In what seemed to some MTHA workers a bizarre self-fulfilling prophecy of failure on the matter, MTHA also took it upon itself to modify the behaviour of all residents. Toward that end, it hired the criminologist and security “expert” Clifford D. Shearing to write a pilot study on how to solve MTHA security problems.
In correspondence with North York Mayor Mel Lastman, Sheila Mascoll accused the mayor of the sort of neglect of and insensitivity toward Jane-Finch that had cast an unreasonable racist pall on a neighborhood where thousands lived, worked, and played.
In a reflection of the city itself, the racial, religious and ethnic dynamic of public housing had changed dramatically over the preceding decade. And for all the discussion among consultants, MTHA administrators, Community Relations Workers, and tenants themselves, Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority managers and employees seemed oblivious to initiatives that might specifically address that transformation and how it was impacting the lives of tenants.
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.
I think it is about time that our City Council and our Provincial Government did something about all these evictions that are going on, and all these terrible rent increases… I think we should have some action from the people we elected to give us some protection and a right to live in some security and dignity, instead of being… Read more »
by Eliot Perrin The Flour Mill neighbourhood in Sudbury serves as an almost mythical place in Franco-Ontarian identity. Much like St-Boniface further west, it survived for decades as a Francophone enclave, maintaining and nurturing the French language, its institutions, and artistic production. For individuals of Franco-Ontarian background such as myself, it remains a place of residual family memory and lore…. Read more »
David M. K. Sheinin In 1997, the Peterborough real estate developer AON, Inc. settled out of court libel suits against the Peterborough Examiner newspaper, local television station CHEX-TV, and Trent University Economics professor Peter Wylie. As a function of the settlements, each respondent apologized unreservedly to AON. At issue was an accusation by Wylie that AON and the City of… Read more »
Daniel Ross 2021 has been a difficult year for Chinatowns across Canada. In mid-April, a coalition of community leaders from six cities released a statement calling on the federal government to make it a “national priority” to support Chinatowns struggling with the fallout of the COVID-19 lockdown and a new spike in anti-Asian racism. In both Montreal and Toronto, local… Read more »
This post by Lilian Radovac and Simon Vickers is part of the “(In)Security in the Time of COVID-19” series. Read the rest of the series here. Alternative Toronto is a DIY digital archive and exhibition space that documents the history of alternative communities in the Greater Toronto Area from 1980 to 1999. As archive director and volunteer coordinator for Alternative… Read more »
Max Mishler’s interview with with Samuel Stein, author of the book Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (Verso, 2019), is part of the “(In)Security in the Time of COVID-19” series. Read the rest of the series, including a post contextualizing this interview, here. Max Mishler: Hi Sam. Thanks so much for taking the time to think with us… Read more »
