Vaughan's Wellbeing: report reveals troubling trends
Despite having an affluent, well-educated populace, city is grappling with lack of affordable housing, long commute times, air quality issues

YorkRegion.com
Nov. 3, 2015
Adam Martin-Robbins

Vaughan boasts a largely affluent, well-educated populace, but it suffers from a lack of affordable housing, long commute times, poor air quality and hidden pockets of poverty, according to a new report.   

“We here in the City of Vaughan have an exceptional standard of living and quality of life, but it’s very important to be aware of the polarization of classes; be aware of the fact people are in need,” Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua said during the official release, at city hall Tuesday, of Measuring What Matters, The Vaughan Community Wellbeing Report 2015.

“In a city like ours, you can really begin to believe that everything is always OK for everybody, but the reality is that there are signals out there — and this report will indicate it — that tell us we need to give attention to certain issues.”

The report measures the health and well-being of Vaughan residents compared to the rest of the province and country.

To do that it draws heavily on the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW), which pulls together data from a host of sources – Statistics Canada, social service agencies and municipal governments — to examine 64 indicators grouped into eight quality of life categories such as community vitality, democratic engagement, education, environment, healthy populations, living standards and time use.

TROUBLING TRENDS

 Among the report’s findings are some troubling trends.

For instance, Vaughan has a large proportion of high-income residents and relatively few low-income residents, but “more and more people are feeling financial pressures and are dealing with precarious employment,” the report states.

And while the city has an incredibly high homeownership rate — 92.2 per cent in 2011, the highest among Ontario’s 10 largest cities — a large proportion of residents are spending 30 per cent or more of their income on housing costs.  

Low-income earners, meanwhile, are facing barriers to finding housing fuelled by rising home costs, a short supply of rental accommodations and long waiting lists for affordable housing units.

When it comes to the ever-increasing time crunch, Vaughan residents are feeling it, in part, because they spend more time in their vehicles travelling to and from work.

The average commute time in the city is 30.1 minutes, nearly 10 minutes longer than the provincial average of 20.8 minutes and the Canadian average of 20.5 minutes, the report finds.

Of course, part of the problem is that 80 per cent of residents use a car, truck or van to get around town compared with 72.5 per cent provincially and 74 per cent nationally.

Conversely, only 13 per cent of residents use “sustainable” modes of transportation such as public transit, walking or cycling.

The high percentage of drivers is contributing to Vaughan’s air quality issues too.

Greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise, the report states, and, if steps aren’t taken to curb them, annual emissions could reach 2.6 megatons, up from the current 1.7 megatons, by 2026.

The report also points to a lack of civic engagement reflected, in part, by lower voter turn out, especially during municipal elections.

A mere 40 per cent of local electors cast a ballot in the 2010 municipal election and even fewer, 30 per cent, in 2014.

POSITIVE ASPECTS

However, Vaughan does fare well in some areas.

For instance, both property crime and violent crime are on the decline.

The city also gets top marks in education with solid early years performance numbers and a higher than average rate of postsecondary education completion.  

“Every community needs to be clear about where it’s headed and a community like Vaughan obviously wants a future that’s healthier, safer, more just and prosperous for all of its citizens and using evidence to find out about how much progress is being made against that ideal future is critical,” said Charles Pascal, a University of Toronto professor who helped develop the CIW when he helmed the Atkinson Charitable Foundation.

“If you don’t gather evidence, it is easy for elected officials and others to be deluded into thinking that everything’s fine,” added Pascal, who was one of the keynote speakers Tuesday.

Measuring What Matters was produced by the Vaughan Community Wellbeing Coalition, comprised of representatives from the City of Vaughan, Vaughan Community Health Centre, United Way Toronto & York Region, Vaughan Public Libraries, York University, York Region District School Board, The Social Planning Council of York Region (SPCYR), Human Endeavour and Catholic Community Services of York Region.

The coalition formed after Vaughan was chosen, in 2013, as one of six sites to participate in a provincial pilot project to help agencies develop a measurement tool, based on the CIW, aimed at providing a “detailed, data-driven” and much broader perspective of the quality of life in their respective communities.

The hope is that this new report will spur local agencies, citizens and decision makers to take action to address areas of concern.

To that end, the coalition has made policy recommendations in four areas: increasing affordable housing options, improving access to public transportation, implementing measures to improve air quality and promoting local economic development, especially for newcomers and others facing barriers to employment.

Isabel Araya, executive director of Vaughan Community Health Centre, is optimistic there will be action on those recommendations.

“I think there is a lot of potential because we have a lot of like-minded individuals as members of the coalition and we have representation from the city and we are hoping to have representation from the Region (of York) as well,” she said. “So if we all put our minds together I’m sure we’ll be able to respond to and measure these policy recommendations.”

Bevilacqua said he and his fellow councillors “deeply care about the signals this report is giving us and, you can rest assured, we will give it the respect it deserves.”     

The report will be available online Wednesday at www.aohoc.org/Vaughan-Community-Wellbeing-Report