All 114 families who used to live at the Swansea Mews complex in the west end of Toronto have been forced from their homes because they have been deemed structurally unsafe. A ceiling panel in one home fell in late May, seriously injuring a local Mom. Now, for the foreseeable future, these 114 families face incredible uncertainty, frustration, overwhelm, and unexpected expenses, as they find themselves without secure housing, not knowing when (if ever) they might be able to return to Swansea Mews.

Throughout our campaign’s 8-year history, Fix Our Schools has periodically followed the issue of disrepair in Toronto Community Housing (TCH) buildings. The dynamic of chronic and gross underfunding is similar to the dynamic faced by school boards. A long history of downloading responsibility for important social goods like schools, education and social housing while higher levels of government fail to provide the adequate, stable funding required has not lead to positive outcomes, as is evidenced in the recent case of Swansea Mews.

Frustratingly, we have read in several news reports that the Swansea Mews complex was operating at only around 75% capacity when the ceiling tile file in late May. In a city where affordable housing is so desperately needed, this seems unacceptable and short-sighted. Fix Our Schools has been trying to ascertain why 25% of this affordable housing stock remained empty, and to find out the occupancy rate of TCH properties overall. Our suspicion is that the 25% of units not in use at Swansea Mews had been in such a state of disrepair that they were deemed uninhabitable, and our suspicion is also that this situation is not unique to this one TCH property. As of July 18, 2022, we have not received confirmation of these suspicions but will update this blog accordingly once we have the information we are seeking.

If our suspicions are confirmed, then this is an issue that rests on the shoulders of all 3 levels of government, and is a fairly straight forward issue of simply providing sufficient money for TCH to be able to reasonably take care of its buildings. If we, as a society agree that affordable housing is an important social good, then there is no excuse for failing to provide the stable, adequate funding required to ensure that these homes are safe, healthy and well-maintained.

Residents of the Swansea Mews complex at Windermere & the Queensway have been forced from their homes because they have been deemed structurally unsafe. A ceiling panel in one home fell in late May, seriously injuring a local Mom. All 114 families living at the Swansea Mews are now facing incredible uncertainty, frustration, overwhelm, and unexpected expenses, as they find themselves without secure housing for the foreseeable future. A June 8, 2022 Toronto Star article by Ben Spurr entitled, “Toronto community housing buildings score worst in city’s own evaluations“, highlights the “sometimes dire condition of Toronto’s social housing stock”.

Sadly, the horrible situation at Swansea Mews is one that could have been predicted and prevented. Almost a decade ago, in his March 2015 Toronto Star column entitled, “Toronto public housing needs a Plan B”, Edward Keenan stated,

“Bad news: If something significant doesn’t change, Toronto’s social housing agency will be forced to shutter 7,500 units by 2023 because they’ll be uninhabitable, and fully 90 per cent of the existing units will be in poor or critical condition. Making the repairs to prevent this will cost $1.7 billion more over the next decade than the city has already committed.

Good news: Toronto Community Housing and Mayor John Tory have a plan, unveiled in a press conference Monday and contained in a report released at the same time.

More bad news: The plan is to ask the provincial and federal governments to cover the shortfall.”

Back in this 2015 column, Keenan agreed with John Tory’s argument that the moral and business cases made a bullet-proof case for why the provincial and federal governments should invest to repair housing. However, Keenan also pointed out that while the moral and business cases for supporting social housing have been clear for a long time, higher levels of government have continued to download responsibility and accountability for this important public good.

While Fix Our Schools has always focused on ensuring safe, healthy, well-maintained public schools, we have drawn parallels over the years between the large and growing disrepair in Ontario’s schools and within Toronto Community Housing buildings.

With the recent situation at Swansea Mews, we are once again revisiting this parallel, and identifying the root cause as gross and chronic underfunding of a public good that we, as a society, agreed we wanted many decades ago. Much like public schools, social housing also requires stable, adequate funding in order to be safe, healthy and well-maintained. Sadly, much like public schools, social housing has not received the levels of funding needed. This must change.