Toronto Community Housing CEO Kathy Milsom says she’s ready for the challenges ahead
New head of the country's biggest landlord says the corporation's focus needs to be "tenant-centric."

TheStar.com
Sept. 21, 2017
Jennifer Pagliaro

Kathy Milsom doesn’t know how many people wanted the top job as head of the country’s largest landlord after a year-long search, but said she was drawn to the work ahead.

“This organization does present a considerable challenge,” Milsom said in an interview with the Star in a seventh-floor boardroom at TCH’s Rosedale headquarters one month after her hiring was announced.

“When you look at the organization, you look at the number of people we’re responsible for — it’s 4 per cent of Toronto’s population — and the opportunity to really make a difference, to me it resonated both professionally and personally at this stage in my career.”

So far, Milsom has reached out to tenants by personal letter, knows there are more people on the waiting list then are currently housed by TCH, and is keeping track of how many people have yet to find new homes as they are displaced from a crumbling housing complex in North York.

But just weeks into the job, she’s careful not to weigh in decisively on big-ticket issues currently up for debate at city hall.

She said the “Tenants First” report, a document produced on the heels of a taskforce convened by Mayor John Tory on the future of TCH, is an “opportunity for us to really focus on what we do and make sure we do it to the best of our ability.”

The taskforce, led by former mayor and now Sen. Art Eggleton, recommended the first major shake-up in TCH’s history, outlining a need to break up the company into smaller pieces. City staff, in the Tenants First report, have since recommended changes that include hiving off seniors buildings and making a new city-run entity responsible for them.

“Any organization model can be made to work as long as you’ve got the right people doing the right things and very clear on what the mandate is,” Milsom said. “My sense is the city has not made a decision yet in terms of what the right model is.”

The focus, she said, should be on value-for-money and directing funds to services that have the most impact tenants.

At the same time, the corporation is facing a $1.6 billion repairs backlog without adequate funding from three levels of government to prevent thousands of units from being boarded up.

Milsom is “hopeful” that money will be forthcoming.

“My view is that the budget that we’re now putting together will ensure, if we get the approvals that we’re looking for and the money that we’re looking for, that there won’t be any closures,” she said.

Those remain big ifs.

That upcoming budget, she said, will include a request for additional funds from city council, which under Tory’s administration has adopted austerity budgets three years running.

While the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has approved national housing spending, it is unclear how much will be available for TCH and how soon.

And the province under Premier Kathleen Wynne, though recently announcing $343 million over three years for energy retrofits, has yet to commit to the requested one-third share — or $864 million — of the total repairs bill.

Milsom is no stranger to tricky bureaucracy that comes with this job, having worked at the city as director of facility planning and heading both provincial and Crown corporations.

A professional engineer who comes from a world of property management — she was former head of Canada Lands Company and a director of Infrastructure Ontario — she easily articulates the need to “empower” employees and ensure “strategic alignment.” But says the focus is on running a corporation that is “tenant-centric.”

She comes into one of the most controversy-plagued offices in Toronto, which has seen three other CEOs in the last six years — two of them ousted amid spending and mismanagement scandals.

While one former CEO Gene Jones once complained to the Toronto Sun that his office was too small during an ongoing repairs crisis, Milsom seems to be working with what she’s got.

When she inquired about a painting hung on the wall in the office, something that was left behind, she learned it was done by a young TCH resident.

She asked a small plaque be made to permanently mark where the art came from.

“I think the hardest thing is I can’t help everyone all at once,” she said of the job ahead of her. “It’s a big responsibility and I don’t take that lightly.”