Fixes need funding
It’s tough enough to be living below the poverty line, as 94 per cent of the people who live in Toronto Community Housing are. But to have to worry that the home you are living in will be shuttered because of a lack of money for repairs must be horrifying.
Still, that is the dark cloud some 16,000 residents will be living under for the next three years. An astonishing 4,000 TCHC housing units are at risk of being boarded up during that period because they will be deemed to be simply unfit for human habitation. That’s on top of the 350 units that have already been closed because they are in such poor repair.
And that’s not the end of it. The TCHC estimates it will be boarding up another 3,500 homes by 2023.
It’s got to stop. But without provincial and federal money to match the $864 million the city has committed to repairs over the next 10 years, it won’t. And that, foolishly, doesn’t seem to be in the offing.
Last spring Premier Kathleen Wynne did not include any money in her government’s budget for the much-needed repairs.
And repairs to social housing in general, never mind specifically for Toronto public housing properties, have not been a priority in the federal election campaign.
The Conservatives, for example, have not promised any new money to fund capital repairs. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau did tell Mayor John Tory that some of the party’s promised infrastructure funding could be used toward housing repairs. But how much remains to be seen. And the NDP has promised only generally to invest in “affordable housing agreements.” Only the Greens have specifically promised to fund repairs on 8,000 social housing units a year — but that’s across the entire country.
The lack of attention from the province and the federal parties is even more dispiriting when one considers the cost of doing nothing.
A study by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis released last March found that allowing the corporation’s units to keep deteriorating and be shut down would lead to higher health-care spending, rising crime and a host of other social costs.
At the same time, investing in repairs would create thousands of jobs, spur private investment, and generate billions of extra dollars in federal and provincial taxes. Restoring the units would also prevent about 544,000 instances of resident sickness, easing pressure on Ontario’s health-care system.
It’s high time the provincial government and the federal parties step up to the plate and commit to their share of the anticipated $2.6-billion repair backlog at Toronto’s beleaguered community housing corporation. It’s both the humane thing to do and the most fiscally responsible course of action.
Province and feds need to help fix community housing