Addition to poor house
By SUE-ANN LEVY
February 1, 2007
By the end of yesterday's first meeting of Mayor David Miller's handpicked Affordable Housing committee, I left convinced of two things.
One, that the next four years will be a veritable heyday for the city's A-list of non-profits and private developers who choose to make their living in the affordable housing game. The "bricks and mortar" brigade are so firmly entrenched at City Hall, I predict hundreds, perhaps thousands, of not-so-affordable housing projects will be foisted on unsuspecting neighbourhoods, whether they like it or not.
Two, that only at socialist City Hall would such housing be THE answer to Toronto's homeless woes -- even as the feds and the province choose to get out and stay out of the affordable housing game.
As Sean Gadon, the city's director of partnerships noted, there is no national or provincial affordable housing strategy and insufficient government funding to meet the city's housing needs.
Never much mind that however. Ground breakings. Ribbon cuttings. Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Affordable Housing websites, forums and even a bookmark. The crusade takes precedence over silly details like a lack of sufficient funding.
Housing development director Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas said an Affordable Housing Office -- budgeted at about $3.1 million -- is in full swing with 24 advisors and managers ready to "develop policies to deliver" on Miller's platform commitment to create 1,000 new units of affordable housing a year.
Why they're even working on a (I hate to say it) 10-year action plan to build 1,000 affordable homes or more per year.
We also heard that 3,600 new affordable homes have been approved already -- some are occupied and some are under development -- although Llewellyn-Thomas didn't have the breakdown at her fingertips.
That kind of information won't be readily available until much later this year when a new database is developed that indicates what projects are at what stage and whether they're good value for their money. "We're tracking it almost manually (now)," she said.
Meanwhile, another RFP closed earlier this week to create 600 more units of affordable housing. "It's a very, very exciting initiative," enthused deputy city manager Sue Corke.
Gadon spoke with pride of other initiatives including the 300 units being created at 110 Edward St. and 26 affordable units (for starving artists) at the Wychwood Car Barns site.
Ah yes, the $60.9-million 110 Edward St. project. The average cost of one of the so-called affordable 300 units to be created on that site will be $203,217 -- and only 100 of the units will actually be geared to the homeless.
As they waxed poetic about the building boom, no one but Coun. Cesar Palacio bothered to address the issue of the decrepit state of the city's 90,000 units of social housing (the bulk of them managed by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation). No one but Palacio would dare mention, except in passing, the $300-million backlog on repairs to the TCHC units -- with no money to fix them.
"If you have a house that is falling down, it doesn't make sense to add an addition to it," he contended.
But it seemed not to dawn on the other handpicked Millerites that they should perhaps concentrate on trying to convince the province to take over the cost of social housing and its overdue repairs (some $219-million) -- that is, get their own house in order first -- before looking for more funding to build up their social housing portfolio.
Coun. Howard Moscoe even had the nerve to blame the Mike Harris government for dumping 25,000 social housing units on the city with "no money" to fix them. (The units were transferred starting in 1990 and 1992 under former NDP premier Bob Rae).
He even suggested some money be diverted from the city's shamelessly low reserve funds to fund more housing initiatives.
Is it any wonder the city's debt keeps going through the roof? If they keep this up, they'd better be saving some of those affordable units for poor beleaguered city taxpayers.
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