East York community rallies around paved lot
As far as so-called “NIMBY” stories go, this one is almost too textbook to be true, and I say this as a columnist who once wrote about residents in Toronto’s Beach neighbourhood who opposed the existence of a paddleboard kiosk because it obstructed their view of the lake.
Right now, a group of residents in East York (where you’re unlikely to see a home for sale under $999,000) are vehemently opposed to a city plan to build 64 units of modular housing for people experiencing homelessness in the area.
This housing isn’t slated to go up in a beloved park, but on a slab of concrete: a.k.a. a parking lot.
This should be a slam dunk for affordable housing, but residents are angry about the prospective elimination of the 75-spot parking lot, which some seem to regard with a reverence usually reserved for sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
According to one local resident interviewed this past weekend in a now viral Global News clip, the parking lot in question is “the heart of the community.”
Personally, if a parking lot was the heart of my community, I think I might relocate before I went on television to defend its honour. But to each their own.
Residents are upset because the parking lot on Cedarvale Avenue services kids’ recreation spaces in the area, from a park to a public pool to baseball diamonds.
And God forbid people who have experienced homelessness should live around children, particularly children whose parents own appreciating homes.
Many residents have taken to Facebook to express their concerns about the project. Some of those residents are respectful, but others seem obsessed with the notion that modular housing will: a) increase crime in the area; and b) decrease their property values.
Yet there’s quite a bit of evidence out there to indicate the opposite. According to a study by Toronto think tank The Wellesley Institute, which analyzed the impacts of two supportive housing buildings in the late 2000s: “Of the 54 immediate neighbours and business people interviewed, only two business people claimed that the houses have a negative impact. They were also the business people with the least experience in the neighbourhood.”
The study concluded that there was no evidence that the supportive housing buildings negatively impacted property values or provoked crime in the neighbourhood.
Do a quick Google search on impacts of supportive housing and you’ll find similar studies in other North American cities — most of which appear to have similar results: residents’ worst nightmares about supportive housing are rarely if ever realized.
I can provide some anecdotal evidence to support this research: I live directly beside a transitional housing building. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this fact has had zero impact on my life or the life of my infant daughter.
“The research that’s been done, we haven’t seen drops in property values or increases in crime,” says Toronto’s housing secretariat, Abigail Bond. “We’re seeing a huge pressure on our shelter system right now, the result of COVID-19 increasing the number of people who have become homeless. We’re not anticipating this building and these residents to create any increase in public safety issues.”
Bond says the city puts “a lot of care” into these buildings to ensure their success, such as “24/7 staffing on site, picking the right non-profit operator, and having a food program.”
Brad Bradford, the city councillor who represents East York is also optimistic about the project. “I’m not going to tolerate the stigmatization of our most vulnerable residents,” he says. But he won’t dismiss residents’ concerns either — one of which has nothing to do with who occupies the modular housing, but with the parking it will eliminate.
Andrew Pace, owner of East York Baseball Camp, says that the parking lot in question is packed in the summertime and he wonders how the city will make up for it. “If there’s a (baseball) tournament, that’s 1,000 cars. Where are those cars going to go?”
It’s a valid question. Bradford says there’s “an opportunity to increase street permit parking” in the neighbourhood to make up for the eliminated lot. “There are periods where parking is a challenge and rather than being dismissive of those concerns, which are valid, we need to find solutions.”
He’s right about this. The parking lot in question may not be the heart of the community but it does service the heart of the community — and residents are right to wonder how the city will accommodate them if the modular housing is built. But when it comes to residents’ other concerns — those of safety — I suspect that nothing short of scrapping the project altogether will appease those fiercely opposed to it.
This is sad — not to mention ironic — because just last March, it was precisely in Toronto neighbourhoods like East York, full of single-family homes, that we saw people banging pots and pans on their front porches in solidarity with essential workers.
It’s too bad that solidarity doesn’t extend to Torontonians hardest hit by COVID-19: those dealing with homelessness.