Social housing tenants still waiting to hear their fate

Tue Jan 29, 2008

By: By Jillian Follert

OSHAWA -- The uncertainty continues for 80 tenants at two of the City's oldest social housing buildings.

For more than two months, people living in affordable and rent-geared-to-income units at Chris Mason Hall and Owen D. Friend Apartments, have waited on pins and needles as council mulls over what to do with the aging properties.

And it looks like they'll keep waiting.

On Monday night, council had the chance to scrap a proposed plan to sell off the buildings, but instead decided to send it back to the committee level for more debate.

Last fall, council's finance and administration committee voted in-camera to sell the properties on the open market, because they require between $500,000 and $700,000 in repairs over the next five years.

The decision, first reported in This Week, sparked concern that the buildings wouldn't remain social housing if sold. Durham Region already has a serious social housing gap, with about 4,000 people on a waiting list.

On Monday night, Councillor April Cullen made a motion to scrap the sale and do the renovations.

"I want to stop using people who are disadvantaged as a political football. There are people who spent their Christmas wondering if they were going to have a place to live," she said. "I want to put this issue to bed tonight. We have a shortage of affordable housing in this city and I think it would be inappropriate to sell these buildings and take the chance that they could be torn down or replaced."â?¨ But her colleagues weren't convinced.

Councillor Robert Lutczyk wants to investigate selling the properties to the Region of Durham -- which already manages them -- saying that is the level of government responsible for social housing. He suggested this option despite originally voting to sell them on the open market when consideration of selling to the Region was also on the table.

Mayor John Gray said it makes the most sense to keep the properties and do renovations slowly over time, saying it would cost more to transfer them to the Region, because the repairs would have to be done first and the mortgages would have to be discharged.

"I'm not interested in doing that because it's too costly," he said. "My hope is that councillors will decide to develop a work plan, so we can see these buildings rehabilitated over time and keep the arrangement we have now."

City Treasurer Rick Stockman said the amount outstanding on the mortgages was about $38,000 for Chris Mason Hall and $296,000 for Owen D. Friend, as of 2006.

Mary Menzies, acting director of housing for the Region, couldn't guess how Regional council would respond to a request from Oshawa to take on the buildings, but said the Region already needs to make millions in repairs on its own stock of housing and questioned why they would willingly take on more liabilities.

The debate continues at the next finance and administration committee meeting on Feb. 5 at 9 a.m.