In 2021, City Council approved the Vacant Home Tax (VHT) as a policy tool to help address the housing crisis that exists in Toronto. The primary objective of the VHT is to improve housing availability by reducing the number of residential properties that would otherwise be left vacant. The VHT program creates a disincentive for property owners to leave residential properties vacant and encourages them to bring these homes into the active rental or ownership housing market. Where property owners choose to keep a property vacant, revenues collected from the program are invested in initiatives that increase or preserve housing supply, such as the City’s Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) Program. While the VHT program is still relatively new in Toronto, evidence from other jurisdictions has shown that it is an effective policy tool to increase housing supply. As seen in Vancouver, their equivalent policy tool to the VHT has directly resulted in an increase in housing stock in the rental market. While the VHT program is an important policy tool to support housing supply in the City, the 2023 declaration process that culminated last April was incredibly challenging for residents who received a Vacant Home Tax charge for a property they continued to reside in, as well as Members of Council, their teams and City staff that fielded countless calls from distressed residents. During a report to Council in April 2024 , staff acknowledged the challenging 2023 VHT declaration process and immediately identified actions to address those challenges. Staff committed to undertaking a full review of the program and reporting back with a completely redesigned VHT process effective for the 2024 taxation year. Since then, Revenue Services, in collaboration with Strategic Public & Employee Communications, Technology Services, Customer Experience (311), Legal Services, Office of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Office of the Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer have completed a full review and redesign of the program, focusing on improvements to the following four key areas, all with a customer centred approach: 1. Process and timelines, 2. Ease of declaration, 3. Communications strategy, and 4. Technology and customer interface. Together, these improvements aim to make the declaration process as simple and accessible as possible based on feedback from discussions and consultations with various target audiences. The recommended changes outlined in this report will ensure that homeowners are able to declare their occupancy status in a format that works best for them, whether online, in-person or over the phone, over an extended period of time with access to a dedicated customer care team should additional support be needed. The revised program will ensure a smoother and more efficient experience for Torontonians who, through annual declarations, are a key part of helping the City address its current housing crisis. These changes will also ensure that no homeowner will receive any billing related to VHT, unless they are specifically determined as vacant in accordance with the VHT program by-law.
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