On the afternoon of Day 2 of the
conference, Friday June 25, delegates had the opportunity
to pick from a list of workshops held 'on
location' -- in offices or community meeting rooms with
Toronto area housing officials, senior civil servants,
community-based agencies, and local NGOs.
These workshops cover a broad range of topics relating to
housing policy, management, redevelopment of public housing
estates, homelessness, gentrification of an older immigrant
area, the challenges of housing newly arrived immigrants
and refugees, and options for low-cost homeownership.
Field Workshop
#1
The Kensington Market neighbourhood:
An Immigrant Reception Area under Threat? Or…Experiencing
Overdue Renewal?
Carlos Teixeira
The Kensington Market area is Toronto’s
first immigrant reception area. Beginning in the early 1900s
it was the core of Toronto’s Jewish community and
housed a thriving market. As the years past the area was
settled by newly arrived Italian immigrants followed after
World War Two by Portuguese and most recently Chinese. Because
the area is close to the downtown core it is also under
threat from the forces of gentrification. Given the area’s
historical significance proposals are being developed to
preserve the area as a historical district. This walking
tour, with geography professor Carlos Teixeira as the guide,
will focus on the development of Kensington as a symbolically
important area in Toronto’s urban fabric and ongoing
efforts to preserve the eclectic nature of the neighbourhood.
Location: Meet
at Metro Hall and walk to Spadina and Dundas or take the
Spadina streetcar north from King to Dundas
Resources:
The effort to save Kensington,
click
here
collections.ic.gc.ca/kensington/history.html
ceris.metropolis.net/Virtual%20Library/other/wallace1/Chapt4.html
www.openair.org/omar/khome.html
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#2
Engaging Tenants at Canada's Largest Social Housing Landlord: Recent
Experience and Current Initiatives in tenant involvement at the Toronto
Community Housing Corporation
Toronto Community Housing Corporation Staff
Toronto Community Housing is one of the largest social housing
providers in North America and home to about 164,000 tenants in
communities across Toronto. TCHC works with tenants, the community and
other stakeholders to create cohesive and healthy neighbourhoods. This
workshop will focus on recent experience in engaging and involving
tenants in local decision making including the tenant representative
system, local decision-making on capital expenditures, community
revitalization and the selection of tenants recommended to the City of
Toronto for the Board of TCHC.
Location: Beverley Manor (168 John Street), Assemble first in Room 309
at Metro Hall.
Resources:
www.torontohousing.ca/
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#3
The Regent Park Revitalization
Initiative of the
City of Toronto
Derek Ballantyne, CEO, Toronto
Community Housing Corporation
Regent Park is Canada’s first
and one of the largest public housing developments in Canada.
It was built shortly after World War II as a self-contained
neighbourhood with no through streets and limited retail
and institutional uses. It was an urban renewal initiative
intended to replace the perceived slum conditions of the
day. The Toronto Community Housing Corporation has developed
plans to redevelop the area by reintroducing the original
street network and developing a mixed-use neighbourhood.
Discussion will focus on the history of Regent Park, the
community engagement process that was used to develop the
plan, the physical plan, community development issues, and
strategies for relocating tenants during the construction
stage.
Location: meet
at Metro Hall and proceed to Regent Park
Resources:
Regent Park to be Reinvented,
click here
Tearing Up Regent Park: The Debate,
click
here
www.regentparkplan.ca/
www.cbc.ca/webone/regentpark/
www.catchdaflava.com/
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#4
The Atkinson Housing Co-operative:
A New Model of Social Housing? A New form of Housing Tenure?
Jorge Sousa, Hugh Lawson
The Atkinson Housing Co-operative
is a new form of tenant management in Toronto. The community
was developed in the late 1960s as Alexandra Park, a public
housing development west of the city's downtown core. In
the early 1990s tenants began to explore new forms of tenant
management. Discussions extended for more than a decade
but by 2003 negotiations were finalised with the government.
Discussion will focus on the history of Alexandra Park,
reasons for the prolonged negotiations and the nature of
the agreement that was worked out between tenants and the
government.
Location: Meet
at Metro Hall and walk to Dundas and Spadina or take the
Spadina streetcar north from King to Dundas
Resources:
www.coophousing.com/atkinson.html
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#5
Declaring Canada’s Homeless
Crisis a National Disaster:
The Grassroots Campaigns of the Toronto Disaster Relief
Committee
Members of the Toronto Disaster
Relief Committee
A small number of citizens drafted
a declaration in summer of 1998 that many municipal councils
and other organizations, agencies and individuals throughout
the country endorsed, declaring homelessness to be a national
disaster and calling for an immediate end. The campaign
to end homelessness is called the “1% Solution.”
