Sewell’s blunt language challenges Tory on public housing
Toronto needs to just get on with building more, not go begging to the provincial or federal governments, he says.

thestar.com
By EDWARD KEENAN
April 21, 2017

In a lot of ways, a friend recently pointed out to me, former Toronto mayor John Sewell is a kind of anti-Tory - in as much as two older white lawyers-turned-politicians, who have lived their lives in the central city and are both named John, can be considered opposites.

Where our current Mayor John is sort of the definition of an establishment man - born into wealth and influence, schooled in Big Blue Machine backrooms, familiar with corporate boardrooms and executive suites - former mayor John has spent his whole career kicking the establishment in the shins, or disregarding it altogether, organizing the rabble in street demonstrations and church-pew rallies. While Tory is famously agreeable, justly proud of being known as a conciliator and cooperator, always looking for middle ground in an argument, Sewell is cantankerous, not just willing but often apparently eager to point fingers. While our current mayor is relatively new to city hall and sometimes approaches longstanding issues with outsider eyes, Sewell has spent a career as an activist, politician and writer working relentlessly on the same few issues: land use, policing, governance, and, especially, public housing.

And where Tory is famously diplomatic and verbose - his sentences often winding through multiple clauses and digressions and qualifiers before winding around to their resolution, Sewell can tend to be very blunt.

This last contrast was on display when Sewell addressed Tory’s executive committee on Wednesday on the topic of closing some public housing units.

“Sorry, you’re going the wrong way on affordable housing,” Sewell said. “You’re not increasing the stock. It’s decreasing. That’s the problem.

“I’ll just follow up, if I may,” Tory responded, “by asking whether you’re aware of the advocacy exercise by a number of members of this council, including myself, to the other governments - and I think we’re maybe seeing some fruit from the federal government getting back into housing, and the provincial government to help us with that on the basis that we can’t expend $2.6 billion on repairs that are needed by ourselves?”

“I realize you can go out and beg money from them, and then when they don’t give it you can blame them,” Sewell said. “Spend your own money.”

It was bracingly direct. A simple message. And he kept it up not just for his five-minute presentation, but for the 35 minutes of questioning from city councillors that followed. Asked by peacemaker Mary Margaret McMahon what compliments he might have for the current administration to go alongside his complaints, he seemed disgusted by the olive branch. “There’s no compliments from me on the affordable housing file for the city council.”

His message was simple, but it isn’t as if his understanding of the issue is simple-minded. Sewell built his career first by advocating for residents as public housing projects in Regent Park, Don Mount Court, and Treffan Court during the 1960s; he was a pivotal member of the reform council that built public housing in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood in the 1970s; he was the chair of Metro Toronto Housing Authority in the 1980s; he wrote a book about different models of redeveloping public housing in the 1990s. He knows the file.

And here was his key message about it: “I think we have to call it what it is. It’s not about the small questions, it’s about the big issue. This is a major failure of the city’s political leadership.” The “this” in that last sentence refers to the current state of affairs, in which “city council has established itself as the worst landlord in Toronto.” In which, with 177,000 people on the waiting list for subsidized units, the city is closing 425 units this year, and may close 7,500 in the near future because of the sky-high bill for necessary repairs to keep the housing stock habitable. The city has put $250 million into its budget this year to address a backlog worth 10 times that much. The mayor and councillors have been demanding money from the province and the federal governments. Still, the units are closing. The waiting list is getting longer.

“It’s clearly not enough,” Sewell said.

What he suggested the city do, specifically, was the opposite of slowing the rate of unit closures incrementally. He suggested building new units. Lots of them. “I think the city has to show that it is serious about building new affordable housing, and if it can’t get the funding and support from other levels of government, it’s going to go ahead on its own. With a substantial program, not a small program. And I believe the place to start is redeveloping 110 public housing projects.”

Such redevelopments, he suggested, done in partnership with the private-sector developers who would build market units in the same places, could add as many as 20,000 new units on land the city already owns, and rebuild virtually all of the existing ones.

If the city did so, he said, his experiences with Regent Park and especially St. Lawrence Market leads him to believe the provincial and federal governments would want to come in and invest and be a part of it, no begging required. But either way, the city could and should forge ahead without waiting for anyone else’s help.

What we need, he said at one point in response to a question, is “not the begging initiative, but the one that says we’re gonna do it.”

Maybe there’s room to do both at city hall. Maybe there’s a place for diplomacy, and consensus building, and making incremental improvements in all kinds of areas.

But on this issue, at a time when poor people are lined up waiting for a place to live, and we’re closing too many of the places we have already, it sure feels like the blunt approach Sewell brought to the meeting is desperately needed.

“This is a long-term failure,” Sewell said. “We need much stronger leadership.”