How Much Funding Is Needed....

...to pickup the garbage on your front yard and take it to the local dump or in this case possibly use it to fuel the sacred bonfire?

Jonathan Kay: A tiny decrepit slice of Attawapiskat, right here in my Toronto backyard

Dec 5, 2011 – 12:29 PM ET Last Updated: Dec 5, 2011 2:05 PM ET

There are exactly three houses in my neighbourhood that are owned by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. These also happen to be the same properties that, for the last decade at least, consistently have appeared to be falling apart, and have garbage strewn over their lawns. Coincidence? Not quite.
It’s famously said that, in the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car. The same principle applies to real estate. The people who live in public-assistance properties aren’t necessarily any lazier or messier than the rest of us. But they have no economic motivation to beautify or maintain properties in which they have no economic interest. So they tend to let their living spaces fall into ruin and filth.
The difference between these properties and resident-owned properties is remarkable. The three city-owned properties I refer to in the first paragraph carry the street numbers 6,8 and 10. The property immediately to the north, number 12, is a world apart — a beautiful, well-maintained house that the owner has tastefully set apart from his neighbours with a wooden fence. The contrast couldn’t be more telling.
Now imagine a whole community of homes that contains no 12 — just variations on 6, 8 and 10 — a place where real-estate ownership is not only discouraged, but actually outlawed. Read More »