Helter Skelter: Dreams and Disappointments in Social Service Programming at Toronto Public Housing in the late 1980s

David M. K. Sheinin

This is the second article in a series on Toronto public housing in the 1980s. All entries in the series will be collected here.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the Metro Toronto Housing Authority (MTHA) had a clear purpose; to house those who could not afford a home elsewhere. Over the 1970s and 1980s that mandate drifted as Community Relations Workers (CRWs) imagined grand schemes to address the many social needs of residents. This trend was in keeping with other housing authorities in Canada and the United States, and alongside the exceptional work of hundreds of independent social service agencies in Toronto. This was not the result of an overarching policy shift. It came in fits and starts. MTHA common spaces were used for childcare, extracurricular activities for teenagers, free breakfasts, and much more. In the 1980s, (CRWs) became remarkably ambitious in what they proposed, though without the resources or managerial support to set in motion their dozens of ideas.

In 1987, Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority (MTHA) chair John Sewell struck a Committee on Social Services and Community Relations Work (CSSCRW) comprised of MTHA Community Relations Workers (CRWs) and public housing administrators. The latter included Sewell himself and director of race relations Chimbo Poe-Mutuma. The goal was to bring order to MTHA’s forays into social service provision, to create and advocate for social programs, and to figure out what exactly CRWs should be working on every day. On June 23, at the second meeting, Sewell asked four sharp questions that MTHA ought to resolve quickly. Who should determine the social needs of tenants? Who would decide on the adequacy of current services? Who would provide improved access to needed services? Should problems be solved on an individual or group basis? For years, those questions remained unanswered.

The consensus response to Sewell’s questions on the committee suggested chaos. “Social needs of tenants now are determined by agencies; whichever agencies get the grants. It is done on a helter-skelter basis,” read the meeting minutes. Some properties received many services while others received few. One manager present argued simplistically that tenants fell into two categories, those that knew what they wanted, and those that did not. The latter became “victims to the wishes of other organizations.” Another manager argued that some tenants simply wanted safe, affordable housing. They had no interest in MTHA intruding into what constituted their social needs. While MTHA staff agreed that they should work with tenants to identify social needs, nobody could articulate a cogent strategy. Should needs be assessed on a district level, by building, by municipal boundary? “Will the information we gather only be anecdotal or will it be more comprehensive?” In the end, on the question of how MTHA staff might work with tenants to define need, it was agreed that the process be left vague as to methodology and scope, “at least for now.” Through the end of John Sewell’s mandate in 1988, and for years after that, methodology never became more precise.

Dreaming Big

In February 1988, Bernie Densmore, a CRW at MTHA’s 15 Tobermory Drive building in the Jane-Finch neighborhood, proposed to MTHA managers a sweeping plan to supplement the middle and high school education of children in the area. It was meant to begin in September 1988 and would be directed at 12- to 16-year-olds with learning/attendance problems; those with work commitments in addition to school; expectant mothers “desiring to maintain educational continuity in non-threatening, non-judgemental surroundings;” and others. It was a great idea, thought out with care. It reflected a sound assessment of the failings of public education. And it was never implemented. Densmore’s plan was short on details for how so sweeping an initiative might be executed.

The program would offer correspondence courses, co-op education, day care for the children of students, and much more. Classes would run from 9 AM to 2 PM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and from 4 PM to 9 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Subjects would include science, mathematics, English, “work studies,” “life skills,” “family studies” and “shop.” Based out of 15 Tobermory Drive, the program would also include tailored program offerings at Westview Centennial Secondary School and Oakdale Junior High School. The cost of the program for the first year would be an impossibly low $66,500 which was to include salaries for only one teacher and one teaching assistant. Program success would be measured (presumably by CRWs) in improved attendance, interviews with students, the assessment of (unstated) on- and off-site behaviours, decreased negative involvement with police, and increased self-esteem of students. With unfeasibly sweeping objectives, vague methodologies, and troubling success metrics, like many other projects, this one was never rejected but languished unimplemented at MTHA headquarters.

Three key impediments made the implementation of a sound social service strategy impossible. First, and to their great credit, CRWs dreamed big on program implementation. But many (not all) harbored questionable, socially conservative assessments of tenants and their problems. That is, the socially conservative basis of their analysis of tenant lives and what programs were needed was often flawed. Second, CRWs were overwhelmed. They were expected to function as teachers, counsellors, psychologists, social workers, and liaisons with the police and community social service agencies. They were often untrained for any of those roles. In November 1986, MTHA employed a scant 27 CRWs. The portfolio of each ranged from an impossible 550 to 1395 housing units. CRW duties included integrating tenants into the community at large; creating a “positive neighbourhood community atmosphere;” assisting tenants in developing community associations and self-help groups; conferring with individuals on issues of concern to tenants; assisting tenants with apprehensions over physical health, mental health, life skills, financial management, anti-social behaviour, family and child welfare; developing and providing booklets and information packages for tenants; posting announcements in public areas from service clubs, recreation centres, and libraries; clarifying MTHA housing policy; acting as a resource person for tenant information needs; and ensuring contact with local services relating to senior support services, domestic violence and race relations. It was dizzying. Finally, with too little funding, MTHA bureaucracies proved incapable of overcoming the helter-skelter character of their approach to problems.

Today, MTHA’s successor, Toronto Community Housing (TCH), has set the 1980s expansion of social programs aside. It has left the most critical social programs, with the most immediate need for professional intervention by social workers, psychologists, and other professionals, to organizations outside public housing with highly trained staff members. TCH focuses on a limited set of social programs with important, broad-based objectives that don’t address specifically a crisis requiring immediate action. Programs are organized to promote tenant participation in community activities and skill development for youth. Public housing in Toronto has settled into a limited mandate that would disappoint the CRWs of the 1980s. Currently, the city is laser-focused on increasing public housing supply, with little attention to spare for social programming for the residents of that housing.

David M. K. Sheinin is professor of history at Trent University and académico correspondiente of the Academia Nacional de la Historia de la República Argentina. His most recent book, co-edited with C. Nathan Hatton, is Statues and Legacies of Combat Athletes in the Americas (Lexington Books, 2024).

Author’s note: All archival material referenced in this essay is from Fonds 1306, Series 12, City of Toronto Archives.