Toronto Community Housing’s decision to reward residents who helped with a murder investigation is sending the wrong message to other communities, say tenant representatives.
Christopher Kotsopoulos was killed in a brazen daytime shooting at the Swansea Mews community housing property near Queensway and Windermere on August 5. Four days later, after local residents came forward to help, police arrested three men and charged them with second-degree murder.
On Tuesday, TCH CEO Eugene Jones announced that as a thank-you for the residents’ cooperation, the corporation would commit to carrying out $150,000 worth of repairs on the Swansea Mews complex in the coming months.
“This is a safe community, and the residents of Queensway Windermere have made it clear that crime is not welcome here,” Jones said in a written statement. “The residents stepped up, and now Toronto Community Housing is stepping up.”
But the announcement has rankled some TCH tenant representatives, who say that it gives the impression that Swansea Mews is jumping the queue ahead of other community housing buildings that are in dire need of repair.
“It’s just such a bad idea, I think. It sends really the wrong message,” says Susan Gapka, a tenant safety representative for the TCH property at 146 Mutual downtown. “There should be a set of criteria for capital repairs. They should be following due process.”
As of 2012, the repair backlog for the TCH’s 2,215 properties was a whopping $750 million, and growing. Gapka points out that only last year the TCH was so desperate to raise funds to bridge the gap that it considered selling off all of its stand-alone homes. She doesn’t understand why there is suddenly enough money to fast-track $150,000 worth of work at Swansea Mews, and says the reward is pitting housing communities against one another.
“If Gene Jones or the corporation wants to thank people and praise people for being a good citizen, that’s a good idea,” she says. But “if you wanted to thank them, why not have a barbecue?”
Karlene Steer, a tenant representative for 177 Pendrith, wonders if she has to commit a crime to draw attention to the watermarks and peeling paint in some of her neighbours’ units.
“So what’s going to happen next? Do I have to cause some disturbance in my community to get something done?” she asks.
“Where is this money coming from? They say they don’t have no money.”
According to TCH spokesperson Sara Goldvine, the work being done for Swansea Mews won’t be completed at the expense of maintenance for other communities.
“We have prioritized which capital repairs are going to be happening in which communities,” she says. “That process is not impacted at all by the announcement this week… Anything that was planned in terms of capital repairs for other communities is still proceeding.”
The maintenance at Swansea Mews will include a new fence and caulking in the laundry room, projects that were on the wish list that TCH developments are invited to submit as part of the annual participatory budget process. Usually only a few of the items for each complex are funded, but Jones has committed to paying for everything on the Swansea Mews list, “as well as potentially some other things,” says Goldvine.
The $150,000 is not being taken out of the regular capital repair budget, assures Goldvine, but she can’t say exactly where it will come from.
For the moment, there are no plans to make rewarding communities that co-operate with police an official TCH policy. But Jones is open to trying something similar with other residents who help fight crime in their midst.
“One size does not fit all,” he said in an interview with CP24 on Thursday. “Hopefully we go to another community, they do something – it doesn’t have to be a result of a murder – but they take control of their property, they reduce or minimize criminal activity, [and] we’ll go out and do something with them.”
Toronto Police Services spokesperson Tony Vella says that the force relies on several initiatives, including community policing programs and Crimestoppers, to encourage witnesses to cooperate with investigations. Crimestoppers offers a cash reward for tips.
Vella says that while “sometimes it is a challenge to bring people forward,” community housing tenants are no more or less likely than other citizens to speak with police.
