Toronto Community Housing

STOP THE SELL OFF OF TORONTO HOUSING!
Statement from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

In a move that falls in line with the plans of Rob Ford, Toronto Community Housing is looking to sell off close to 1000 homes. The money raised in the sale would, we are told, go to meet the $600 million repair bill that years of neglect have created in public housing owned and operated by the City of Toronto. The sell off will involve ‘stand alone’ homes throughout the City.

Tens of thousands of desperate people sit on the 10 years’ long waiting
list for rent geared to income housing in this City and the housing
authority is now looking to sell off a major portion of this precious
resource. Displaced tenants will have to be moved into units presently
standing idle, that will be renovated with the money from the sale. This will mean that few people on the waiting list will get housed while the stock of public housing is reduced massively.

TCHC caves on tenant’s 30% rent increase!

Today, one day after OCAP’s public call-out to help Edmundo DeSousa make his rent after TCHC increased it by 30%, the City’s Largest Slumlord has caved: TCHC has apologized to Edmundo, and set his rent back to the original amount!

So, there’s no longer need for Friday’s protest/rent party at TCHC head office on this case. However, those who miss this notice and still show up on Friday will find some Victory Muffins.

While this is yet another victory for TCHC tenants fighting back, it’s still not known how many other poor tenants around the city could be facing such egregious rent increases as TCHC exploits a legal loophole to avoid even the lowest private market standards of social responsibility.

Stop the TCHC from raising Edmundo DeSousa's rent by 30%!

TCH Head Office
This Friday, October 9th
11.30 AM to 1.30 PM
931 Yonge Street (just south of Rosedale subway station)

TCH office: (416) 981-5500 or info@torontohousing.ca
Paula Fletcher: (416) 392-4060 or councillor_fletcher@toronto.ca

On May 23 we gathered outside 13 Trefann Street to tell the City and the Province not to sell this house or any other public housing unit. There is a desperate need for affordable housing in this city and it is
unconscionable to sell it off under these circumstances.

See more photos in our Photo Archive and on Story In Pictures.

Decent, Affordable, Accessible Housing For All

1. Ensure that enough social, supportive and accessible housing is built to eliminate the waiting list

4. Don't ask don't tell

At a time when the reality of financial crisis is becoming frighteningly clear for many Toronto residents, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation is quietly proposing the sell-off of 326 apartment units and 45 single-family homes of public housing (to see a map of buildings they want to sell, click here. The waiting list for social housing in the city of Toronto currently stands at an astonishing 70 000 and we can only expect this number to increase rapidly in the coming weeks and months. More jobs were lost in Canada in the month of January than in any other month since 1976, and the Ontario social assistance system remains in shambles. Not only are welfare and disability rates abysmally low, the system is currently incapable of providing for the inevitable surge of people who will find themselves suddenly unable to meet their basic needs. The City’s welfare reserve fund—a pool of money used to deal with sudden increases in social assistance rolls—has shrunk from $94.4 million to $8 million since David Miller came to power in 2003.

The three high rise buildings at Gordonridge Place in Scarborough are in a state of massive disrepair. The tenants in these buildings, like tens of thousands of others in Toronto Community Housing (TCH), face mold, water damage, poor ventilation, broken fixtures, unsafe balconies and infestation by rodents, cockroaches and bed bugs. They are victims of the City of Toronto’s worst slum landlord – the City of Toronto.

As part of our challenge to the neglect and abuse faced by Toronto Community Housing tenants, OCAP has been collecting up photographs of disrepair in TCH buildings. On March 26, we came to City Hall and put up a photo display that showed some of what we have seen around the City.

Right in the lobby of the City’s administrative centre, we let everyone see just how tenants have to live in the properties owned by the City of Toronto. Pictures showed the water damage that is eating into the units and common areas of high rise buildings in Mornell Court and Moss Park. They included a bathroom on Jamestown Crescent where the ceiling has caved in. A gaping hole over the shower of a tenant at 200 Sherbourne was shown. Petty neglect that could be dealt with easily was included. Outside one highrise building, a bench was pictured that had most of the boards that made up the seat missing.

OCAP is working on a photo display of the terrible housing conditions that exist in the housing that is operated by Toronto Community Housing (owned by the City of Toronto). We are going to put it up at City Hall under the title “The Worst Landlord in this City is the City” These photos show clearly that the neglect of tenants in TCH is at levels that are scandalous and disgusting. TCH claims that they can’t do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of repairs because the Province has not funded them. Queen’s Park replies by saying City Hall should take care of the problem.

The dispute is a farce designed to hide the fact that none of the players want to maintain decent public housing. The plan is to let it run down until they can say ‘there is no alternative’ and it gets sold off to the developers. Then, public housing will be replaced by condos. They will tell the tenants they displace that they are building ‘mixed neighbourhoods’ but the rent geared to income part of the new developments will shrink to nothing over time and public housing will disappear.