By M. Lau & S. da Silva
On March 10, 2011 Toronto Mayor Rob Ford launched his attack on social housing in Toronto, adding to the list of other attacks that Ford’s City Hall is making on working people. After scandalizing the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) when details were released about misspending by TCHC bureaucrats, City Hall moved to dismantle the TCHC Board of Directors. The TCHC board was replaced with one man: ex-councilor Case Ootes, who will act as the interim managing director and the lone board member of the Corporation.
With no oversight, Ootes will be able to unilaterally make drastic changes to TCHC over the next three months. Ford has stated, “This is the first step taken to restore confidence back in Toronto Community Housing and tenants are going to be happy.”
Sure, revelations about the TCHC bureaucrats spending thousands of dollars on candies and retreats should outrage people. But let’s not confuse Ford’s rhetoric about fighting the “gravy train” for his attacks on working people and the poor. The former is a not-so-subtle justification for the latter.
The real scandal in TCHC is the deplorable living conditions that tenants are being forced to endure.There is anywhere from $300 to $600 million in outstanding repairs due in Toronto’s social housing stock, with some 2,000+ units sitting vacant because of being in such a state of disrepair. The crisis of chronic underfunding is the result of downloading the responsibility for housing to municipalities with the passage of the Social Reform Housing Act in December 2000.This crisis is the result of all three levels of government, and the people have to fight to prevent privatization from becoming the solution to this manufactured crisis of neoliberalism. Read more…
By Steve da Silva
The TCHC residents of Regent Park and Lawrence Heights will easily recognize the name ‘Public Interest’. Public Interest Strategy and Communications was the consulting firm that was hired by TCHC to conduct the bogus “consultation” processes with residents about plans for ‘Revitalization’ (a.k.a. Gentrification).In essence, these consultations were all about selling the idea of “redevelopment” to the people, managing people’s dissident when it arose, and channeling people’s opposition into harmless forms of community engagement.
On Sunday, March 13, 2011, a citywide organizing meeting was held in Lawrence Heights to create tenant opposition to the new threats of privatization. The folks of Public Interest (alongside one of the two purged TCHC ‘Tenant Rep’ Board members Catherine Wilkinson) immediately thrust themselves into the center of the organizing initiative.
Can a TCHC-contracted consulting group be in a position to provide genuine leadership to the tenant opposition to privatization? Or are they merely concerned about losing their hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts if TCHC is privatized? At least one Lawrence Heights resident saw the conflict of interest when she demanded Public Interest be excluded from the March 13 meeting: “How could these people be here if they’ve been the ones promoting the “revitalization” of our communities?”
One look at the biography of Wilkinson on the TCHC website would have most tenants thinking twice about whose been “representing” them at TCHC. A Board Member of the Innisfil Chamber of Commerce and formerly an Auxiliary Police Constable are only a few of the highlights of Wilkinson’s stacked resume.
Sean Meagher (President) and Effie Vlachoyannacos (employee) of Public Interest have also established a series of other non-tenant led “community outreach and engagement programs”, including Save Our Structures. It’s also no secret that Meagher, Vlachoyannacos, and the work of Public Interest as a whole isvery close to the NDP.
Tenants haven’t forgotten that it was the NDP Mayor David Miller who oversaw the deterioration of social housing in Toronto and the unpopular “revitalization” schemes. Certainly, higher levels of government need to be blamed. But the NDP at the level of municipal politics in Toronto has done nothing but to hold back the initiative of tenants at a period when what we really need is a massive organizing and mobilizing initiative, not lobbying and electoral politics.
Since the March 13 meeting, the Public Interest-Wilkinson duo have been dominating and directing what has developed into a grouping called “Tenants for Social Housing: We are not for sale!” They have struggled hard to ensure that the work of this grouping would limit itself to lobbying politicians, petitioning, and reinstating tenant representation (read: Catherine Wilkinson) on the TCHC Board of Directors.
I, Steve da Silva, a member of BASICS Community News Service, alongside Shafiq Aziz, a TCHC resident, have been attending these meetings and strongly advocating for the creation a completely independent tenant initiative. Indeed, BASICS (and myself) were advocating for this sort of independent organizing since early 2007 when we created our newspaper in Lawrence Heights to counter the gentrification schemes on the horizon – around the same time that Public Interest was signing their first contracts with TCHC for the Lawrence Heights project.
