Vital Signs 2007: Toronto's annual checkup

[scottycameron]

An overview of the main areas covered by the Vital Signs report. (PDF, requires Adobe Acrobat reader.)

http://www3.thestar.com/static/PDF/071002_vitalsigns_charts.pdf

http://www3.thestar.com/static/Specials/vital_signs.html

 

[scottycameron]

Why Toronto needs a sudden boost
Positive reports outweighed by troubling trends such as a widening income gap
October 02, 2007
Laurie Monsebraaten
staff reporter



First, the good news.

Toronto continues to rank among the world's most livable cities. Crime rates are down, physical activity and environmental awareness are up. And the city is the centre of a growing and prosperous region.

But according to Vital Signs 2007, the Toronto Community Foundation's annual checkup on the city's social and economic health, Toronto has stalled in terms of population growth and prosperity.

The signs are troubling, starting with the city government struggles with a $1.1 billion annual deficit that can no longer be met through reserve funds and debt. A failed attempt in July to raise cash through a new land transfer tax and vehicle registration fee forced the city last month to close libraries and recreation centres once a week, raise TTC fares, reduce snow clearing and shorten the outdoor skating season.

Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and poor continues to expand with the richest tenth now earning on average nearly 11 times the amount of the poorest tenth.

Finding work – and jobs that pay living wages – remains tougher for new immigrants and young people. And families continue to flee to the suburbs for more affordable homes.

From his 21st-floor office in the heart of the city's financial district at King and Bay Sts., TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond says he's not overly concerned about the city's stagnant population numbers. Like all big cities, growth tends to occur on the outskirts where there is more room for housing development, he says.

But he is somewhat alarmed that it has taken Toronto so long to deal with its structural deficit and believes this is the year city council will have to take definitive action to get it under control. And that could hurt.

"To have the deficit linger for a long time is not good," he says. "But some of the things they may have to do to address it may have unfavourable side effects, too."

Drummond doesn't mind the prospect of a new vehicle registration fee, but he thinks the proposed land transfer tax should be imposed only as a last resort, as it would accelerate family flight to the suburbs.

Instead, he'd like to see a GTA gas tax similar to those levied around Vancouver and Montreal to pay for transit. This could free up between $200 million and $400 million annually for Toronto, Drummond estimates. Another $100 million in savings could be squeezed out of the city's agencies, boards and commissions. And he expects the province can still be counted on to help by making good on its promise to pick up more social costs that were downloaded to cities during the 1990s.

Finally, Drummond believes the city will likely have to raise property taxes beyond the inflation-level hikes of the past three years.

"Toronto's taxes are low compared to similarly-valued homes in other Canadian cities," he says.

But for Sri Lankan refugee Lucya Pirapakaran, 46, whose family waited 10 years for subsidized housing in a Scarborough co-op, home ownership is just a dream.

It's after 10 p.m. by the time the mother of five – two children in university, two in high school and one in elementary school – has finished cleaning up the supper dishes, overseeing homework and reading bedtime stories and has time to talk.

Pirapakaran's husband, Prabaharan, is disabled and has been unable to work since the family moved here in 1994, she says. As the sole income earner, she has had to juggle two and sometimes three temporary or part-time jobs in coffee shops, factories and offices, earning minimum wage or less with no benefits.

"It's been really, really hard on me," the former preschool teacher sighs. She remembers crying when she had to pawn her gold wedding necklace, earrings and bangles to pay first- and last-month's rent on their first apartment in a private rental building. But she has always been able to earn enough money to pay back the "loan" of her jewellery.

"I'm lucky I have that," she says, noting that she's used it often since, most recently to cover her son's university tuition because his government grant won't arrive until later this fall.

For five years, Pirapakaran worked overnights in a factory driving a forklift and part-time during the day as a home visitor for a parenting centre.

"It was crazy. I returned to work three months after my youngest was born, pumping breast milk on my breaks," she says. "I had no time to spend with the children, no time for family life, no time for myself."

When the factory pulled up stakes for Brampton in 2003, Pirapakaran had to quit – she had no car and simply no time in her already hectic life to take transit across town.

But she has continued to visit struggling mothers like herself and is amazed that so little has changed in the 13 years she has been here. "I see so many parents who have no time with their children; fathers work during the day and the mothers during the night. They have no time for each other or themselves.

"They have no time to upgrade their skills to get ahead. So they are stuck working part-time, temporary jobs their whole lives," she says. "It's time the government did something. We need a $10 minimum wage now and better labour laws so that workers aren't exploited."

Economist Armine Yalnizyan says Pirapakaran's story is one of thousands of examples of how low- and moderate-income families in Toronto are not reaping the benefits of the city's booming economy.

