There’s a sign outside the apartment buildings at 1555 Queen Street East that identifies them as social housing units, but it’s hardly necessary. You’re not likely to mistake them for anything else. Plain, squat, and unattractive, the brown-and-white buildings have all the recognizable hallmarks of the dark ages of Toronto community housing.
Thankfully, society’s thinking on affordable housing has evolved since the 1950s when developments like the two Queen East towers were built. But as veteran housing advocate Joy Connelly explained on her Jane’s Walk through the east end on Sunday, popular perceptions about low-income housing continue to be influenced by the prejudices built into these ageing developments.
Standing in the patch of green space between the two buildings, Connelly described the philosophy behind Toronto’s mid-century social housing projects as “make sure it’s not too nice, or people will want to stay.”
In order to avoid competition with the private market, the buildings were designed to be functional but undesirable. Small bedrooms, unstylish furnishings, and ugly exteriors were the order of the day. Stigma and marginalization were drafted right into the blueprints.
“Think how hard it is to overcome that marginal feeling once it’s been built in,” Connelly told the roughly 50 people who turned out for the walk.
Because of the failure of those marginal neighbourhoods (think the original Regent Park), Connelly says many people continue to see social housing as a problem to be solved rather than a public good, even though there’s a dire need for affordable housing in Toronto, and plenty of evidence that such projects can be successful.
A few short blocks from the Queen East site where the walk began, Connelly led the group west to the Riverdale Housing Co-op. It’s a little slice of urban bliss. A row of quaint town houses faces out onto a small, well-kept courtyard, where on Sunday children were playing in the spring sunshine.
Built just eight years after the Queen East towers, the co-op is evidence of a seismic shift in philosophy from ‘housing of last resort,’ to ‘housing as community.’
Tenants collectively own the co-op, and rental revenue that would otherwise go to a landlord instead gets put back into the property. Co-op members manage and maintain the development, and by keeping their costs down, pay $200 to $300 below market rent.
Crucially, the co-op is mixed income, making it an antidote to the ghettoization that plagued earlier projects. Half of residents receive a city federal subsidy to help with rent, while the other half pay their own way, attracted by the low rates and the knowledge their money is helping their less fortunate neighbours.
Successful as it is, the Riverdale Co-op is unfortunately as much of an anachronism as the drab towers on Queen East as first the federal government and then the province downloaded housing responsibilities to municipalities, co-op building was abandoned, and according to Connelly only one has been built in Toronto in the past 10 years.
As the group headed north into the residential streets near Greenwood and Dundas, Connelly asked the group to try to spot which houses are being used for social housing. Although there are several along the route (20 per cent of rental units in Toronto are social housing owned either by the city’s housing agency or non-profit organizations ), they’re indistinguishable from their neighbours.
This blending of incomes is vital to reducing the stigma that still surrounds community housing but the city is considering abandoning the strategy of embedding subsidized renters in regular neighbourhoods. The Toronto Community Housing board has recommended selling more than 600 of its scattered properties and herding the displaced tenants into high-rises. Although a working group has been appointed to look into alternatives, it may not prevent a sale.
Connelly says the houses have been mismanaged (they’ve racked up huge repair backlogs under the TCH’s watch) and the agency is right to sell them. But instead of auctioning them off to the highest bidder, she wants them transferred to an agency that can maintain them as affordable housing.
“The TCH says they cannot manage their houses. I think they’re right,” Connelly says. “But just because they can’t manage the houses doesn’t mean nobody can.”
She thinks the city could learn from Innstead, a co-op group made up of 53 scattered properties in the east end of downtown. Unlike the scattered TCHC units, Innstead’s properties have produced reserve funds instead of backlogs. They’re energy efficient, well-maintained, and many provide housing for people receiving rent subsidies from the city. The rent for one 5-bedroom Innstead house is a paltry $1,800 a month.
A new, city-run agency set up in the Innstead model could take the scattered units out of TCH’s hands without displacing vulnerable tenants, Connelly believes.
“I would strongly recommend that they would set up a new non-profit housing corporation that would take responsibility for this portfolio, learn from the expertise and the experience of the people who can do it,” she says, “and create something I think could be quite wonderful.”
