Province pledges support for social housing
Plans in works to reduce overcrowding, restrict access to wait-lists
Ontario’s new social housing plan promises to direct money to reduce homelessness and repair public housing, but it is unclear what that will mean for Toronto Community Housing stock, which remains in dire need of extensive and costly repairs.
“Our government believes Ontario families shouldn’t have to live in buildings with crumbling walls, leaking roofs and broken elevators,” Steve Clark, minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, said in a news release. “We will work with municipalities and non-profits to address issues like safety, overcrowding and long wait lists.”
The province has promised it will commit funds to existing programs designed to reduce homelessness and repair and get people into affordable housing, ensuring matching dollars by the federal government, that will result in more than $1 billion committed to those programs overall.
“We await details of this commitment so as to determine if this has positive implications for Toronto Community Housing. Such support is much needed and would be most welcome,” Mayor John Tory said in a release.
When asked by the Star what future support would come to TCH, Clark said that in a “challenging fiscal environment” the government decided this plan was the best way to utilize existing provincial money and “leverage every federal dollar on the table.”
In Toronto, the number of active applications for households looking for social housing — a mix of co-operative housing, TCH properties and private not-for-profit housing — hit 100,515 by the end of 2018, according to the City of Toronto website.
The city is responsible for 58,500 public housing units, worth $10 billion of public assets. During the 2019 budget, city council was told the repair backlog for that portfolio — largely downloaded on the city by the province without any reserves to fund repairs — would grow to nearly $3.2 billion by 2028.
After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to contribute an unprecedented $1.3 billion to Canada’s largest public housing agency over 10 years in an announcement this month, Tory repeated the city’s position that repairs for social housing be split three ways between all levels of government.
Since 2013, the city, using opportunities to remortgage properties and other measures, have financed more than $1.1 billion toward the repairs program. Of that, $133 million came from a previous provincial program, a budget briefing note from city staff outlined.
The province also aims to trim social housing wait-lists by using new tools to measure income and to let providers block renters who were evicted for serious criminal offences from coming back.
Regarding the provincial pledge, TCH spokesperson Bruce Malloch said the corporation is pleased “the Ontario government is pledging to invest in social housing repairs and would welcome any provincial contributions” to their capital repair plan.
“We are also encouraged by the province’s commitment to make long-awaited changes to simplify rent calculations and prevent former tenants evicted for serious crimes from applying to be rehoused,” Malloch said.
As part of the plan, existing rent-geared-to-income rules will be overhauled using “a simple calculation based on income tax information” although the income of full-time students will be exempt from that equation, the ministry said.
Housing providers will be required “to set an appropriate local asset limit for people to be eligible” for assistance, according to the report, citing figures produced through the auditor general of Ontario that stated some people on the wait-list held assets worth more than $500,000.
In that 2017 report, the auditor general found that 709 people on the social housing waitlist for one service manager — the report does not specify which one — held assets worth between $500,000 and $999,000. An additional 1,395 people held assets between $100,000 and $499,000, according to the report.
The province will also seek to amend existing housing law to allow housing providers the right to not rehouse people who had been evicted for a serious criminal offence. The ministry is accepting feedback on the community safety piece — part of proposed amendments to the Housing Services Act — until July 1.
While the news doesn’t mean a new pool of money it will provide stability for agencies helping marginalized people, said Greg Suttor, a senior researcher with the Wellesley Institute.
“The general spirit of this affirms a provincial commitment to housing programs,” Suttor said.
The mayor thanked Clark in his statement for taking action on an issue the city has been advocating about for years.
“I know our two governments have a shared determination to ensure the safety of all our residents, especially seniors and families,” who live in TCH buildings, Tory said.