In the Growing Gap, her analysis of Statistics Canada income data for families raising children released earlier this year by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, she found that most low- and moderate-income families in Canada are sinking further into debt and working longer hours just to keep pace. The problem is even more pronounced in Ontario and most severe in the Toronto area, she says.

"What's needed is a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy that's not just about incomes but about making life livable in all its dimensions," she says.

This includes affordable housing, child care, support for the disabled equal to seniors' benefits, dental and drug plans for low-wage workers, an unemployment insurance program that covers all workers and a decent level of support for parents who are unable to work.

"If you can't provide these supports under these economic conditions, when can you?" she asks with frustration. "These conditions are going to haunt us for decades, because children growing up in these stressful circumstances aren't going to reach their potential to become happy, healthy and productive adults," she warns.

But there are glimmers of hope for today's so-called "at risk" youth and they are reflected in the faces of people like Shahina Sayani, 34.

The St. Catharines native of South Asian decent turned her back on a career in occupational therapy and came to Toronto a decade ago to help young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods find their way. "There was so little for me growing up as a young person of colour," she says. "I always knew I wanted to change that."

Through small youth-led agencies like For Youth Initiative in the city's Weston-Mount Dennis area, Sayani has offered job skills, leadership training and employment to hundreds of young people.

Sayani's new agency, ArtReach, is helping marginalized youth find their creative voice through art. The agency helps young people start their own arts-based businesses and non-profits, helps them write grant applications and learn how to run their own organizations.

Last month, ArtReach handed out its first scholarships to youth in the area to help them pursue studies in law, social work and aviation.

The grants of $2,000 and $1,000 are small, Sayani admits.

"But ... the ripple effect is enormous."

 

[scottycameron]

Report should motivate city improvements
October 02, 2007
Royson James

Greatness takes time – whether you are Michael Jordan or a beta city with worldly aspirations on becoming an alpha attraction.

So, while impatience is a virtue to those who seek greatness, Toronto lovers will have to curb that trait as the city lurches towards excellence.

That is one lesson best learned from the 2007 report card on the city's health. There will be setbacks, a wrong turn here, regression there. And as long as we are measuring the progress we will know where we need to improve and shore up.

Vital Signs 2007 is the sixth such annual checkup of Toronto's social, economic, fiscal, environmental – whatever happened to spiritual? – health.

And as with such necessary navel-gazing there are findings we would rather not unearth. Besides, improvement is incremental; progress, slow.

Last year, the Toronto Community Foundation, which launched this annual exercise at a landmark community engagement session in 1998, revealingly showed its impatience at the slow progress.

Among the eyebrow-raising findings is the stalling of Toronto's population and job growth, even as the general economy bounds along.

Toronto's population last year, at 2,503,281, is up less than 1 per cent since 2001 – way below projections. Population of the entire region was up 9.2 per cent (to 5,113,149), with Toronto's slower population growth pulling the GTA's growth numbers down below double digit increase.

And the number of jobs in Toronto declined 1.6 per cent since 2000. By comparison, jobs in the rest of the GTA jumped 28 per cent.

This, of course, bears watching. Policy decisions that give newcomers to the region an excuse to locate outside the denser core city of Toronto are not in our best overall interest.

Every person that moves to a low-density subdivision puts enormous pressure on the transportation system, adds to global warming, and increases the cost of providing infrastructure, which is already lurching along in a deficit position.

Investments in a subway system, rapid transit, dense urban form that supports transit, a livable and walkable city, people-friendly urban landscape and all the amenities that has garnered Toronto awards and accolades will be wasted – if the early signs prove a definite trend.

Another concern could be fewer immigrants choosing the GTA to call home. The number dropped 12 per cent in 2006 to 99,263 from 112,784 the previous year. That's a major concern because over the past decade (1996-2006) the natural increase in the city of Toronto's population (births minus deaths) has fallen by 49 per cent.

As in previous years, these Vital Signs show mixed results.

Toronto is exercising more, wasting less water and smoking less. Poverty rates are rising among children and falling among seniors. The number of public school students fell 6.6 per cent while private schools attendance jumped 7.2 per cent.

Twenty-five years ago it was true that the rich were getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Today, it's also true, only worse. The gap has doubled since 1982. Now, the top 10 per cent of the Toronto population rake in income 11 times that of the bottom 10 per cent of wage earners.

Between 2000 and 2005, the rate of poverty among children grew 13.3 per cent and fell 18 per cent among seniors. There may be angst over gun crimes and shootings, but most forms of crimes are down, including violent crimes.

And for those who like to compare us to Chicago, consider the murder rates of each city. Toronto had 69 homicides last year, a rate of 2.5 murders per 100,000 persons. Chicago, comparable in size, had a murder rate of 16.3 per 100,000.

