Vanessa Lu
city hall bureau chief

Toronto's public housing agency has about 300 houses and apartments sitting empty because it can't afford to fix them, but it says it doesn't necessarily make sense to sell them.

"When the parks budget is tight, you don't sell parks. What you do is you try to manage it for the long term," said Derek Ballantyne, president and chief executive officer of Toronto Community Housing Corp. "We're in the rental housing business for the long term."

But the reality is the agency simply doesn't have the wherewithal to fix all its housing units, said Ballantyne, responding to calls from councillors to sell off its 550 single-family homes.

"We fix a vacant unit and get somebody into it, and somebody moves out of another unit, it's just as disastrous as the one we fixed up," he said. "We're essentially chasing our tails on this."

For a year, the housing agency has been after the federal and provincial governments to help pay upkeep for its 58,500 units. Since 2005, the bill for backlogged repairs has grown from $225 million to $300 million. Meanwhile, 65,000 names are on the waiting list for community housing.

Councillors calling for the real estate sell-off say the fact that 50 homes are vacant – some as far back as 2005 – is all the more reason to sell.

"This is scandalous that we have 50 single-family dwellings sitting empty," said Councillor Case Ootes. "It's unacceptable. I don't care what the reason is ... but you don't just sit back and don't do anything."

He argued that city council should have been made aware of the problem. "If you can't maintain something, then you sell it," Ootes said.

Ballantyne disputes that suggestion. "Those who would like us to sell houses – would they like us to sell apartment buildings?"

Provincial law, he points out, requires the agency to replace any units it sells. "We don't have money to repair these (units), so it's hard to imagine that we would have money to replace these."

The agency spends its scarce dollars on maintaining occupied units and apartment buildings, because if a roof goes at one of those sites, 100 to 200 units will be affected.