September 1 is the official move in date for Vaughan’s “first privately sponsored rental building,” said Jack Morelli, president of First Avenue Properties, behind the 45-units edifice at 8010 Kipling Ave.

The building is like a “mini condo,” Morelli said in awe of the building’s modern-feel, yet made matching next to a heritage home. Unlike older rentals, this building’s units come with their own washing machines and dryers each, and underground parking.

First Avenue also had to change its plans for the sidewalk to save a chestnut tree in front of the building.

Its one-bedroom units rent about $1800 a month, and the two-bedrooms about $1,900.

“We have so many requests, it’s unbelievable,” Morelli added, describing the building’s vicinity to bakeries and shops people can walk to.

There aren’t enough rental buildings for demand in the Greater Toronto Area, and increasing their number would mitigate the affordability crisis and feed into what people describe as the “missing middle.”

“Before the pandemic, demand for rental housing was near a 40-year high, but supply was not keeping up, with over 80 per cent of existing purpose-built rental units built before 1980,” said Tony Irwin, president and CEO of Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario, citing a figure from Urbanation, a research real estate consulting firm, of how Ontario will have a “housing supply gap of 200,000 rental units over the next decade.”

Coinciding with Irwin’s figures, Morelli explained why there aren’t many of these much-needed rentals with people having not many options. The two also explained that financing is one major hurdle to build rentals.

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