There’s a sign outside the apartment buildings at 1555 Queen East that identifies them as social housing, 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 hallmarks of the dark ages of Toronto community housing.
Fortunately, society’s thinking on affordable housing has evolved since the 1950s, when developments like these two Queen East towers were built. But as veteran housing advocate Joy Connelly explains on her Jane’s Walk through the east end on Sunday, May 6, popular perceptions about low-income housing continue to be influenced by the prejudices built into these aging developments.
Standing in the patch of green space between the two buildings, Connelly describes the philosophy behind 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 tells the roughly 50 participants.
Because of the failure of those stigmatized 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 and plenty of evidence that such projects can be successful.
A few short blocks from the Queen East site, Connelly leads the group west to the Riverdale Housing Co-op. It’s a little slice of urban bliss. A row of quaint townhouses face onto a small, well-kept courtyard where on Sunday children are playing in the spring sunshine.
Created just eight years after 1555 Queen East was built, 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, manage and maintain the development and, by keeping their costs down, pay $200 to $300 less than market rent.
Crucially, the co-op is mixed-income, making it an antidote to the ghettoization that plagued earlier projects. Roughly half the residents receive a subsidy from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, while the others pay their own way, attracted by the low rents and the knowledge that their money is helping their less fortunate neighbours.
Successful as it is, 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 heads north into the residential streets near Greenwood and Dundas, Connelly asks us 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 Toronto’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. Although a working group has been appointed to look into alternatives, it may not prevent the sale.
Connelly says the houses have been mismanaged, 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 could maintain them as affordable housing.
“TCH says it cannot manage the houses. I think that’s right,” Connelly says. “But just because TCH 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. Unlike TCH’s units, Innstead’s properties have produced reserve funds instead of repair backlogs. They’re energy-efficient and well-maintained, and many provide housing for people receiving rent subsidies. The rent for one 5-bedroom Innstead house is a paltry $1,800 a month.
A new city-run agency set up on the Innstead model could take the scattered units off TCH’s hands without displacing vulnerable tenants, Connelly believes.
“I would strongly recommend that they set up a new non-profit housing corporation that would take responsibility for this portfolio, learn from the experience of the people who can do it,” she says, “and create something I think could be quite wonderful.”
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