The nature of homelessness in Toronto and the struggle to
end it will be focus of this workshop with members of the
steering committee of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee.
Location: Trinity
Square; a meeting room near the TDRC office at Trinity Church,
next to City Hall (Meet at Metro Hall and walk to Trinity
Square)
Resources:
Toronto
Disaster Relief Committee
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#6
Eva’s Phoenix transitional
shelter and employment training facility for homeless youth
Jennifer Morris and Clovis Grant
Eva’s Phoenix is an award-winning
transitional shelter and employment training facility for
homeless youth who are working towards self-sufficiency.
Fifty youth live in shared townhouse-style units within
a renovated warehouse for up to one year and engage in hands-on
life skills training, while being trained in a career of
their choice by one of the program’s partner employers.
Youth are supported by a team of staff and mentors who work
with them to help them learn how to live and work independently,
with the goal of leaving the shelter system for good. Participants
will be given a tour of the facility, including an on-site
social enterprise, the Phoenix Print Shop, where youth are
trained in design, print production, and the key elements
of running a small business. Eva’s Initiatives has
recently embarked on a National Initiative Program to assist
groups across Canada who are working on developing similar
integrated service delivery models to address youth homelessness
and unemployment.
Location: Eva’s
Phoenix
Resources:
Eva’s
Initiatives
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#7
Bellwoods House and Birchmount
Residence
Anabella Wainberg, Stefanie Krasij,
Jermet Levene, Dan Anstett, Maurice Richman, Mike Selznick
Bellwoods House and Birchmount Residence
are the two facilities operated by Shelter, Housing and
Support Division, Hostel Services that specifically serve
chronically homeless senior women and men respectively.
They are satellite programs of Women’s Residence and
Seaton House, two of Canada’s largest shelters for
single homeless people. In Bellwoods House and Birchmount
Residence, the opportunity arose to explore different ways
of assisting older adults that have been long term users
of the hostel system to overcome the barriers, personal
and systemic, to obtain permanent and appropriate housing.
The successes are evident in the client’s improved
wellbeing, their willingness to accept supports in dealing
with their health, mental health and other issues, in winning
the acceptance of the community at large and in being touted
as models for service delivery to the chronically homeless
older adult population.
The workshop will include brief
histories of both programs, program descriptions and current
challenges, information on other Women’s Residence
and Seaton House programs, and a tour of Bellwoods House.
Location: Bellwoods House
Resources:
Bellwooods
House
list
of workshops
Field
Workshop #8
Home Away from Home: Refugee Housing
Services
in Toronto
Carolina Gajardo and Francisco
Rico
Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America. In
the Toronto region 100,000 thousand new people settle annually.
Some 30,000 homeless individuals pass through the City emergency
shelter system every year and a large percentage of those
homeless are newcomers to Canada.
Why is it important to find a home away from home? Refugees, displaced people, migrants and many other million people across the globe struggle to redefine their sense through a painful journey away from home. Governments’, the NGO’s, service providers in general, faith groups and grass root organizations had a rich history in Canada and in Toronto of providing support and services to those resettling in Canada.
Two major service providers, COSTI
Immigrant Services and FCJ Hamilton House take a close look
into the experience of refugees in Toronto searching for
home away from home, what services are available and how
people survive the experience and re-build their lives in
a new home.
Location: Metro
Hall & field trip
Resources
COSTI
FCJ
Hamilton House
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#9
Planning Policies and Practices
to Human Rights
John Gladki, Phillip Dufresne,
Peggy Birnberg, Brigitte Witkowski, Kathy Laird
The presentation will take the form
of a panel discussion, with 4 panellists all of whom are
participating in a innovative collaboration, under the name
HomeComing, which is working to address discriminatory barriers
to meeting the housing needs of disadvantaged persons.
- A Consumer of Supportive Housing will describe his experience of supportive housing and the kind of supportive environment that has enabled him to live independently in the community.
- A Developer of Supportive Housing will describe the process that she and other developers faced in their efforts to develop supportive housing for people living with mental illness.
