Toronto Silly Hall

Here's another power grab City can decide to put new affordable housing anywhere before consulting public

The comments by Socialist Silly Hall's self-appointed affordable housing czar came right near the end of yesterday's press conference unveiling a $4.8-billion, 10-year plan to build more bricks and mortar taxpayers can ill afford.

Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti -- who called the $50,000 Housing Opportunities Toronto (HOT) report "precedent-setting" -- suggested he'd like to see affordable housing in every single neighbourhood in the city.

"NIMBY for me has to disappear," the chair of the city's affordable housing committee proclaimed.

He said the city's new plan -- which took meetings with 1,800 stakeholders and 18 months to produce -- provides the "tools" to pass bylaws that deal with NIMBYism.

What Mammoliti confirmed he's talking about is putting forward a bylaw similar to the "as of right" shelter bylaw passed in early 2003.

The controversial shelter bylaw, which caused such a public uproar at the time it was sent back to the drawing board for nearly a year before being approved, gives city officials the right to decide to put homeless shelters (anywhere) in the city before public consultation is conducted. In other words, it allows a shelter to be virtually a fait accompli before the public is notified.

The party line perpetuated at the time was shelters are desperately needed to keep people off the streets -- not that they have ever helped to reduce street homelessness in the slightest.

Mammoliti made it quite clear to me he'd like to do the same for the 1,000 affordable housing units he wants to see built annually for the next 10 years.

He said he'll look at a possible bylaw that helps run (public) meetings in a formal way -- meaning any discussion about "who can live in particular neighbourhoods" and why particular people aren't wanted would not be allowed.

He said the bylaw will ensure people only provide input about the housing development from a planning perspective. But when the public starts talking about a particular person or their disabilities that's where city officials "should draw the line," he said.

Asked if that means any upscale neighbourhood like Forest Hill, Rosedale and the Bridle Path should be prepared to absorb their fair share of affordable housing developments, Mammoliti responded "absolutely.

"If someone who's disabled wants to live in that community they (the residents) should be talking about why they should," he said.

OK then.

The question is, are these people mad or simply drunk on their own self-righteous power?

It's not insane enough that Mammmoliti and Co. are proposing this grandiose scheme with 67(!) proposed actions -- in the midst of a recession yet -- with no idea where they'll get the money to fund it.

REQUEST SUBMITTED

All they could say yesterday is they've submitted a request for $198 million in funding for repairs to social housing and another $180 million for new affordable housing to the province under its economic stimulus funding package. We were given no clue whether that money would be approved.

Why the heck are they even looking at building more affordable units when the city's 90,000 units of social housing face a $352-million repair backlog over the next 10 years? Should that not be the priority?

Let's also not forget that the city's already approved affordable housing projects are the furthest thing from affordable -- often costing more than $200,000 per unit. That doesn't include rent supplements that need to be provided to subsidize the rent charged.

But to suggest neighbourhoods with prime real estate and land values should be forced to absorb unaffordable units is beyond belief. Do we not owe it to these neighbourhoods -- who pay enormous taxes to prop up the city's tills without equal return -- to keep their land values intact?

Coun. Doug Holyday insists it makes absolutely no fiscal sense to put affordable housing on the most expensive land in the city just to say neighbourhoods are "blended.

"It's imbecilic ideology that they would even think of a thing like this," he said, adding he hopes residential taxpayers would continue to have a say.

Alas, I fear nothing seems to stop Mayor David Miller and his motley minions from their self-appointed mission to socially engineer Toronto from the waterfront right up to Steeles Ave. -- neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

City Hall's champagne socialists seem to have quite a contempt for those who earn their money the hard way -- and not by porking at the public trough.

SUE-ANN.LEVY@SUNMEDIA.CA