Social Policy in Ontario

Fixing Toronto’s broken public housing system would help us all

Posted on April 1, 2015 in Debates

—

TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – A report on the crushing repair backlog at Toronto Community Housing shows that fixing it would generate thousands of jobs and billions of tax dollars.
Mar 31 2015.   Editorial

Making people’s lives better by giving them decent shelter should be reason enough to ease the crushing repair backlog at Toronto Community Housing. But many low-income families have remained stuck in crime-infested public housing for years, enduring leaking roofs, rats, cockroaches, bed bugs, rusted pipes and bad wiring. To our society’s shame, the moral argument for fixing this mess simply hasn’t been enough.

Now a convincing new case is being put forward: Repairing Toronto’s dilapidated public housing stock isn’t just good social policy — it’s good business, too.

A comprehensive study by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis shows that doing the right thing would create thousands of jobs, spur private investment, and generate billions of extra dollars in federal and provincial taxes. That adds up to a compelling argument for increased support from Ottawa and Queen’s Park.

If upper governments won’t respond to basic human need, perhaps they’ll act in their own self-interest. Toronto Mayor John Tory (open John Tory’s policard) is intent on making a “moral and business case” for more federal and provincial funding, and rightly so.

“The economic and social benefits of increased investment are significant and far-reaching,” Tory said on Monday. And so is the harm that would result if nothing is done and social housing is allowed to deteriorate.

Today, about 36 per cent of the Toronto Community Housing Corp.’s massive residential portfolio is considered to be in poor or critical condition. Without an investment in repairing these homes, more than 90 per cent of the corporation’s units will be in a poor or critical state by 2023, or shut down due to unsafe conditions, according to the authors of the report.

The toll of such a dereliction of public duty would include higher health care costs, rising crime and immeasurable human suffering.

Federal officials are quick to note that they do pass money to the provincial level which could be channeled into public housing. And Queen’s Park insists it has spent more than $4 billion on affordable housing across Ontario since 2003. Just this week it announced $587 million for municipalities to ward off homelessness by helping people deemed at risk find accommodation suited to their needs.

It’s not as if nothing has been done to help poor people in need of shelter. But the plain fact is there’s a lot more to do to ward off a crisis looming in Toronto Public Housing.

City council has approved a 10-year, $2.6-billion capital repair plan, with one-third of that money to come from the municipal level. Ottawa and Queen’s Park are each being asked to contribute an equal share of $864 million. It is imperative that they do so.

Coupled with projects already underway, such as the revitalization of Regent Park, this investment would produce $4.5 billion in additional tax revenue for the federal and provincial governments. According to the independent consultant’s report, commissioned by the housing corporation, it would also generate 220,000 person years of employment as new jobs are created to support renovation work.

Businesses would thrive and, counting spin-off effects, the overall economy would benefit from as much as an $18-billion increase in GDP over 30 years.

Some serious ills would — quite literally — be avoided. According to the study, better housing conditions would prevent about 544,000 instances of resident sickness, easing pressure on Ontario’s already over-burdened healthcare system.

Installing modern heating systems and other efficiencies is projected to shave 10 per cent from the system’s average utility cost per unit. And a troubling increase in poverty-inspired crime would be warded off.

Even if some benefit projections listed in the study prove over-optimistic, there’s enough evidence to show that substantial new funding from Ottawa and Queen’s Park must not be regarded as just money gone down a public housing drain. On the contrary, such spending is a logical investment in social infrastructure capable of generating reasonable returns.

That makes it well worth pursing. Providing people with an acceptable place to live doesn’t just help the poor; it helps us all.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2015/03/31/fixing-torontos-broken-public-housing-system-would-help-us-all-editorial.html >

Tags: budget, economy, Health, homelessness, housing, mental Health, participation, poverty, standard of living, tax

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2015 at 9:46 am and is filed under Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.