Toronto’s social housing is crumbling. How will the federal leaders fix it?
Toronto Community Housing’s buildings are old - decades old - and a $2.6-billion repair backlog is resulting in apartments being closed by the hundreds, forcing already vulnerable families from their homes.

thestar.com
Oct. 14, 2015
By Jennifer Pagliaro

Greg Spearn tours a property at 20 Falstaff Ave. during a boarded unit tour in Toronto, Ontario, September 12, 2015.

Greg Spearn stands where the ceiling is bulging down toward him, the result of water seeping in from the roof over the top-floor apartment.

Now the units below are also at risk in this Toronto Community Housing highrise near Jane St. and Wilson Ave.

The top-floor unit is just one of hundreds TCHC has been forced to close in the past five years.

The lack of repairs due to funding gaps has gotten so bad in buildings like this that they’ve been deemed unfit for human habitation.

There are now 4,000 units at risk of being boarded up in the next three years. And with few other options for rehousing families, officials estimate that could have a devastating impact on some 16,000 people.

City officials, local politicians and housing experts have all deemed it a crisis.

“If we don’t fix these homes, there’s a huge spike in health-care costs coming that are going to far exceed the investment we’re asking the levels of governments for to fix the units in the first place,” said Spearn, Toronto Community Housing’s interim CEO, in a recent interview with the Star.

“So for us, we’re a little frustrated that you can see something clearly ahead of you and it is a wall you’re going to run into and if you don’t do anything about it you will hit the wall.”

In Toronto, 265,000 people live in social housing. The city, through TCHC, governs 58,800 housing units spread across more than 2,200 buildings worth more than $9 billion.

Meanwhile, there are almost 94,000 applications on the public housing waiting list as of July, representing 172,087 people - families and individuals, many vulnerable, waiting to be housed.

That is more than the entire population of Burlington; more than the city of Oshawa.

That list has continued to steadily grow - up from 66,186 households in 2007 - in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which left families struggling to get by as rent and housing prices crept up.

At the same time, TCHC is faced with a $2.6-billion repair backlog over the next 10 years. The reason for the massive price tag? The average age of all TCHC buildings is 40 years, with some that have been standing for 60 years. The $2.6 billion would not transform these buildings into gleaming new apartments and townhouses, just a “fair” state of repair.

The city has committed to a one-third share, at $864 million, which is quickly depleting without contributions from the provincial and federal governments.

City and housing officials are pleading for help.

The city insists the federal government has to maintain the 2015 level of investment - $140 million annually - to keep up with housing needs.

Without it, the city faces a critical cash problem. Looking at that $140- million figure, if you assume a one per cent property tax hike brings in approximately $25 million for the city, taxes would need to be raised by 5.6 per cent - sustained indefinitely - just to cover the federal government’s missing share.

That doesn’t include what is needed from the province or any annual inflationary increases. That money, in a city context, is equivalent to most of the library budget ($188 million) and totally overshadows the $95 million investment in the TTC that will see needed bus and other service improvements promised this year.

Without that federal investment, as well as a provincial commitment, 7,500 units could be shuttered in the next decade, city officials say.

“The system is now at a pivotal moment,” read a June report from city staff to council. “Unless these pressures are finally addressed, the city will see the erosion of its social housing system, limiting the city’s ability to meet the needs of low-income households or to ensure quality housing and services even as the municipal funding share increases.”

While the city now contributes the majority of social housing funds, it wasn’t always this way. The responsibility for social housing was traditionally borne by higher levels of government.

In the 1990s, the federal government was largely subsidizing housing, providing money to the provinces and territories to dole out amongst cities through various agreements. Provinces were soon made to take chief responsibility for funding social housing.

Meanwhile, the province has continued off-loading housing costs onto the city, withdrawing money that was needed to maintain the current portfolio of buildings. At the current rate, the federal government will be contributing nothing to maintain that housing by 2032.

Though there have been some new investments from the province and Ottawa - including $801 million across Ontario over five years, that money cannot be used for repairs.

Spearn says it would have been cheaper in the long run to have kept up with repairs. Now, several buildings are too far gone and need replacing.

“The buildings are simply aging out, and unless they get the repairs, the acceleration of closing them up is going to happen,” he said. “It’s inevitable.”