends at the local fitness centre, those fees may eventually chafe, particularly when eye-candy features like saunas stop functioning. City planning officials in the past year came face-to-face with the constraints of the existing amenity space rule during the planning of a missing middle pilot project in the east end. The proposed 28-unit apartment building, meant to be shoe-horned into an oddly-shaped Green P lot off Danforth Avenue near Woodbine Avenue, exceeds the minimum threshold for amenity provision. The city's designers realized the additional space requirements may render it uneconomical. In fact, these are precisely the kinds of constrained properties or consolidated lots that missing middle developers are now targeting, says Mr. Scorgie, who is working on a number of projects in the 30- to 45-unit range. 'It becomes very challenging actually to find space for indoor amenities,' he says. 'There's different pressures at that scale. Ms. Blonder and others working on such compact projects argue that the city should follow the approach it took with underground parking two years ago. Instead of requiring a minimum number of spaces, council voted to leave the decision up to the developer. 'I don't think the city should ultimately be mandating [amenity space],' says Igor Dragovic, senior manager for development at Concert Properties. [If] you speak to a lot of developers or people in the industry, I think they will sort of agree on that.' Mr. Galbraith's view, on the other hand, is that with council's push to get developers to build small-scale apartment buildings on major streets, the projects with fewer than 60 apartments – such as the one in which Mr. Chatni lives – should be exempt. It's interesting to note that the debate over the city's amenity space regulations was only thrown open by council's recent decision to begin encouraging the sort of low-rise apartment buildings that were constructed decades ago – well before developers sought to promote themselves with sexy enticements in order to attract either buyers or tenants. Ironically, those amenity-free older buildings today have long wait-lists while tiny condos in towers fitted out with roof top terraces or weight rooms are seeing rents stall and market values plunge. As Ms. Blonder puts it, 'When you live in an apartment in Paris, no one expects to have a theatre room and a gym and a pool.'
