Memo to Rob Ford: How To Fix Toronto Community Housing

So Toronto Community Housing Corporation got booked for wasting taxpayer dollars.

The findings are scary. $1850 for a boat cruise, $1900+ for a spa day for staff recognition, a $6000 planning session in Muskoka, $90 000 spent on "holiday" parties for two seasons...

Want to know what's scarier? They didn't even find all the waste.

It's kind of sad. I truly believe that TCHC does good work. Why? Let's just say I'm very familiar with the inner workings. The organization has done lots for the tenants in their buildings in the time I've observed them. I think they provide a vital service, which if it were to cease to exist, would turn Toronto into Detroit or some other hell hole of an American city. By this I mean rampant homelessness, poverty, hopelessness, and all the crime and violence that come with that type of situation. This is to say I'd much rather have a TCHC where we can support the vulnerable, instead of letting them suffer all over the city.

However, having fiscally conservative values, I cannot stand to see the abuses of this institution, and I don't just mean from the management side. Part of the problem are the tenants themselves. TCHC, or any social housing for that matter, is supposed to be a temporary solution for people till they can get back on their feet and do well for themselves. That's often not the case. There are third and fourth generation tenants living in TCHC buildings. What's the excuse?... In fact, I've been in communities where this is a source of pride. Tenants brag about how they are raising their kids in the same home that their grandparents raised their parent in.

So why is this a problem?

TCHC currently has a ridiculous waiting list that could be the population of a rural village in northern Ontario. There are people amongst those on that waiting list who aren't simply looking to mooch off the backs of taxpayers. The truly vulnerable do exist, but for every one of those, there are a plethora of other tenants in TCHC abusing the system.

As taxpayers, we need to ask ourselves whether we want to fund a shit show such as this, or whether we should take that money and re-invest it into education for all those tenants in TCHC young enough to go to school or to go back to school. Let's give them all the adequate training they need, and find them all jobs. The sooner we get these dead weights out of the system, the sooner the system will become sustainable, and they'll become productive members of society.

In addition, TCHC communities are shitty because no one living in the community takes pride in it. Why don't they take pride in their community? Well, it looks like shit. You can't blame them. So what can we do to rectify it? As a stipulation for living in TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZED HOMES, if you are under the age of 30, you should be required to commit to a specific number of community service hours every year. You can set it up so your tenants beginning at the age of 14 would do 50 hours of community service, and with every year of age, your community service hours would decrease. Why would we do this? If someone is helping to mop the floor of an elevator, do you think that's the same person that's going to be pissing on it? Do you think if someone had to scrub graffiti off the walls, they're going to be the one defacing the wall to begin with?

I've seen communities where people have come together to work on building playgrounds, creating community spaces, planting flowers, and generally beautifying their community. What's the effect? Pride. People are PROUD of the fact that they contributed to the improvement. What are the trickle down effects? If they're proud of it, they tend to protect and take care of it.

Why hasn't someone thought of this yet? I'm sure someone has. Why has nothing been done to make it a reality then? Equality. It's a two-fold issue of equity. All the special interest groups would start crying that we're forcing hardship upon the most vulnerable in our society. Well, if you're missing a leg, am I going to send you to war? No. Likewise, if you're unable to do physical labour, you're exempt (or maybe you start a book club for your community instead -- anything to make it more attractive to live). The other issue of equity, which I will go into sometime in another post, is the power of the labour unions. TCHC has two separate union affiliations, and if tenants were to start doing the work the unionized workers with their cozy benefits and fat salaries currently do, the unions would be pissed. And let's be honest, every politician in Canada turns into chicken shit when they have to battle a union.

Here's to hoping Rob Ford changes this, and I hope he adapts some of these ideas.

I'm a believer in the government lending a helping hand to the most vulnerable in our society, but we need to do it better, and show some seriousness in wanting to fix the problem.