From the Post:
KNOCKING DOWN 'JUNGLE' WALLS
Kelly Patrick, National Post
Published: Monday, July 16, 2007
Toronto authorities are taking a sledgehammer to housing projects built just 50 years ago, doing away with the old philosophy -- separation -- in favour of a new one: integration. This week, city council will vote to start remaking Lawrence Heights, where market-value housing will be put amid public housing. Today, Kelly Patrick on the plans for the neighbourhood.
TORONTO - As Ahmed Samater walks through Lawrence Heights, he halts every few minutes to point out another bizarre physical feature that isolates the public housing complex's poor tenants from their affluent neighbours.
"This street dead-ends here," he says, pointing down Rondale Boulevard, a residential street that stops about 10 metres from connecting to Varna Drive, the ring road that hems in the eastern half of Lawrence Heights.
Mr. Samater, the affable Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) manager for the swath of northwestern Toronto that includes Lawrence Heights, says built-in boundaries like this one exacerbate the differences of income and class that already separate the kids here from their peers outside.
There is a park at the end of Rondale, but Lawrence Heights kids never play there, Mr. Samater says. And kids from outside "Jungle" -- as those who grew up here call the complex -- do not venture into Flemington Park either.
"Literally, there's no opportunity for any of these kids to get exposed to other kids," Mr. Samater adds later outside Flemington Public School, which is attended almost exclusively by children from the complex.
"That's what a mixed-income community will do."
When the federal government built Lawrence Heights, near Lawrence Avenue West and Bathurst Street, in the late 1950s, the complex's maze of green space and pathways meshed with the urban design trends of the moment.
Its physical isolation also mollified the middle-class neighbours who might have objected to thousands of low-income tenants moving into the backyard of what was then a new suburb of Toronto.
Today, however, experts at the city and TCHC say the barriers that surround Lawrence Heights -- both visible and invisible -- are partly to blame for its residents' persistent poverty and social ills.
They believe knocking those barriers down and integrating the community will lift up the 3, 438 people who live in Jungle.
As early as today, while the city's attention is trained on a crucial tax vote, city council is expected to create a revitalization secretariat and approve a $500,000 allocation to officially begin studying a sweeping redesign of Lawrence Heights.
If the plan goes through as expected, 1,208 units of subsidized housing spread over 65 acres will be bulldozed to the ground in the next 10 to 15 years.
In their place will rise a new community with physical links to the outside world and a mix of subsidized apartments, market-priced condos and commercial buildings.
The vision is in keeping with a theory that prompted the razing of Don Mount Court and Regent Park: That the poor are likely to thrive better in mixed communities than in low-income ghettos.
"Other experience from around the world tells us these communities come out the other end better places for people to live," said Mark Guslits, TCHC's chief development officer.
The revamping of Don Mount Court, a 232-unit public housing complex located near the Don Valley Parkway and Dundas Street East, is already well under way.
So is the rebuilding of the much larger Regent Park.
Constructed in 1948 on 69 acres east of downtown, Regent Park was the first public housing project in Canada to adopt the isolated park design that would become a hallmark of future projects such as Lawrence Heights.
That's why the $1-billion Regent Park redevelopment, which is roughly a decade from completion, is the touchstone to which those planning Lawrence Heights' future keep returning.
The grinding poverty and crime that afflicted Regent Park also afflict Lawrence Heights's population of young, immigrant families.
The average household income in Lawrence Heights is just $15,425. Forty-seven per cent of the population is under 16 years of age. Sixty-three per cent of residents are younger than 26.
After English, the most widely spoken languages in the complex are the African tongues of Somali, Oromo, Tigrinya and Amharic.
Toronto's "summer of the gun" two years ago put Lawrence Heights in a negative spotlight. In the two highest profile incidents, gunfire rang out during a memorial barbecue on July 24, 2005, to mark the fourth anniversary of the murders of two community workers, and a 46-year-old resident, Leroy Whittaker, was gunned down through the door of his apartment on July 30, 2005.
