Tory visits shuttered TCHC units, continues push for funding for repairs

Mayor John Tory toured a number of shuttered units at a Toronto Community Housing building in Scarborough on Thursday morning as he continued to lobby the provincial government for funding for needed repairs.

There are currently 24 units that have been closed at the building on Eglinton Avenue near Markham Road and Tory told reporters on Thursday that those units may not be repaired for up to a year as the city continues to struggle with a significant backlog of capital repairs across its 58,000 unit community housing portfolio.

Tory said the damage to the shuttered units he toured included a floor that had “been completely ruined” as a result of leaks from the ceiling and bathrooms and kitchens that were otherwise in a state of significant disrepair.

“These units are on the list to be fixed in next 12 months or so but they aren’t fixed yet and they sit empty today in a city where we are short of housing units and where we have a substantial waiting list,” he said. “We need all three governments to come meaningfully to the table to get this job done.”

In 2013 the city approved a $2.6 billion, 10-year capital repair plan for crumbling TCHC buildings that was based on equal contributions from all three tiers of government, however to date neither the provincial or federal governments have contributed any money to the program, leaving a $1.7 billion shortfall that could mean the closure of 1,000 more units by the end of 2018 and 7,500 units by 2022. .

In its most recent budget the federal government did set aside $11.2 billion for social housing over the next 11 years and Tory told reporters that he expects money to flow to the city for needed repairs by “2018 at the latest.”

Tory, however, chastised the province for failing to include any new money for Toronto Community Housing in its most recent budget and said Queen’s Park has a “moral imperative” to step up.

“With the city having virtually exhausted its sources of money, that heightens the risk of units actually having to be closed,” he said. “We have used every reasonable tool that I think people would expect us to do. We have used City of Toronto dollars, we have used the refinancing of mortgages and we have used the sale of assets. So the question that is now clearly on the table is this; isn’t it fair and sensible that the other governments should become part of the solution?”

Tory conceded that the province has made some investments in social housing, including a commitment to provide $130 million in funding for energy retrofits, but he said that they have failed to come to the table in any meaningful way when it comes to fixing crumbling units.

“I just don’t believe that the things included in the budget make up for the fact that nothing in the way of new funds was provided for the repair of units like the ones we visited today,” he said on Thursday.

Resident speaks out

The building that Tory visited on Thursday was in the news about two years ago when the bricks on most of its east exterior wall suddenly peeled away and crashed to the ground below.

At the time, residents raised concerns about the general state of the building but work has been slow.

As Tory took questions from reporters on Thursday, several residents and social housing advocates interrupted him to raise concerns about the slow pace of repairs.

“This building and all of these issues have been around for years and we feel as though we are being used right now,” Joy Robertson of the Scarborough Residents Unite Neighbourhood Association said. “There is no effort and there is no accountability.”

Tory said that some repairs are underway on the building, including the replacement of exterior walls and balconies, but he admitted that more needs to be done.

“The City of Toronto has put nearly a billion dollars into trying to repair this building and many other buildings across the city and I am saying I need the help of other levels of government to do that part of this,” he said.

For her part, Robertson said that the attitudes that politicians sometime have towards buildings like the on Eglinton Avenue must change.

“We deserve to be looking like part of Toronto and this neighbourhood definitely doesn’t look like it’s even part of Canada. It is about time they do something about it,” she said.

It should be noted that Premier Kathleen Wynne has previously said that Tory’s suggestion that her government hasn’t stepped up on housing is simply “not true.”