The real crisis isn’t at the top

Toronto Community Housing Corp. needs strong, stable leadership. Unfortunately, it’s getting neither.

The CEO has been sidelined and the most important initiative she launched since she was appointed 14 months ago has been abruptly cancelled. This is an ominous sign for TCHC, which badly needs to turn the page after years of turmoil and controversy in its senior ranks.

The stakes are far too high to allow the organization to be consumed once again by internal squabbling. It’s the country’s largest social housing provider, responsible for 110,000 tenants living in some 2,100 properties spread across the city.

They deserve a safe, decent place to live and that takes a team focused on making sure TCHC properties are properly maintained — an enormous job after decades of neglect from all levels of government.

Progress is being made: this year TCHC plans to spend $300 million on repairs, more than double what it what was spending a few years ago. And it plans to spend the same amount next year in a serious attempt to deal with a repair backlog estimated at $1.6 billion.

Keeping that going will take both commitment from governments and a steady hand at the top. The latter, at least, is now in serious question.

Kathy Milsom, who took over as CEO in August 2017, has been put on administrative leave, along with another senior employee who was involved in awarding a $1.3-million contract for “change management” to an outside consulting firm called Orchango.

All we know at the moment is that the TCHC board has cancelled the arrangement with Orchango and put the two executives on paid leave because, it says, the process of awarding the contract “was flawed and did not follow existing TCHC regulations.” Whatever that means.

Apparently the board hopes that a review of the procurement process by the law firm Bennett Jones will clear the air and put to rest any doubts about what went on here.

But it’s hard to imagine that a CEO who has been shoved aside in this way can simply walk back into her office and have the confidence of her team, no matter what the review finds. Especially in an organization notorious for acrimony and turnover at the top.

This is the same outfit, remember, that has had four CEOs in seven years, and as recently as last January had to call in another law firm to investigate complaints that it operates in a “culture of fear.”

A wholesale change in such a culture sounds like an excellent step. But at a time when governments are being asked to spend hundreds of millions to fix crumbling buildings, any suspicion that the organization is blowing more than a million dollars on a contract awarded improperly must be addressed.

That’s the real crisis at TCHC — not the one at the top, but the ongoing plight of tenants forced to put up with substandard housing and live in unsafe conditions. Far too many TCHC buildings haven’t been properly maintained and aren’t secure; just this week the corporation asked that the number of special constables patrolling its properties be doubled.

The truth is that TCHC may be simply too big and unwieldy. Almost three years ago Toronto city council endorsed a major report called “Tenants First,” which recommended that some of the corporation’s services be hived off to separate entities.

TCHC has made some progress on this front. It’s transferring some properties to non-profits and developing more robust services tailored for seniors in public housing, the fastest growing segment of its clientele.

That’s the right direction, but the corporation needs that strong, stable leadership to keep up the pace of change. With the latest turmoil at the top, that is once again in serious doubt.