On July 11, 2006, representatives from our neighbourhood attended a meeting at the North York Community Council (NYCC) to discuss the proposed redevelopment project at 1900 Sheppard Ave W and the council voted on July 27 to approve the project. On behalf of the Sheppard West Neighbourhood Association (SWNA) and our members, I am writing to you to express our strong opposition to this project.
We live in a community that was once vibrant. Many of our neighbours tell us stories of how prosperous this area was years ago, how the government used to take an active interest in improving it, and how this paid off in an increasing tax base, low crime rates and happy voters. However, in the past few years, and especially since amalgamation, many residents identify the community as being in decline. Most people pay markedly higher taxes for reduced services especially in the areas of garbage collection and policing. Although the Police forces are doing a great job, ever since the Jane and Sheppard police station was closed, the crime in its vicinity increased steadily. Sadly, the decline seems to have accelerated especially as the NYCC has been relegated to a consultative role in an increasingly centralised and cumbersome “amalgamated” bureaucracy. Many residents feel that these days, the only way your voice can be heard is if you live downtown, in Shelley Carroll’s ward or in one of the 13 communities hand-picked for special attention. The few residents who managed to call your office felt they were ridiculed and that their words were misinterpreted.
Our efforts to understand how this project came to pass were seriously hampered by the lack of transparency of the City Council debates. At a time when other newer democracies post and archive their entire meetings in a searchable format on their website (http://tinyurl.com/yy4rgv)
, no Canadian representatives’ forum allows members of the public to search in the same way. Having the ability to search the full text of Council meetings and see the attached audio and video clip just one click away would certainly help voters to make more informed decisions, as well as journalists and NGOs to keep track of Council meetings. We would like to request that you take steps to do increase this level of transparency to be in par with other democracies by webcasting public meetings and by archiving in a searchable format the debates. We believe that this will do more to increase the prestige of the councillor position, the implicit accountability and it might also elevate the level of the debates, which, lately, according to the press, has been sorely lacking. This simple and inexpensive measure will surely attract more young voters to the political process, who are already accustomed to watch their news on YouTube ™ or Google Video ™. Other measures might include legislative changes to require city councillors to live in their ward and to hold their position for no more than two consecutive terms.
Most of the residents in our area take great pride in their homes, which they spend a great deal of resources maintaining. We have tried to capture this sense of pride in our photo album published on our website. It is this sense of optimism and belief that bad times will end if we all work together that led us to start our neighbourhood association. Our founding meeting was surprisingly attended by about 400 people, and most of them chose to become members of our Association. Most homeowners are seniors who feel they are too old to move out and think they are being short-changed of their retirement money which they invested in their homes. As the house values decrease, their retirement security is being severely compromised.
We have a lot of subsidized housing in the area that is not being properly maintained. A concern of the neighbourhood is where will the funds come from to maintain this new building? We understand that the cost of building the units will be covered by the Federal government, but where will the maintenance funds come from? How will this building be any different then the 1000 units already in the area that are rapidly deteriorating?We understand that affordable housing is a human right, and being part of this community proves our understanding of this viewpoint. What we are having difficulty understanding is why add more housing without more services to an already saturated area, when no other alternatives have been explored (i.e., public-private low-income housing partnership)? We know of other municipalities in more pragmatic jurisdictions avoid such concentrations by requiring all new condo developments to dedicate 10% of their space to rent geared to income housing.
A sociologist at the University of Illinois found that there is a threshold of loss of “high-status” individuals, after which community decline accelerates. The “high-status” individuals, as defined by the Census Bureau, are professionals, teachers, managers and generally role-models in a community. In communities where there are 5-40% high-status individuals, there is little variance in teenage pregnancy rates or school drop-out rates, but when this ratio drops below 5%, there is a marked increase in these negative statistics. When the percentage falls from 5.6% to 3.4% for instance, teenage pregnancy rates as well as drop-out rates among black schoolchildren more than double. According to StatCan as quoted on the City of Toronto Website for Ward 9 (http://www.toronto.ca/wards2000/ward9.htm), “the population of Ward 9 decreased by -1.5% between 1996 and 2001”. We found that all the other wards, with the exception of Ward 8 and Councillor Mammoliti’s Ward 7 have had population increases, some by double digits. According to our members, most people leaving the area were professionals living in their own homes. One has only to look at the Real Estate ads published in the North York Mirror to see that 90% of the homes for sale are along Jane Street.