On top of all this, the complex's public housing stock of townhouses and three-storey apartment buildings is crumbling.
TCHC says it simply does not have the cash to keep pace with repairs.
"Ninety-three per cent of all my calls are plumbing-related," Mr. Samater said. "Every time it rains, everything backs up."
Jaquie Waldren knows that first-hand. After 33 years living in Lawrence Heights, a pipe burst beneath her apartment just before Christmas in 2005, prompting her to move out of the neighbourhood.
Despite travails like these -- or, some residents say, because of them -- those who live in Jungle are fiercely attached to their neighbourhood and to each other.
People here look out for each other, they say. They know their neighbours by first name.
They have begun to work together on successful projects such as community gardens. Now they are afraid of being forced out. They are wary of living cheek by jowl with the middle class.
"To be honest, most of the people don't like [the revitalization] because they feel like they are being kicked out," said Faadumo Hussein, a 43-year-old Somali immigrant and mother of six who has lived in the complex for 15 years.
"I love my community. We have to find a way to rebuild without losing the community."
Mr. Guslits and his colleague Lorne Cappe, a TCHC housing development manager, say that is what they are aiming for with the revitalization.
Howard Moscoe, the councillor who represents the area, echoed that sentiment.
He said the goal is to not "displace" anyone while the rebuilding work progresses.
It could be possible -- because there is so much surplus land in Lawrence Heights -- that people could be moved from building to building without being dispatched elsewhere as they have been in Regent Park, he said.
As well, Mr. Cappe said TCHC is legally obliged to keep the same number of subsidized units after the revitalization.
That is a message they are trying to drive home in the community.
"It's partly a matter of building the trust that I think we did in other locations, like Regent Park and Don Mount Court, where we entered into contracts with each household," he said.
Lawrence Heights is bounded roughly by Bathurst Street to the east, Lawrence Avenue to the south, Dufferin Street to the west and Highway 401 to the north.
The Allen Expressway bisects the community.
Not all of this area is public housing, of course; the 65 acres owned by TCHC is mostly situated inside Flemington Road and Varna Drive, the ring roads that encircle the complex.
In total, roughly 160 acres are being considered for the redevelopment, including city lands, several schools and the Lawrence Square Plaza at Lawrence and Dufferin.
Mr. Moscoe envisions between 4,500 and 5,000 units at the end, with a third being subsidized housing.
"It's the value in the land that will be used to make the revitalization affordable," Mr. Moscoe said. "It's going to be a mixed-use community, so parts of it will be sold off, parts of it will be intensified on our own. But that's what will finance the restorations, the sale of the private condominiums."
There is no price tag attached to the project yet. Everyone involved stresses the revitalization plans are at a very early stage.
Still, Mr. Moscoe said his office has already had "a huge number" of inquiries from people interested in buying in the area. The Orthodox Jewish community that hugs Bathurst Street is particularly interested, he said.
Iman Ali, 21, and Helen Yohannes, 18, bristle at the idea of the private sector and the upper classes invading their neighbourhood. The girls are eloquent, passionate opponents of the revitalization.
"I feel it's trying to make the community that already exists here disappear," said Ms. Yohannes, who was born in the complex. "We have so much of a tight-knit sense of community. I don't want to lose that."
But Ms. Ali, a nursing student at Ryerson University, and Ms. Yohannes, a political science student at York University, are also prime examples of a dilemma that will keep plaguing Lawrence Heights if it is left to subsidized housing alone.
Their academic success means they will likely be too well-off to stay in the community after they graduate.
This is how Mr. Moscoe puts it when he speaks to teenagers at Lawrence Heights: "Do you realize that if you become successful and earn a higher income, you won't be able to live here anymore? You'll be separated from your friends and your parents if we don't create a mixed-income community here."
TOMORROW
Zosia Bielski goes to the sales centre for "Rivertowne," the mixed-income development that will replace South Riverdale's Don Mount Court.
AoD
