Falling bricks, urgent needs

Latest incident at a building in Scarborough underscores the urgency of mending TCHC

It’s a matter of sheer luck that no one was killed. Had children been playing next to a Toronto Community Housing building on Eglinton Ave. E. last Saturday afternoon, they might have been hit by a four-storey section of brick that tore loose and came crashing to the ground.

The avalanche of masonry, at a building notorious for the miseries its residents have endured, underscores the urgency of mending the broken agency that is Canada’s largest landlord.

Indeed, two sweeping repairs are necessary. One is a literal fix of dilapidated public housing stock, requiring billions of dollars of work. The other involves correcting a flawed organization and funding structures that helped produce this mess in the first place.

It’s vital that both these fixes happen with all practical speed. But, unfortunately, a key leadership post remains unfilled.

Mayor John Tory took a welcome first step toward necessary restructuring in January by appointing a six-member task force to recommend reforms, led by former mayor Art Eggleton.

True, there has been no shortage of audits and reports on the sad sate of affairs at Toronto Community Housing. But setting up this latest panel fulfils one of Tory’s campaign pledges and — more important — it might well result in concrete change.

Why? The status quo simply can’t continue. Dire problems at the massive agency have reached the crisis stage as thousands of hard-pressed residents languish in crime-infested buildings, struggling to cope with corroded pipes, broken heating, mouldering carpets, rats, bedbugs, cockroaches, bad wiring, rusting balconies — and now falling bricks.

Toronto was lucky on Saturday. But unless these grim conditions change, it’s only a matter of time before someone dies as a direct result of failures at Toronto Community Housing.

That’s why it’s so essential that Tory’s administration not just act, but act quickly. Eggleton has promised to present an interim task force report in July, with final results by the end of the year. One possible breakthrough being explored is splitting the city’s giant public housing agency into smaller, more manageable business units.

Once the group’s interim findings are released, the mayor, Toronto city council and public housing officials would do well to get a running start on engineering changes — immediately laying groundwork for what’s to come — rather than passively waiting five months, or more, for a final report.

Momentum for reform mustn’t be allowed to bog down in a mire of bureaucratic process and needless delay.

But there’s a hitch. It’s difficult to enact bold change without a permanent leader in place dedicated to restructuring. Yet this is precisely what’s lacking at the Toronto Community Housing Corp.

As reported by the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro, the TCHC has temporarily suspended its search for a new CEO even though it has been almost a year since Gene Jones was forced out of the job. The apparent reason for this inertia is Tory’s appointment of the six-member Eggleton task force; the panel may shift the ground rules under which a new hire would operate. And that could delay filling this post until well into 2016.

By all accounts, interim CEO Greg Spearn, formerly the agency’s chief development officer, has done a commendable job filling in after Jones was ousted last April. But a temporary office holder typically doesn’t have the clout of a more entrenched leader. So every possible effort should be made to secure a permanent CEO before 2016, perhaps in the wake of the July interim report.

With a new leader in place, backed by a mayor and city council firmly dedicated to progress, and armed with task force recommendations pointing the way to reform, there’s a much better chance for meaningful change at Toronto Community Housing.

City council has already approved a 10-year, $2.6-billion capital repair plan. But it still needs contributions from Ottawa and Queen’s Park. Each government is being asked to pay a one-third share, or $864 million. This essential money is more likely to arrive once Toronto puts a strong reform agenda in place, along with the expertise to make it real. And that can’t come soon enough.