The Jane-Finch Community

The Jane-Finch community is situated between two traditional industrial areas, and is usually described as bounded by three arterial roads, Highway 400, to the west, Steeles Avenue to the north, Sheppard Avenue, to the south, and by Black Creek stream and parklands to the east. Click here to view a map of Jane-Finch.

A 'wide' definition of Jane-Finch describes it as bounded by four main arterial roads in the area - Steeles Avenue, Highway 400, Keele Street, and Sheppard Avenue. This broad definition is the basis of high population estimates of more than 100,000 people (City of Toronto, 2000).

Jane-Finch is considered one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the world. The community has one of Toronto's largest youth populations, sole support families, refugees, immigrants and low income earners. One of Toronto's densest communities, Jane-Finch is home to one of the City's highest concentrations of subsidized housing units. The community is characterized by distinctive clusters of multi-unit housing, high-rise and townhouse dwellings that stand-out from the largely single-detached and semi-detached ownership-dwellings in the area (Hodges, 1983; Project Rebirth, 1989; Sakamoto, 1986).

The presence of large numbers of public housing units, the highest density subsidized housing in Ontario, meant that low-income households were a major neighbourhood group from the beginning (Heller and Tescher, 1979). One of the longstanding consequences of the high concentration of public housing units in the area is a high proportion of single parent families, most of which are headed by women. In 2006, Lone Parent households comprised 11 percent of all households in the Toronto CMA.

In Jane-Finch, the figure is substantially higher with over 23 percent of Jane-Finch households headed by a single parent. Many Jane-Finch census tracts have figures closer to 40 percent. This household structure is strongly linked with poverty and child poverty, especially in the case of female headed households. While the lack of an additional income is part of the cause, a major reason is that single mothers often earn less in the labour market or are more likely to receive government transfers, which are within the low-income bracket.

Forty-seven percent of residents of the Toronto CMA in 2006 were born outside of Canada
Recent immigrants, that is, people who landed in Canada within five years of the census, comprise almost nine percent of the CMA population
Immigrant youth comprise 10.4% of the CMA population, and roughly 22% of the immigrant population in the region
The census reports that 65% of Jane-Finch residents were born abroad, with 12.8% of them arriving recently.
Over 25% of the immigrant population in the area is between the ages of 15 and 24
In the 2006 census, racialised populations in the Toronto CMA comprised about 43% of the population
In Jane-Finch, this figure is 71% and in some census tracts well over 80% of the population.