Regent Park cash shortfall no surprise
Re $108 million sought to get Regent Park rentals built, Jan. 14
As a former resident and current family physician practicing in Regent Park, the $108-million shortfall is not a surprise.
The author describes Regent Park as “troubled” community. What he fails to mention is that the troubles of Regent Park stem from decades of underfunding arising from the devolution of public housing from higher levels of government to municipalities like Toronto that do not have the tax base to take on this task.
Government divestment from housing was true before the project started, and remains true now. The promise of mixed income redevelopment has not been realized by the original residents.
Benefiting from this unsustainable model have been the developer and those profiting from the neighbourhood’s gentrification. The original residents have been forced to accept a solution that has dramatically shifted the composition of their neighbourhood from 100 per cent to 25 per cent rent-geared-to income.
Many have been uprooted from their support systems and flung to distant corners of the city, learning that the plan was not made with them in mind; that they were pawns to be moved around and now to be used as bargaining chips between governments.
Concern for demoralized tenants who are waiting to return can’t be taken seriously when it was the city’s imperfect solution that forced them out of their homes in the first place.
I commend Ottawa for starting a discussion around a national housing strategy. It is a basic human right to have access to decent shelter regardless of income. We cannot rely on the benevolence of the private sector to achieve this. We must take on this task as a nation. Dr. Fatima Uddin, Toronto
Taxes have become a shameful political football in Toronto. It is time for a Star editorial urging other levels of government to stop all “help” until the city gets its politicized tax strategies aligned with simple human decency and to open its coffers generously when Toronto starts pursuing fiscal policies that are transparently humane. Hendrik Hart, Toronto