For over a century, a handful of family and district associations most people have probably never heard of have quietly run one of Toronto’s most effective, and most overlooked, affordable housing systems. A new report from the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust pulls back the curtain on how these Chinatown associations have sheltered low-income tenants for generations, and why that system is now at risk.
Background
In 2021, the grassroots group Friends of Chinatown Toronto (FOCT) received funding to explore who actually owns property in Chinatown, following growing concern over gentrification and displacement. What FOCT found was striking: traditional Chinatown associations, including family associations, clan associations, and district associations known as huiguans, still owned and operated deeply affordable housing throughout the neighbourhood. That discovery led directly to the founding of the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust (TCLT) with the mission to build community power in Chinatown by taking properties off the speculative real estate market and holding resources and assets for working-class people, towards economic and racial justice.
Supported by a literature review, archival research using the newly available David Lai fonds at the University of Toronto’s Richard Charles Lee Chinese Canadian Archives, and 20 semi structured interviews, TCLT researchers set out to uncover who ‘owns’ Chinatown.
Chinatown associations trace back to the earliest waves of Chinese immigration to Canada when discriminatory laws, from the head tax to the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, shut Chinese immigrants out of mainstream Canadian institutions. Excluded from banks and formal housing markets, immigrants pooled money, bought buildings collectively, and built their own systems of mutual aid. The properties were often preserved across generations due to the reluctance of collective owners to subdivide or sell these assets outside the community, as these stewards value their real estate assets far beyond the monetary worth. For many, a sense of community and continuity was even more highly valued.
A Quiet, Persistent Form of Affordability
Amid Toronto’s housing affordability crisis, nonprofit and community ownership remains one of the strongest safeguards for affordable rental housing, especially in Chinatown. Interviewees described a style of ‘landlording’ that looks almost nothing like the private market. One interviewee explained that in five years running the organization, rent was never once raised, despite being legally entitled to. Associations described this approach as relational rather than transactional, prioritizing long-term tenant stability over maximizing returns, and absorbing losses, like they did for example during the pandemic, rather than passing unexpected costs on to residents. As one interviewee put it:
“You can help benefit a few tenants, or you can help benefit a larger community group. So, the idea is to benefit a larger community group.”
This is not charity in the conventional sense, but a governance model grounded in empathy and flexibility. During periods of financial or personal hardship, associations often extend leeway, prioritizing relational gains over rigid, transactional lease enforcement. Buildings owned this way also tend to become more than housing. They double as community space where collective decisions reflect a broader pattern of community care, like relocating a tenant rather than displacing them during financial hardship. In these spaces, the interest of the community’s benefit is the highest priority.
The System Is Straining
Despite strong community-centred intentions, the report candidly identifies how fragile this model has become. Pressures include:
- Gentrification. As insurance costs, property values, and in turn property taxes climb across Chinatown, associations that once subsidized tenants through modest rents are struggling to cover their own operating costs. As one interviewee described it, “the feel of Chinatown is changing, and so the pressures for these businesses are getting higher and higher”.
- Declining Revenue. Deferred maintenance, outdated plumbing and fire systems, and the cost of retrofits mean that rents kept low enough to preserve affordability often do not generate enough revenue to keep buildings safe. One case was significant enough that the owners ultimately chose to sell rather than continue managing their building.
This isn’t unique to Toronto’s Chinatown. In Vancouver, the May Wah Hotel, a building with over 100 affordable units, was put up for private sale with no notice to the community—it was only preserved after the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation scrambled to buy it.
Ambiguous succession. Many Chinatown associations are led by an older generation of men who are often hesitant to hand responsibility to women’s committees, queer members, or younger people, generally. To current leadership, younger members are sometimes seen as less trusted to direct projects that could create lasting change, even as associations struggle to find anyone willing to take on the unpaid, complicated work of running a building. Without succession planning, decades of accumulated community wealth and cultural knowledge could simply be lost.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Recognizing this housing as a real, at-risk asset is the first step to protecting it. Municipal housing strategies routinely overlook associations’ self-managed buildings when tallying affordable housing stock in Toronto; this needs to change.
The report underscores the need for targeted support mechanisms that recognize and strengthen the existing community ownership base in West Chinatown. Municipal programs must be made more accessible, better coordinated, and tailored to the realities of small, volunteer-based property stewards. Efforts to introduce external stewardship tools, such as land trusts, must be approached with cultural sensitivity and a commitment to community-led governance. Trust-building and transparent collaboration are essential, especially given the historical legacies of institutional discrimination that continue to shape community perceptions.
At the end of the day, for any stewardship partnership to succeed, conversations must begin with listening, relationship-building, and framing land trusts not as entities that ‘take over,’ but as tools that strengthen internal governance and uphold longstanding community values.
As Toronto moves forward with its first planning study of West Chinatown, this report is a reminder that some of the neighbourhood’s most valuable affordable housing infrastructure is not waiting to be built. It already exists, and it needs support to survive.
Consider Supporting This Work
TCLT is continuing this research and is actively seeking donations and funding to keep it going. If this work matters to you, you can support directly at chinatownlandtrust.ca/donate.
Read the Report Read the Traditional Chinese Translation Read the Simplified Chinese TranslationFor more recent news from TCLT, listen to New Housing Alternative‘s recent podcast with Chiyi: “From Tongs to Trust: Mutual Aid in Toronto’s Chinatown.”
The Balanced Supply of Housing (BSH) is a SSHRC-CMHC funded partnership grant led by Dr. Alexandra Flynn at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, focused on land use, housing financialization, and sustainable housing futures across Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