If Public Interest and Wilkinson are against privatization, good on them; the people need allies. But TCHC residents had no shortage of problems under the former Board of Directors and under the NDP-oriented City Hall of David Miller; and things are certainly about to get a hell of a lot worse with Mayor Rob Ford. Residents cannot let their initiatives be supported to the NDP electoral machine or any other narrow set of interests.
At this time, tenants need a truly independent, citywide tenant organization to fight against privatization, fight for the long-overdue repairs, and build truly democratic tenant-led movement in our communities.
By Shafiqullah Aziz, TCHC Tenant, Cataraqui (Scarborough)
As the current situation with TCHC unfolds – Bill 140 threatening to throw open the door to the privatization of social housing, the firing of all members of the former TCHC board, the approval by Ootes to sell 22 units, with a one-man TCHC board occupied by Case Ootes, among many other actions – it is clear that the working class tenants of TCHC housing are being bombarded from all sides by provincial and municipal governments.
So the question arises, what should we do about this? What should the working poor TCHC tenants do about the possible privatization of the management and ownership of their homes? The answer lies in the tested, tried, and true method of grass-roots community organizing, led by tenants, for tenants, and to the benefit of the greatest amount of tenants as possible. Not only is this one of the only methods that can be effectively used by tenants throughout the city, it is by far the strongest.
What does grass-roots community organizing actually mean? It basically follows the idea that we as tenants, as individuals separate from any existing NGOs or governmental bodies, can effectively launch a massive campaign to bring the threat of privatization of our homes to a grinding halt. There are many ways that this may come about, and the key principle here is to empower ourselves to take control of matters that will directly affect our lives. Currently there are approximately 165,000 tenants living in TCHC housing, and with numbers of this size, there is a lot of progress that tenants can make by working together in one large, united collective.
Essentially, tenants would reach out to their neighbours, family and friends who all live in TCHC housing to stop the possible privatization of our homes. This approach must be used in as many communities as possible throughout the city. Spreading the word by going door to door, carrying conversations with community members, posting agitational materials throughout your neighbourhood, urging tenants to join in the struggle to keep our homes from being privatized are all tactics that may be used to gain support and solidify the power of the tenants.
These efforts and strategies must be guided by an organization whose general membership and leadership is comprised of TCHC tenants. Here are some guidelines to think about for the creation of such an organization:
1. The organization must have an authentic TCHC tenant leadership that represents the interests of the whole and not of a few individuals.
2. Meetings, discussions, town halls, etc., must be held in a manner that will respect the voices and concerns of the people; any disrespectful facilitators and rogue leadership that may lead the people astray must be questioned, and if necessary recalled to avoid the division of our collective efforts.
3. Those tenants who volunteer to take on a leadership position must be embraced and not excluded from the activities of this tenant-organizing group (especially women of colour, youth, queer and transgendered people, and other marginalized peoples representing various segments of our diverse population)
4. The leadership of such an organization must be subordinate to the greater general body of tenants within the organization; the leadership is only in place to carry out the wishes and demands of the tenants, which must be approved by and can be overturned by majority votes during meetings.
5. Individuals or groups which have a vested interest or may financially/politically gain from defending the former TCHC board and maintaining the former corrupt system, must not be allowed to co-opt the movement for their own personal benefit.
6. A genuine, independent tenants’ organization must follow the mandates set out by the democratic process advanced by TCHC tenants. The strategy devised by the organization must always emphasize and represent the interests of all TCHC tenants; the organization must appeal to the largest amount of TCHC tenants it can gather throughout the city; and the tasks assigned by the organization must be carried out in a time-efficient and effective manner at the initiative of the mass membership.
Tenants need an organization of our own. The time for the mass mobilization of TCHC tenants is now! We must use our strength as a unified force of tenants to exercise our democratic rights, and refuse the privatization of our homes. If we are not able to organize at this point in time, or homes and communities face privatization, leading to the selling off of our homes, massive increases in rent, unaccountable management, and the general deterioration in the quality of our homes as private owners aim to increase profits, not serve the people.
We must fight to attain control of our homes and our lives. No longer will we be idle as Rob Ford, Case Ootes and City Hall sells off our social housing.
