Letters

Selling off community housing is a step backward

13 February 2012

This letter to Mayor Ford and the Members of the Executive Committee,  from CUPE Local 79 President Tim Maguire, details the importance of Toronto Community Housing’s Stand-Alone Units.The proposed sale would fly in the face of TCHC’s own policies, which aim to avoid the creation of social housing ghettos by integrating tenants into mixed neighbourhoods.

 

Dear Mayor Ford,

And Members of the Executive Committee,

Re: Item #EX15.1 – Securing Funding to Repair Toronto Community Housing’s Multi-Residential Portfolio: Sale of Toronto Community Housing Stand-Alone Units

I am writing on behalf of Local 79, who represents more than 350 full-time, part-time and seasonal staff working at TCHC. Our members are the front-line workers in the provision of affordable housing.

I applaud the recent decision by City Council to allow the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) to keep the property tax savings they realized for 2011 and include it in their TCHC budget, rather than counting it as part of the City’s general revenue. The resulting approximately $6 million increase in the TCHC budget is indeed good news!

We received, with cautious optimism, news of the referral of the sale of 18 supportive houses under legal agreements with supportive housing agencies, back to the TCHC. It is welcome news that the City Manager and the General Manager of the Shelter, Support and Housing Administration are not recommending the sale of these properties. Providing shelter, support and services for the homeless should remain a priority for our City.

However, the recommendation before you from the City Manager and the General Manager, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration to approve the sale by TCHC of more than 700 homes is far from being good news. This proposal runs counter to TCHC’s own policies of avoiding the creation of social housing ghettos by integrating tenants into mixed neighbourhoods. These ‘stand-alone units’ or ‘scattered housing’ as they are being called – are a vital part of TCHC’s commitment to ‘city building’ and the growth of healthy, sustainable communities across Toronto.

Toronto put in place housing policies that are intended to fight poverty, promote equity, and provide support for seniors, new Canadians, students, and people with disabilities. The sale of these homes displaces people, takes individuals and families out of neighbourhoods, and breaks up communities.

Selling off community housing is a step backward when all the studies, consultations and evidence have proved that mixed-income communities benefit everyone. These are not just buildings or real estate assets to be sold – these are homes. This drastic change in policy direction will impact thousands of tenants and neighbourhoods all across the City.

If these ‘stand-alone units’ are sold, it will devastate hundreds of families. Evicting tenants, and trying to squeeze larger families into apartments that are too small to accommodate them, is not the direction that the Executive Committee should be taking social housing. This shift in policy will only serve to marginalize and isolate people.

When TCHC already has a current waiting list of close to 70,000 individuals and families, it begs the question of where all the displaced tenants in scattered housing are supposed to go, especially when there are no plans for additional housing. In this housing crisis, selling off hundreds of stand-alone homes doesn’t make sense.

The City is creating its own financial predicament, whereby many ousted tenants will need to avail themselves of additional support services. This inevitability is just further proof that this plan is simply illogical.

Ironically, at the same time that City staff is recommending approving the sale by TCHC of these homes and dooming tenants to vertical poverty, TCHC is being lauded for the revitalization of Regent Park based on the concept of mixed-income housing. Is this a deliberate policy change by the City, and TCHC, to be in the real estate business, rather than social housing?

The discussion at the Executive Committee meeting today should be about the value of helping house the people of Toronto, and sustaining strong neighbourhoods and communities, not real estate values.

I want to also question TCHC’s intention to contract out 2,500 Units, effective April 1, 2012. In addition to vigorously opposing this proposal, Local 79 needs to know how this decision came about. TCHC has a responsibility to provide the rationale behind the decision to contract out, particularly when the very negative experience of the contracted out 200 Wellesley Street is still uppermost in everyone’s minds.

Yours truly,

Tim Maguire
President