Community housing is giving ‘false hope’
Tenants wishing to switch units for safety, medical reasons face long, unfair wait-list, new ombudsman report on agency finds
A young mother witnessed a violent crime while living in a Toronto Community Housing residence. When she and her child fled to a shelter for safety, an intruder entered her unit and left a gun in her child’s room.
Twice, Toronto Community Housing denied her application to move, revealed an ombudsman’s report released Friday.
The report comes from an Ombudsman Toronto’s investigation into Toronto Community Housing’s safety at risk and medical priority transfer process. That’s for tenants who’ve witnessed a crime, were victim to a crime, or have a serious medical condition that’s aggravated by where they live, or they need different accommodations because of a medical condition.
“The reasons Toronto Community Housing provided for denying the transfer (for the young mother) were vague and contradicted its own policy,” the ombudsman’s report said.
The young mother filed a complaint with Ombudsman Toronto in the fall of 2015.
The independent body investigated and helped resolve the case (she was transferred to another unit in the summer of 2016) but it was left with concerns about the administration of Toronto Community Housing’s priority transfer wait-list.
Through an investigation beginning in April 2016, ombudsman Susan Opler found that more than 1,400 households are on the wait-list and 55 per cent have been waiting to transfer for five years or more, the report said. She has made 21 recommendations to improve the system that she said currently gives tenants “false hope” and is “fundamentally unfair.” “The way Toronto Community Housing addresses the needs of tenants who believe their unit is putting their health and safety at risk is a broken system and needs to be overhauled,” Opler told the Star.
“From the beginning to the end of the process, there are fairness problems.”
Toronto Community Housing staff also makes inconsistent and arbitrary decisions in regards to the wait list, Opler said.
There are no written procedures for staff making decisions on who is eligible for priority transfers, or what help it should be providing households.
“The process isn’t robust enough, it isn’t tight enough and it doesn’t have a way to determine the most serious cases and address them quickly and effectively,” Opler said, adding that tenants with strong advocates, for example, might get a decision made in their favour even though their circumstances aren’t as serious as other cases.
Toronto Community Housing president and CEO Kathy Milsom said she supports Opler’s recommendations and is “already working to implement them.”
“As the ombudsman noted, we have a duty to treat tenants fairly, apply our processes correctly and consistently, make timely decisions and communicate those decisions clearly,” Milsom said. “We have a responsibility to help tenants applying for transfers, and to complete transfers quickly.”
Opler’s recommendations include Toronto Community Housing creating a “crisis” transfer category for urgent cases, and that Toronto Community Housing design and implement a fair process to decide who fits in to the crisis category.
She also recommends it stop accepting applications for the current medical and safety at risk priority wait-list.
Another case that came to the attention of Ombudsman Toronto in the fall of 2015 was that of a family who, experienced gun shots fired into the living room window of their Toronto Community Housing unit, said the report.
Soon after, two of the family’s teenage sons were assaulted while walking home from school.
Toronto Community Housing refused the family’s request to transfer homes because the family had difficulty getting police documentation, as the case was still under investigation, said the report. The family was not given help obtaining the correct police report.
Ombudsman Toronto assisted the family to get the right documentation and they reapplied for transfer, the report said.
Toronto Community Housing lost the family’s second application for four months. Ombudsman Toronto once again intervened to help get the family approved for transfer.
As of November 2017, they were still on the wait-list, Ombudsman Toronto said.
Households on the safety at risk wait-list are prioritized lower than a separate Toronto Community Housing wait-list for “overhoused” tenants, meaning for those who live in units that are considered too large because a family member moves out or dies, for example.
This wait-list has more than 1,300 households on it.