The long saga of what to do with 22 single-family homes owned by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation ended at this week’s city council meeting. By a vote of 33 to 10, council agreed to sell the homes – some of them in bad shape, but many of them in prime real estate locations – possibly for as much as $15 million.The city hopes to use the funds to repair some of the hundreds of other properties TCHC owns throughout the city. Even though $15 million is a significant amount, it’s merely a drop toward filling a $600 million bucket – which is how much it’ll cost TCHC to eliminate its backlog of repairs to its various buildings.Even though the current tenants will have to leave their homes, provincial statutes require that TCHC find alternate housing for the residents either in another property that it owns or by providing subsidies enabling them to live in privately-owned apartment buildings or homes.Although the TCHC board of directors approved the sale in April, the board then only consisted of just one person, former councillor Case Ootes. In the next step of the approval process, Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee basically rubber-stamped the item. This week’s meeting was the first time councillors of all political views had he opportunity to debate the matter.Most councillors see the sale as a quick way for the city to make money. Others view it as the first thrust of a long-term attack on social housing in Toronto. Mayor Ford has opined publicly that the city should investigate selling even more TCHC properties as a means to reducing some of the TCHC’s repair bills and possibly to bridge the city’s upcoming budget shortfall.For many, that solution remains unpalatable. “This is just the beginning,” warned Councillor Janet Davis. “How many will come back next time [for discussion at council]? Fifty? One-hundred? Two-hundred? There’s no disguising the agenda here . . . ” Davis and other councillors fear that the city will balance its budget and spare more affluent taxpayers from a property tax increase by sacrificing the poorer and more vulnerable TCHC tenants.Expect council to wrestle with more tough questions on the social housing front over the next few months and years. Should people in need of social housing live in single-family dwellings in neighbourhoods of otherwise privately owned houses? Or should those residents live only in separate communities or projects? Should the city continue to act as a landlord, or sell its housing portfolio and simply subsidize lower-income tenants to live in “for-profit” residences that other landlords own and maintain? The questions get still trickier as council faces a growing deficit and struggles to determine exactly what type of services a municipality should necessarily provide.
