Dale Duncan
At the beginning of the year, when I spent a week phoning up city councillors asking them about the biggest issues for 2007, Joe Mihevc spoke of the growing divide between what he called “the two Torontos.” There’s the Toronto that a lot of the people reading this blog are familiar with — the one that’s full of excitement and hope for the city, the one that’s participating in events and openings and critiquing the lastest waterfront development. And there’s the Toronto that’s finding the struggle to survive (whether it’s dealing with the threat of gangs, scrambling to find daycare or working three jobs to put food on the table) increasingly difficult. Mihevc expressed concern that the gap between these two Torontos was growing. Toronto’s growing waiting list for affordable housing suggests that this is true.
The number of people now requesting affordable housing in T.O. is well over 70,000. “Toronto has the biggest housing needs in Canada,” says the Wellesley Institute’s Michael Shapcott, one of the authors of the Blueprint to End Homelessness. “We don’t have anything that resembles a permanent program.” Councillor Giogio Mammolitti, chair of the city’s affordable housing committee, says Toronto is working on its own 10-year plan. He’d like to see the province do the same. “They need to highlight the amount of money they would bring to the table,” he says.
In my column this week, I wrote about the maintenance problems that plague Toronto social housing. Some other issues on the affordable housing front (aside from the fact that we simply need to build more units) include rent regulation and housing allowance. In 1998, the notorious Mike Harris brought in Vacancy Decontrol, which meant rent regulation would continue to apply to units until tenants moved out. Once the tenants were gone, however, landlords were free to raise the rates. As critics of the plan predicted, this has led to increased applications for evictions, which Shapcott says affects 30,000 households a year. “It has created an assembly line, generating more homelessness, housing and insecurity,” he says.
In 2003, the Liberals promised they would put and end to vacancy decontrol. It didn’t happen. “They introduced a few cosmetic changes in January, but the heart of the problem was not fully addressed,” Shapcott says. “We [still] have a system of rent regulation that you can drive a truck through.”
Another unmet promise of 2003 (depending on how you look at it) was the pledge to start a housing allowance program to make up the gap between what a tenant can afford to pay and the cost of rent. In Toronto that gap is significant, running anywhere from $200 to $800 dollars a month. Politicians have made this promise before, but they “never go through with it when they figure out how much it will cost,” Shapcott says. Starting in 2008, some families (note: only families) who meet the requirements (must be working, not receiving welfare and making under $20,000 a year) will receive $100 a month under the province’s Rental Opportunity for Ontario Families (ROOF) program. Though $100 a month is better than nothing, it won’t come close to closing the gap that many families who live in rental units face.
It’s obvious that many of the needs Torontonians would like to see addressed leading up to the provincial election are tied to finding more funds, more than the provincial government’s recently announced budget surplus provides. The Liberals didn’t have it easy when they were elected in 2003, but sooner or later, the old excuse that the Harris Conservatives messed up things so much that we can’t possibly fix them isn’t going to cut it anymore. That affordable housing waiting list doesn’t seem to stop growing.
Comments [1]
Honestly, while I am very concerned for the fate of low-income Ontarians (been there myself in younger years), I am not persuaded that more public housing is the right solution.
In terms of capital investment the contruction of public housing, it typically runs fairly close to that of private rental housing or even condos (before amenities and upgrades).
Then your faced with the operating cost. Typically, for public housing to break-even, its rents would be roughly in line with the average of the public sector (2-5% lower). That, of course does not result in affordable rents for a minimum wage worker, never mind a welfare recipient.
As such we then have to subsidzize large numbers of units, to a very high degree, which we could have done without bothering with the capital expense. (by simply providing appropriate income supplements/minimum wage)
Add to this the ‘ghetto-ization’ of poverty problem that tends to occur in most public housing communities of any size, and I really don’t like this a social investment.
I do favour investing in this type of housing for students (dorms), seniors and the mentally ill, there there are other reasons those types of housing prove more cost-effective and necessary.
For working aged adults, I think the most important solutions are to get them out of poverty, rather than ‘treat’ the symptom.
A substantially higher minimum wage (including for youth) would be a good place to start. I applaud the Liberals for going as far as they have, but its not enough. No one can suggest than even a single adult with no dependents could get by on $10.25 an hour in Toronto.
I think we need to realistically say its time for a GTA minimum wage, which reflects that the cost-of-living is much higher in Toronto than say London, or Thunder Bay.
The province-wide figure should probably be $11-12 per hour, but here in the GTA, i think the most frugal person needs about $13-14 an hour to get by.
Obviously we could not raise the minimum wage that high over night, but we should have plan to get there, in a timely fashion, and then index the minimum wage to inflation as has now been done in many U.S. states we don’t need to have this debate every year.
I hasten to add that I also think we need tax-reform, by that I don’t mean a hike or a cut in overall taxes, but rather, we need to stop taxing people making $15,000 a year, as if they can afford to give up $100.00 on every pay cheque.
Fewer deductions, higher rates on higher incomes, but just let the poor folks struggling to get by keep their money!
We then do need to address the chronically low-income as well. Those who for whatever reason, have been unemployed for an extended period of time.
I think we need to make a more determined effort to get people in this position back into schools, apprenticeships and training and provide better job placements services to them.
However, acknowleding that they will need state support for a time, no matter what, means also providing a realistic stipend to live on.
The current number for an indiviual in Toronto with no dependents is around $550.00 per month.
That’s just so absurd, as if anyone could cover rent on the most modest basement apartment on that, never mind feed themselves.
Clearly that number should be somewhere around $1,000 a month in order to get anybody by.
Now, that’s not cheap, but compared to the operating and capital costs of public housing, I think its a much more effective use of the public purse, while getting, on average, better living conditions for the needy.
No comments:
Post a Comment