There are many organizing efforts by tenants at this time. Contact us at [email protected] to start organizing around these issues.
FOR PUBLIC HOUSING! FOR TENANT POWER!
TCHC HOMES ARE NOT FOR SALE!
By M. Lau & Diamond Wisdom
Timing was everything when it came down to Ford’s rush decision to dismantle TCHC’s Board of Directors and replace it with a one-man-operation, Case Ootes. The provincial government is currently working to passBill 140: Strong Communities Through Affordable Housing Act 2011. Bill 140 will enact the Housing Services Act 2010, and repeal the Social Housing Reform Act 2000. If Bill 140 passes, it will have disastrous consequences for those reliant on social housing in Ontario.
With over 300,000 names on housing waiting lists across Ontario—a list that can take up to 21 years to wait through—there is no mention of new funding to address the backlog of repairs or any plans to create more truly affordable housing stock. One tenant told BASICS that she felt that the provincial plan for social housing was to let it crumble to the point where the city could use the excuse of “unmanageable deterioration” to justify privatizing management or selling off more of its housing stock. For instance, while just a few months ago, the backlog of TCHC repairs was reported to be standing at $300 million, mainstream press recently began reporting that the number currently stands at $600 million. It is unclear where these numbers come from as there has been no such transparent reporting / documentation of these numbers. In any case, City Hall is trying to steer the crisis of social housing into support for privatization, as if that were the only solution.
Under Bill 140, the supervisory manager – now Case Ootes – will be given new powers to essentially do what he wants. Under Section 95(16), “The housing provider is deemed to ratify and confirm what the supervisory manager does during the supervisory manager’s appointment, but this subsection applies only to things done in accordance with this Act.” During this time, Case Ootes will be able to “carry on the business of the housing provider,” “to improve the governance of the housing provider,” and “to stabilize or improve the financial situation of the housing provider”—legal-speak for taking the wrecking ball to TCHC.
As it stands, Bill 140 effectively removes (the currently existing) provincial oversight in the selling off of local housing corporation assets. Under Section 161(2), “A person may transfer, mortgage or develop the real property only with the written consent of the service manager in whose service area the real property is located.” Under Section 162(2), “The housing provider may transfer or mortgage the housing project or the land where it is located only with the written consent of the service manager in whose service area the housing project is located.” Since the service manager of the TCHC is the City of Toronto, Bill 140 would effectively allow the City of Toronto to privatize / sell off the current stock of housing.
While the passing of Bill 140 paves the way for privatization, it fails to address the real crisis of social housing. For TCHC tenants, the Bill fails to address the systemic problems caused by the structure of the Corporation in alleviating poverty and truly helping to improve the lives of poor people across the city in an era of instability.It also fails to address existing issues such as punitive Rent-Geared-Income rules (which removes protection and increases the instability and stress of tenants transitioning into the workforce through unfair rent increases); lack of protection and fairness for tenants (for instance, in rent subsidy disputes or unfair evictions) due to a lack of an independent review process; a lack of inclusionary housing policies; the list goes on.
For non-profit housing providers, such as the 550 housing cooperatives across Ontario, Bill 140 would effectively remove the protections of these co-ops that existed under the Social Housing Reform Act 2000. The new legislation would allow service managers to take control of and potentially sell off co-ops under “a triggering event,” including if the housing provider accumulates a deficit that is “substantial.”
With a provincial election approaching for October 2011, it is not at all surprising that Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty has aligned himself with Toronto’s right wing mayor Rob Ford for a combined Provincial-Municipal offensive against affordable housing in particular and against working-people and the poor in general.
Working people are coming under attack from all levels. There’s never been a more important time for residents and working people to organize themselves against the “austerity” offensive. The rich are getting richer because of the attacks being waged on working people and the programs they rely on. Tenants require a truly independent tenants’ organization to defend against privatization and advance the struggle, made up of and truly led by TCHC residents.
Contact [email protected] to get involved in organizing.
by M. Cook – BASICS #17 (Jan / Feb 2009)
Patrick LeSage, former Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Ontario, has been conducting public forums investigating Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s (TCHC) eviction policies after the death of a former TCHC tenant. We, at BASICS, want to provide tenants with another space to share their experiences and to organize to make changes. This article is intended to provide a brief overview of social housing and we hope to continue a series on social housing based on tenants’ experiences.
