Toronto Silly Hall

Hopefully Comrade Miller has a stock of umbrellas in his closet,where he keeps his new broom,for the fiscal storm that is coming, ......

Raiding the reserve funds

$2.9 million to be pulled from Social Housing Fund to subsidize homeless projects

By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN

Consider this latest bit of fiscal logic from City Hall's patron saints of the homeless industry.

At the community services committee last week, a plan was approved to yank $2.9 million -- virtually all the money left in the city's Social Housing Stabilization Reserve Fund -- to subsidize dozens of homeless projects should funding not come through from the feds by the end of next March.

That is when the current Homeless Partnership Initiative (HPI) -- which gave Toronto $34 million over two years -- is slated to end. The HPI is the latest incarnation of the Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI), which under the federal Liberals handed more than $100 million to the city for homeless projects over six years.

Phil Brown, general manager of shelter, support and housing, said there's been "mixed messages" from the feds on whether the program will be extended, but the election promises were "positive."

He called the $2.9 million a "transitional arrangement" -- meaning they'll "bridge finance" the homeless services until the new federal program "comes into play." Hopefully, they'll repay the reserves once the federal money flows, he added.

If the city does not use the $2.9 million -- leaving a scant $200,000 in that reserve fund -- horror of horrors, the report suggests, community agencies may need to "wind down" their service projects and about 100 homeless-serving community agency employees "could be subject to layoff."

IMMUNE FROM CUTBACKS

Now I don't want to suggest the lunacy of bleeding yet another rainy-day fund dry -- on the brink of an economic downturn -- or the suggestion, however implicit, that the city's (steadily ballooning) homeless industry is somehow immune from belt-tightening.

It's not as if the homeless cause is suffering in the slightest. There are now nearly 700 city staff overseeing the homeless file and $18 million per year alone ($6 million from the feds) being pumped into the mayor's Streets to Homes initiative -- a figure that was recently topped up by $2.5 million to address the needs of panhandlers. That $2.5 million was also taken from the social housing reserve fund.

Money certainly didn't seem to be a factor either in May of 2007 when the city paid $2 million more than the going rate to purchase 129 Peter St., which is slated to open in December and will house the new assessment and referral centre.

Nevertheless, this is yet another example of a regime that lives hand to mouth and has no concept of the real world beyond Socialist Silly Hall.

Coun. Doug Holyday bristled at the idea of bleeding another reserve fund dry.

"If you don't have the money to continue the program, you don't have the money," he said. "These people are not happy until every nickel of every reserve fund is gone."

Meanwhile, Iain de Jong, acting manager of the Streets to Homes program, told me the panhandler program has hired pretty well all the frontline positions -- 39 workers in total -- and they've been out on the streets since mid-September.

He said within the downtown boundaries set by council, they're working "intensely" with panhandlers concentrated on Cumberland St. in Yorkville, a few locations on Yonge St. and venues on King St. in the theatre district.

While he said 2,200 homeless have been found homes since 2005, it's too early to provide figures on panhandlers.

"Our staff are very busy both on the homeless and panhandling front," he said from B.C. where he's attending the province's Homelessness Action Week. "With the increased resources even some people who've been saying 'no' to services ... are now saying 'yes.'"

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Another 113 votes for Comrade Miller at our expense.......

Nice work if you can get it: A job call for 60 contact centre representatives to staff the mayor's 3-1-1 service ended this past Friday. The new reps, members of CUPE local 79, will make from $28.06 to $30.75 per hour for 35 hours of work a week answering phone calls and e-mails from the public and referring inquiries to the appropriate officials. That calculates to $55,900 a year, not including the city's generous benefit scheme. And that's only half of the full complement to be hired from other (flush) city departments. City spokesman Cheryn Thoun tells me there will be 113 call takers in total when the service is up and running next June. Asked what he thought of the wage rate -- determined based on "standard benchmarks" by the city's human resources staff -- Coun. Mike Del Grande called it "obscene."