With the recent release of Patrick LeSage’s report on the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) eviction of Al Gosling, an 82 year old long time tenant, and his subsequent cruel and tragic death, some individuals may have concluded Justice LeSage’s recommendations will eventually lead to real change at the TCHC. Although most stakeholders, tenants, neighbourhood residents and taxpayers, who are accustomed to TCHC failures know better than to expect anything that will improve their lot from the TCHC. Failures synchronized with hollow sounding apologies from management and scripted excuses and empty promises from the same city politicians feigning outrage is the standard outcome.
TCHC’s 164,000 tenants continue to endure deplorable living conditions: thousands of property standards violations and unfinished work orders; infestations of bedbugs, cockroaches and rodents; plagued with violent crime. The Parkdale Tenants Association nominated the City of Toronto for their ignominious Lord of the Slums award. Over 60,000 people are on the affordable housing waiting list, which gets longer every year. With only 10% annual turnover in social housing tenants, the wait time for a housing unit once an individual or family gets on the list could be a staggering eight years. Tenants wanting to relocate to housing in another area of the city for better employment or education opportunities face comparable delays, making it incredibly difficult for them to break out of the cycle of poverty.
Frustrated residents in neighbourhoods with high concentrations of TCHC housing also share in the problems created from the poorly maintained, overcrowded TCHC properties and the inherent impact on the quality of life in those areas. In addition, addiction and mental health issues are both more prevalent amongst TCHC tenants. TCHC has said as much as ten percent of their tenant population suffer from mental health problems. There is no question these latter tenants must rightfully be provided publicly funded housing. Mixed housing intensification if sustainable over a very long period of time may help mitigate this issue. Nonetheless our current local politicians fail to effectively address the quality of life impacts on neighbourhoods with high concentrations of social housing.
TCHC and local politicians quickly point out that there are also social housing success stories, such as the revitalization of Regent Park. Most people would say they are glad to finally see some progress in Regent Park. The new buildings are impressive. Critics point to the fact Regent Park revitalization has moved forward at glacial speed. If it is finally completed as planned, a generation of tenants would have come and gone along with $500 million dollars spent for roughly the same number of social housing units as before. With this astoundingly prolonged timeframe and the very poor living conditions of Regent Park, it was inevitable new development would occur sooner or later. In this case, it is much later. Any politician responsible for social housing in our city that crows success in this context and particularly when 60,000 low income individuals are facing the prospect of languishing on a social housing wait list for eight long years is shamelessly desperate for any recognition.
Another lament often heard from our local politicians is that problems at TCHC were inherited from the provincial and federal governments when they downloaded responsibility for social housing to municipalities without sufficient funding needed to maintain the dilapidated housing stock. While essentially true, it happened a long time ago, 12 years to be exact. Since then there has been some uploading of funding from the province although more is needed. Local politicians cannot continue to blame Harris or McGuinty or John A. Macdonald for that matter, for all the social housing failures of the past twelve years. The obvious unanswered question is: “why have you not fixed it by now?”
For example, why have city officials not significantly expanded the portable housing allowance program? More dollars would go directly to help individuals deal with the lack of income for rent or home ownership. Low income individuals with a portable housing allowance can more easily relocate to private housing closer to new job opportunities or schools. Facilitating workforce mobility is a key element for success in our new economy. TCHC has also said “the ability to choose one’s own housing” promotes housing stability.
TCHC strangely describes itself proudly as, “the largest social housing provider in Canada and the second largest in North America.” The underlying assumption is that more is better, then it logically flows that having the most social housing in the world is the ultimate goal. The sobering question is how many social housing units can Toronto support before we reach a tipping point where social housing subsidies are not sustainable? A more enlightened vision to strive for maybe is to have no need for social housing in our city, because everyone can earn an adequate income to meet their housing needs and for those few individuals that cannot, have subsidies provided.
We must reach for dramatic change in our social housing programmes. We need innovative solutions that are much more effective and offer more choices — solutions that will benefit all stakeholders.