Enough to keep Toronto optimistic, motivated to improve.

 

[unimaginative2]

Gloomy report doesn't dampen Pollyanna's spirits

JOHN BARBER

October 3, 2007

Once again, the Toronto Community Foundation's annual Vital Signs report presents a tough challenge to the Pollyannas of the mainstream media.

The most persuasive evidence of urban decline it presents is the simplest: the city's inability to attract new people and investment, especially when its performance in those two basic measures is compared with that of the booming 905 suburbs. The suburbs outside Toronto are growing, it says, while the city proper has stalled.

But dauntless Pollyanna doesn't buy it. She notes that the 2001 census undercounted the population of Greater Toronto by 5 per cent, and that the 2006 undercount is likely to be similar - with most of the uncounted likely to be found in older parts of the city.

Leaving aside the uncounted cohort of so-called illegal immigrants, city staff say that official "undercoverage" adjustments could add 200,000 souls to the city's stated population of 2,503,281. Pollyanna approves.
Print Edition - Section Front

But she doesn't bother much with the arithmetic. Mostly, she just looks around. And being well travelled, she can't help noticing that there are more high-rise buildings under construction in Toronto today than anywhere she's ever been in her carefree life.

She doesn't exaggerate - much. There are currently 143 high-rises under construction in New York City, according to Emporis.com, compared with 104 in Toronto, a city with less than one-third of NYC's population. Including new towers both proposed and approved raises the count to 435 in Toronto, versus 330 in NYC. Chicago is distinctly second tier, with 63 high-rises under construction and a total of 173 in the pipeline.

Pollyanna wonders: If this is what it feels like to be stalled, how could we ever survive growth? But mostly, she attributes the apparent discrepancy between 416 and 905 to the fact that the city as a whole is growing, like any organic thing, from the inside out. One doesn't expect the pith of a tree to add rings, but urban ingenuity has produced a work-around: Toronto is growing up as well as out.

Pollyanna is more apt to celebrate suburban growth than to regret it, especially when it's accompanied by some measure of urban growth. Many U.S. central cities continue to outright lose population while their suburbs grow, a textbook diagnosis of sprawl. Even among the well-publicized few that are now regaining population, however, none appear to enjoy a greater share of overall regional growth than Toronto.

Developers built 24,354 new housing units in Greater Toronto last year, with a healthy 12,726 of them appearing in the already built-up city. New York and its region acquired 32,609 units in the same year, with 8,790 of them in Manhattan. Among comparable cities, only Chicago is capturing a share of regional housing starts equal to Toronto's.

Pollyanna is also struck by the facts that more Torontonians than ever own homes, and that those lucky many have experienced spectacular gains as a result, with house prices rising 77 per cent over the past decade.

An affordability crisis, then? Not really: The plentiful new construction that propelled home ownership also helped to hold down rents, which increased by 30 per cent over the same period that housing prices increased by 77 per cent. Vacancy rates remain near historic highs.

Transit use is twice the national average while crime rates are much lower, smog days are dropping, waste diversion is climbing, the streets are cleaner, and the number of head offices in Toronto is growing smartly. The financial sector is booming and lavish cultural monuments are erupting from the sidewalks. Toronto's stall, in short, is uncommonly energetic.

True, Pollyanna never sees the whole picture. But that doesn't stop her from liking what she does see.

jbarber@globeandmail.com

 

[Glen]

Vital Signs Absent

In light of John Barbers comment.............

The most persuasive evidence of urban decline it presents is the simplest: the city's inability to attract new people and investment, especially when its performance in those two basic measures is compared with that of the booming 905 suburbs. The suburbs outside Toronto are growing, it says, while the city proper has stalled.

It would be an interesting exercise to extrapolate how many more people in Toronto must go to work in the 905 region during 2000-2006. Using figures from the Vital Signs report published by the Toronto Community Foundation, it is hard not to conclude that a large portion of the job growth in the 905 region must be filled by Toronto residents. In the 905, the employment base grew by 28% while population grew at 9%. Using historical employment figures (jobs = 50% population), the 905 went from having an employment base of 2,341,448 million in 2000 to 2,973,638 in 2006. This gives an increase of 632,190 jobs in the 905 region. At the same time population grew by 430,252 persons. Again using the 50% historical average that means that 417,064 (632,190-(432,252*50%)) of those jobs must have been filled by people living outside of the 905 region. I think that it would be a fair assumption that more than half of those were filled from Toronto.

Until Toronto reverses this exodus it will continue to find itself in a worsening position, as the commercial / industrial base is what subsidises the residential base.


On the other hand maybe people in the 905 region have to work two jobs in order to pay the much higher property tax which is a result of getting $2,100 per household less per year and those In Toronto.