A west-end Toronto public housing complex was in a critical state of repair and “falling well short” of targets the last time it was assessed before a ceiling collapse on Friday left a person hospitalized.
The early morning incident took place in a two-storey lower-level townhouse in the Swansea Mews community near High Park, Toronto Community Housing says. The rest of the block — which has 14 units, 11 of which were tenanted — was then evacuated for an inspection by city engineers, it added.
As those tenants remain in hotels, awaiting an update on the inspection that TCH expects to deliver by Wednesday, local councilor Gord Perks described the collapse as a blow to a community that has long struggled with disrepair, and was finally on the cusp of a site renewal.
“This is the heartbreaking thing,” Perks said.
“We had a plan that, next year, we would start… vacate all the units, and essentially gut the place and reconstruct. The tenants were aware this is where we were going, so they were already facing a very difficult period — and then, this happens.”
Repairs have been a serious issue in Swansea Mews for at least half a decade. An internal TCH repairs database provided to the Star in 2017 showed the west-end community was in the 14th worst condition citywide, compared with more than 360 other public housing communities.
At the time, repairing everything that had broken at Swansea Mews would cost 41.59 per cent of the price-tag to replace the whole complex — anything above 30 per cent is considered critical, though not irredeemable, the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro has reported. Without any new funding commitments, the complex was expected to further deteriorate through 2021.
But while the federal government promised $1.3 billion to Toronto Community Housing in 2019 to be used for repairs after multiple decades of underfunding, that money hadn’t yet pulled Swansea Mews out of critical condition, and a January 2021 assessment found repairs would still cost 38.51 per cent of replacing the complex.
Robin Smith, a spokesperson for TCH, acknowledged the buildings still fell “well short” of repair targets, but noted it was being improved.
Since 2018, he says TCH has allocated more than $5.5 million to projects at Swansea Mews, such as asbestos abatement, mold remediation and the interior demolition of some townhouses. A $1.6-million design phase for the site renewal is currently underway.
A $301,000 contract had been issued for emergency roof repairs at Swansea Mews, though Smith said those repairs weren’t planned for the block where the ceiling collapsed on Friday.
While TCH has not provided any updates on the injured person’s condition, except to say initially that their injuries were serious, Perks said his understanding from conversations with TCH staff was that the person was expected to be discharged from hospital on Tuesday.
Considering the depth of TCH’s repair backlog, Perks places blame on the decades-ago decision by federal and provincial governments to discharge responsibility for public housing onto the city, despite Ottawa’s more recent efforts to help repair TCH’s roughly $10 billion in public assets.
“When the federal and provincial governments walked away from (social) housing, they created the future we’re living now — where there’s substandard housing, and there’s not enough of it.”
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