- A Lawyer Specializing in Human Rights Law will discuss the pros and cons of using litigation to combat discriminatory ratepayer opposition and restrictive zoning.
- A Planner Experienced with the Municipal Role and Community Consultation will discuss the principles and policy underlying the community consultation process and respond to the potential for the community process to be used to exclude “different” people from neighbourhoods.
Location: Metro
Hall
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#10
“Let’s Build”
– or least let’s try: The City of Toronto’s
Affordable Housing Program
Mark Guslits, Peter Zimmerman, City
of Toronto, Let’s Build
This workshop examines the role which Municipalities can
play in the generation of new affordable housing which can
be used as a catalyst for enhanced community and neighbourhood
development. The evolution of the City's Let's Build affordable
housing program will be discussed and examples of success
to date shown and examined.
Location: Metro
Hall and field trip
Resources:
What
is “Let's Build”
The
First Four City-owned Sites
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#11
The Case of Homelessness: The Toronto
Mayor’s Homelessness Action Task Force, the City’s
Report Cards on Homelessness, and other Municipal Research
Initiatives
Susan Shepherd & Karen Mann
This workshop will explore the relationship
between research, policy and social change. The discussion
will include Toronto-based examples such as the Mayor's
Homelessness Action Task Force and the Toronto Report Card
on Housing & Homelessness. How policy and program influence
research will also be discussed via the City of Toronto's
federal government funded (SCPI) research agenda.
Location: Metro Hall
Resources:
Housing
and Homelessness Report Card, 2003
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#12
The Planning and Development of
a New Neighbourhood: 25 years later
In the early 1970’s the City
of Toronto decided to form a housing company and build social
housing under a federal government program. In addition
to scattered sites around the city, an underused tract of
land adjacent to downtown was redeveloped as a new neighbourhood.
Most conventional design approaches were ignored in favour
of a 19th century streetscape – rowhouses and buildings
on sidewalks. About half the housing is subsidized. This
workshop will tour the neighbourhood and discuss the social
planning and physical design decisions and what their impacts
have been. In the 1970’s Frank Lewinberg was one of
the City of Toronto’s chief planners of the neighbourhood.
Frank
Lewinberg, Partner
Urban
Strategies
Location: Meet at
metro Hall and take King streetcar east.
Resources:
Planning
Lessons from St. Lawrence, J.D. Hulchanski, 1990
A
Lesson for the Future, F. Lweinberg, 2000
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#13
The City of Toronto’s Homelessness
Interdepartmental Team (Works and Emergency Services; Parks
& Recreation; Shelter, Housing & Support; Toronto
Public Library)
Barrie Chavel, Lucy Stern, Troy
Ford, Anne Longair, Sheryl Pollock,
Pat Bull
Participants from several City of
Toronto departments meet on a regular basis to discuss and
develop protocols for dealing with issues relating to homelessness.
This workshop will outline how various departments work
together and the strategies that have been formulated to
assist people, who are homeless, beginning with an overview
of its activities. The Works and Emergency Services Department
will discuss strategies for enforcing City By-Laws regarding
garbage and blocking rights-of-way. The Parks and Recreation
Division will discuss their Homeless Policy, Profile and
Strategy, outlining their initiatives and the challenges
they face. The Shelter, Housing and Support Division will
discuss the links between the various City Divisions and
other programs and services such as Street Outreach. The
Toronto Public Library will talk about the changes in their
operations that complement the City’s overall approach
to reducing homelessness.
Location: Metro Hall
list of workshops
Field Workshop
#14
Self-managed Social Housing: Canada's
Co-operative Housing Sector
Nicholas Gazzard, Harvey Cooper,
Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada; and Tom Clement,
Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto
About one percent of Canadian households
live in non-equity self-managed housing co-operatives. These
have been developed under social housing programs and are
part of the social housing sector. This new tenure form
represents a blend of owning and renting. The nature of
this tenure and recent policy trends will be discussed.
Challenges faced by this model of resident controlled housing
communities will also be examined. The co-operative housing
sector in Canada is well organized and has local, provincial
and national level organizations.
Location: TBA: Older Women's Network (OWN)
Housing Co-op, Meeting Room, 115 The Esplanade, St. Lawrence
Neighbourhood (Southeast corner of The Esplanade and Market
St., 1 block west of Jarvis St).
Resources:
Co-operative
Housing Federation of Canada
Co-operative
Housing Federation of Toronto
list of workshops
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