The high crime rates along the Jane Street corridor and especially at the Jane & Finch hub have been intensely mediatised. As early as October 2, 2006 the 31 Division issued a public safety alert: “The Toronto Police Service would like to make the public aware of numerous street robberies that have occurred within 31 Division. The robberies have taken place between late afternoon and evening, on Jane Street between Steeles Avenue West and Sheppard Avenue West, and appear to target women.” This is only one in the steady stream of similar releases from Toronto Police Services and they have become so common that they are no longer published by the local press. Our Association held a meeting of protest against crime and neglect on November 4, and as early as November 8, the 31 Division had a press release asking for the public to help catching a suspect who allegedly threatened police officers with guns. During the hunt for the suspect, two adjacent Catholic schools were closed and a dragnet enforced, yet the suspect still escaped despite a very strong police presence. This happened right next to the abandoned police station at 1900 Sheppard, and it is easy to see how a tragedy may have occurred if the project have already been occupied by mothers with children. One possible use for that building would be the creation of a small, mobile police unit that would be more in touch with the community due to its smaller size, helping thus prevent crime and fostering better communication with the neighbourhood citizens.
The fact that the Jane Street corridor has been a “dumping ground” of subsidized housing without adequate amenities is also well known, as it has transpired in the North York Community Council meeting we attended in the summer of this year. We also heard from the city officials that the public housing sites administered by the city have fallen below the city’s own standards, and that the city inspectors are being told to turn a blind eye and focus instead on privately owned rental properties. We were pleased to learn that a millionaire councillor visits the Jane & Sheppard area regularly, but we were saddened when a resident alleged that he does so only to play golf in the course just across the street. We were all flabbergasted when we heard from Councillor Shelley Carroll, one of the most ardent proponents of the project, that although our area has twice the city average of high-density subsidized housing (15% vs. 6.9% in the city), we should pretend that this is the solution we have been asking for. However, studying the proposed project we could not find anything regarding services, such as a permanent position of a social worker created on-site; instead, services will be provided by an already overtaxed pre-existing infrastructure. We strongly believe that social housing needs to be spread out across the city and not concentrated and forgotten in any one particular area.
We are optimistic that our government learns from its mistakes. The Regent Park revitalization project is surely a sign of righting the wrong. You have acknowledged that there are 13 priority neighbourhoods that need immediate attention as lack of resources and amenities and saturation of government housing have created "ghetto pockets". One of these neighbourhoods is Jane and Finch. The proposed site for the 27 units of transitional housing is at Jane and Shepherd which is not faring much better. In the last few years the neighbourhood has deteriorated due to lack of support services and increased violence. Do you honestly believe you are doing a favour to young disadvantaged mothers by putting them up in a neighbourhood that has already seen its share of violence? A young boy was shot to death two summers ago directly across the street from this proposed site. We find that all 13 priority neighbourhoods are areas with high concentrations of government housing which only makes the proposed building at 1900 Shepherd that much more absurd.
What our neighbourhood needs is not more blitz visits, hypocritical pleas and photo opportunities, but rather a serious long-term commitment, a problem-solving partnership between the province, the federal government and the local government on one side and the private sector on the other of investment in the community and providing alternatives to youth. We have seen in the Regent Project that this works and elevates and empowers the disadvantaged to live happier, healthier lives, in harmony with their communities. We believe that our governments should continue in the way of public-private partnerships to find better solutions to the housing problem. Unfortunately, the new Tenant protection legislation seems to continue the line of heavy handed government intervention and discrimination against small landlords. The new legislation has been criticized for potentially increasing tribunal workloads. Faced with skewed and unfair legislation, many landlords might choose to leave this business altogether and take their units off the market. By decreasing supply, rents will go up, maintenance will suffer and subsidized housing will have to cope with an increased demand, even while there are non-sufficient resources for the existing problems.
While we can quote many other statistics to bolster our argument, we would rather just appeal to your basic common sense. There was a time when sailors used to throw whale blubber overboard to calm the waters next to the ship during a storm. Unless you believe that, as sailors of yore, you can throw young mothers and their children in a sea of neglect and hope that the crime will be reduced through their sacrifice, there is little benefit to either those you are purportedly trying to help or to the community at large in starting this project.
We are thus requesting that you do everything in your power to stop this project, allow real consultation and public input and reverse the community decline by investing in the community and providing alternatives to those living in the Toronto ghettoes.
Although we strongly believe that there was no adequate public consultation in this matter, we would like to thank you for taking the time to read our letter and for considering our comments on the City's proposed project. SWNA would be pleased to work with the City and the Toronto Police Service to devise appropriate measures to address this issue; the cost of allowing our neighbourhood to fall into further neglect is too great to be ignored, for both our members and to the greater community at large.
If you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact our Association at 416-557-2685, or visit our website at http://sheppardwest.org. A list of signatures endorsing this letter is available on request.
This was particularly hard since the subsidized housing map Ms. Carroll was using to illustrate her request showed no such housing in her ward; we were nonetheless encouraged by her promise to “try to get her numbers up”.
Yours truly,
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