USE IT OR LOSE IT

Vote by crowbar:
OCAP heads to Miller's door, pushing for City takeover of vacant buildings

By MIKE SMITH
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2006-11-23/news_feature.php

I'm not saying David Miller's house isn't nice. It's just not as mayoral
as I'd expected. But, then, all the lights are out. Oh, and it's
surrounded by police, as Ontario Coalition Against Poverty supporters cap
a bracing night of break-and-enter with a visit to the mayor.

It's November 9, four days before an election that's seen little talk of
poverty. As OCAP's Mike Desroches puts it, activists have spent the
evening "voting with their crowbars," occupying a building long abandoned
(eight years) across from High Park.

This is part of a campaign for a "use-it-or-lose-it" bylaw that would
prevent developers from sitting on property while folks freeze.

"We will fight Miller as the mayor who promised to build housing but
didn't," declares OCAP organizer Sarah Vance. Really? Vance has always
been a gifted speaker, but I wonder if someone packed the wrong rhetoric.

Miller certainly hasn't turned out to be the anti-poverty advocate some
hoped for, but 900 affordable units this year and an Affordable Housing
Office are nothing to sneeze at.

Of course, compared to the overall problem thousands of households on the
affordable housing waiting list it's just a start, and a late one. No time
for a laurel nap.

But little as well for old posturing. "We got a 2 per cent raise on our
bloody welfare rate, now we're casing your houses for the other 38,"
chants the crowd. All this speaks to a complex reality, in which the
province holds assistance and housing dollars while developers hold
properties and the city deals, sagely or savagely, with the consequences.

OCAP and council have a common enemy in other governments and delinquent
developers. What if they I don't know listened to each other?

There's precedent, after all. OCAP has been, through some mixture of
intent and inevitability, on the cutting edge of progressive planning
before. For instance, one city's lawbreaking is another's lawmaking take
Paris's socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoé, who in 2001 committed his
administration to a controversial promise: buying property in the city's
most exclusive locales for conversion to affordable housing. Five years
on, economic diversity is making roads into les beaux quartiers. But you
still need a crowbar to do it here.

This evening's march is actually a backup plan. The group was aiming to
mark the closing of the Parkdale Pope Squat four years back with a return
entry en masse, but the property was ringed by police. So the assembled
piled onto school buses headed for the ward's tony north end, leaving 1510
King West as a dark monument to the strange history and future of city
housing.

The week before, OCAP hosted a small tour of the building. At first
glance, the inside looked as it had when activists pried the door in 2002,
despite the fact local landlords Antonio and Filomena Sciscente bought the
building months later. The only signs of work were the gutting of drywall
installed by volunteer labour and new wiring coiling through skeletal
studs.

The Sciscentes showed up and said, when asked why the building sat in
stasis, that the city was blocking plans to convert it to a rooming house.

Stephen Miller of the city licensing division informed me that the delay
stems from the Parkdale Pilot Project, a program created in 2000 to
upgrade illegal rooming houses.

"[Mr. Sciscente] had to meet a number of provisions." These include fire
safety, minimum room size and ventilation standards. "The process was
delayed because the plans he submitted weren't to scale with property
inspections," but it's now moving.

In bringing 90 properties in line with standards, the city saves on legal
fees later. But asked why project staff couldn't do the work themselves,
Miller says they don't have the capacity. The program kicks in only when
landlords request renovations.

It was OCAP that brought attention to the property in the first place. The
march to the Pope Squat began from the Parkdale Activity Recreation
Centre. PARC abuts 194 Dowling, abandoned and recently expropriated for
affordable housing. PARC, OCAP and others ratepayers had long called for
such a move.

"Expropriation is never your first choice," says Patty Simpson of city
legal services. "It's time-consuming, costly and often you end up in
litigation."

Would a use-it-or-lose-it bylaw help? "I can't see the government
agreeing," she hedges. "Property law is sacrosanct. You can't take their
land and expect them to have no income."

Yet the reason the recent expropriation went smoothly is because city
staff convinced the province the owner had no plans for the property and
no purpose in owning.

Couldn't that logic be applied to a push for proactive seizures?

After all, the city won't be building housing any time soon. Few cities
still do, and staff are even seeing limits on the ability to zone for it.

"It's a matter of what our partners bring to us," says newly appointed
deputy city manager and housing office head Sue Corke.

Lately, "partners" means developers, whose incentives are waived fees or
Section 37 variances, under which the city grants additional density in
return for project funding. The city's primary tool is the Official Plan
requirement that developments over 5 hectares be one-quarter affordable.

Corke says a look at possible interpretations of the New City Of Toronto
Act will be crucial. "There's more to be done with land use planning," she
says. "We have to have a conversation with our new council."

She also echoes many in bemoaning a lack of deeply affordable subsidized
units and rent supplements, which she says the city can't afford to
provide. "Our tools work much better when there are subsidies from other
governments."

It's notable that she didn't mention Streets to Homes. In fact, though
during the campaign Miller trotted out the program's strategy of moving
the homeless into apartments, no staff mention it unless I bring it up.
Strange since the policy explicitly called for a list of abandoned
properties across the city. No one including program director Iain De Jong
knows what I'm talking about.

"It's something that's been lost it's not on the radar," says PARC
director < Victor Willis. "I hope the new council is willing to get a
deeper understanding of the issues.

"In Parkdale alone, there are 10,000 units of privately held affordable
housing," he says. "As gentrification happens, they're being converted,
and I just don't see landlords keeping them as affordable housing. If the
city's own target is 1,000 [new units] a year, we're still going to have a
deficit."

Kolin Davidson, formerly employed as a Streets to Homes outreach worker,
agrees that the city doesn't grasp the private market problem, despite
housing 800 through the program.

"A lot of landlords Streets to Homes is working with won't take people any
more," he says, noting that without supplements, many can't keep their
units. He feels the program has moved too fast. "I'm not saying people
should be living under bridges. But if you're forcing them out of the
core, where will they go?"

(De Jong informs me that city numbers show one in 10 serviced by Streets
to Homes has moved.)

OCAP has one answer. Back in High Park, activists trounce through the
abandoned block like it's a Halloween haunted house tour. "There's
furniture in here," calls one of the occupiers from a roof. "There are
plates and silverware just waiting for people."

"Let us in!" screams a woman. Instead, the police busy themselves with
shining their lights in people's eyes. Yes, those new name tags really are
making them more approachable.

Good thing Miller got those 250 new officers, I guess. Seems the city
didn't mind pushing the province for police dollars, though the
fund-sharing arrangement still costs the city $12 million per year.

Any housing staff looking for funding? I think I might have an idea.

Cheers,
KoLiN

ACT
YOUR
RAGE

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