Regent Park

Regent Park redevelopment reinforces need for public housing funding: Researchers

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:13:49 +0000

Regent Park redevelopment reinforces need for public housing funding: Researchers

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 08/17/2023 - 10:13

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The redevelopment of Regent Park in downtown Toronto aimed to create a mixed-income, amenity-rich neighbourhood with a strong sense of community (Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Kurt Kleiner

Topic

Breaking Research

Cities

Regent Park

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

The redevelopment of Toronto’s downtown Regent Park neighbourhood has won praise from some observers for taking a neglected housing project and turning it into a successful mixed-income area with impressive public amenities.

But the ongoing $1.5-billion redevelopment has also disrupted lives, suffered major financial and political difficulties and now faces mixed reviews from the very residents it was designed to help.

“There continues to be contention around whether or not this redevelopment was better or worse for the community,” says Shauna Brail, an associate professor and the director of the Institute for Management & Innovation at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga.

“I am on the side that says that Regent Park today is an improved neighbourhood beyond what it was in 1999, or in 2006,” she says.

Yet, she acknowledges the project has faced a host of problems since it was first proposed and agrees it hasn’t done everything it set out to do.

Brail is an economic geographer and urban planner interested in how economic, social and cultural change transforms cities. She’s been studying the Regent Park redevelopment since the project broke ground in 2006.

Along with Toronto journalist and U of T alumnus John Lorinc, she recently published an examination of the project in the Journal of Planning Education and Research.

Regent Park was originally built as a public housing in the late 1940s, with 2,083 subsidized units on 69 acres. By the 1990s, the housing was in poor repair and the neighbourhood was experiencing problems with crime and stigma. At the same time, the federal government had decreased the funding available for social housing.

Land values, though, had gone up. The Toronto Community Housing Corp. (TCHC) decided to pay for redevelopment through “financialization” – building and selling some housing at market prices and using the profits to finance new subsidized housing.

The vision was to create a mixed-income neighbourhood with a strong sense of community and amenities shared by everyone. Existing tenants were relocated during reconstruction, but were offered a right to return – and so far about half have come back.

One of the things Brail was interested in was how low-income community residents would be able to influence the redevelopment process. She says they empowered themselves, giving input on planning and insisting that money and resources be dedicated to the community for things like parks, social centres, jobs and training.

But the community is also divided on the outcomes so far, she says.

“There are some who say, without a doubt, this is better,” Brail says. “On the other side is the narrative of destruction of community – the sense that this is a very patronizing kind of approach to redeveloping public housing.”

In their paper, Brail and Lorinc outline the political, financial and social complications of the nearly 20-year-long project, which has been delayed by a number of factors, including the election of the late mayor Rob Ford and his promise to slash spending. Redevelopment is now five to eight years behind schedule, with two of five phases unfinished.

Brail says she’s interested in how the rising value of downtown real estate changed how planners thought about public housing: Rather than relying on public funding, the projects could finance themselves. Financialization, however, didn’t cover the full cost of Regent Park’s redevelopment. The three levels of government have collectively kicked in about $500 million so far.

One of the major lessons of the project is that redevelopment doesn’t come free, Brail says.

“The financialized model on its own is not sufficient. Governments still need to continue to think through just how to fund public housing, and they need to continue to be pushed to do that.”

Recipe for resilience: U of T cities experts talk housing, transportation, growing disparity in GTA

Romi Levine — Thu, 04 May 2017 16:16:51 +0000

Recipe for resilience: U of T cities experts talk housing, transportation, growing disparity in GTA

Romi Levine Thu, 05/04/2017 - 12:16

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U of T cities experts say initiatives like the Regent Park redevelopment are a step toward building a more resilient Toronto (photo by City of Toronto via Flickr)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Arts & Science

Toronto

Toronto's rising housing prices are just one symptom of the city's struggles with rapid growth.

On Tuesday, a group of U of T cities experts explored Toronto's challenges and proposed solutions for making the city more resilient at The Inclusive and Sustainable City of the 21st Century, an RBC-sponsored conference organized by the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Toronto’s growing inequality is undeniable, said Professor David Hulchanski, principal investigator of the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership, which has documented the shrinking of middle-income neighbourhoods, greater disparity between high-income and low-income residents and released research showing that low-income families can no longer afford to live in the city.

“We've always had a gap between rich and poor, and we always will have it – only it is much larger today,” Hulchanski said.

If Toronto continues on this trajectory, it could become a city like Chicago which has almost no middle-income neighbourhoods, Hulchanski warned.

“We're not Chicago, but we're going in that direction.”

Speakers also included Daniyal Zuberi, RBC chair and associate professor of social policy, Shauna Brail, U of T’s presidential advisor on urban engagement and director of the urban studies program, and Mark Kingwell, author and professor of philosophy.

From left, conference speakers included Associate Professor Shauna Brail, Professor David Hulchanski and Associate Professor Daniyal Zuberi (photo by Romi Levine)

Zuberi has been studying how inequality plays out in different cities.

“For many people who don't have resources, they're increasingly left behind, socially isolated, simply pushed out into either the least desirable parts of these cities or into the suburbs, or they are forced to move to other cities,” he said.

But it’s not all bad news, said Zuberi.

“We do see a growing recognition that mixed-income zoning and development is probably better than single-family homes on farmers' fields two hours from downtown, and there's a growing push for these kinds of more inclusive communities to be built,” he said

He commended the federal, provincial and municipal governments for supporting more affordable housing initiatives like in Regent Park and the proposed Rail Deck Park, which are opportunities to improve the lives of Torontonians living in highly dense neighbourhoods downtown.

But change can also take place in small ways in underserved neighbourhoods, said Zuberi.

“Doubling the number of buses that come to a neighbourhood can dramatically improve life in these communities but doesn't cost that much.”

Kingwell emphasized the need for acceptance as cities and the people within them change (photo by Romi Levine)

For Brail, it’s the research conducted by academics like Hulchanski and Zuberi, and the university’s community partnerships that drive change in the city.

“We really need to think, not just about the university as a physical city builder…but also as an institution that creates a social infrastructure, that helps contribute to communities whether it's by working with particular groups, whether it's by identifying ways of developing infrastructure that actually supports groups outside, or whether it's about thinking how to connect and bring other groups into the university,” she said.

This can also be done through service learning placements for students, joint programs in neighbourhoods like Regent Park and collaboration between the Toronto universities through initiatives like the StudentMoveTO survey of student transportation woes and a recent call for proposals addressing Toronto's affordable housing challenge, said Brail.

While Kingwell spoke of the need to embrace people’s differences as the key to becoming an inclusive city, his final message was much more simple: “Don’t be a jerk.”