City council backs scathing TCHC report

City council voted on Thursday to adopt the recommendations in a scathing ombudsman’s report about the eviction of seniors from public housing.

From the very beginning, the debate descended into shouting and grandstanding, prompting speaker Frances Nunziata at one point to call a 10-minute recess.

“If you think people are going to live for free at Toronto Community Housing? No, they’re not going to live for free,” Mayor Rob Ford told Coun. Gord Perks.

“I don’t care if you’re two years old, 20 years old or 200 years old — you’re not going to live for free.”

But Ford appeared not to have read Fiona Crean’s report on practices at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), suggesting there were as many as 100 recommendations, when there were in fact 30.

“She made numerous [recommendations,] probably close to a hundred,” Ford said in response to a question by Coun. Raymond Cho, who then pressed him further.

Cho: “Mr. Mayor, I’d like to ask you directly: Did you ever actually read all the recommendations made by the ombudsman?”

Ford: “Absolutely. I’ve been briefed on it. Absolutely.”

Cho: “How many [recommendations] are there?”

Ford: “I just told you this. It depends what you call a recommendation … 30, 50, 100.”

The report, released last week, revealed staff has been unfairly pushing out elderly tenants, at least one of whom died months later.

Crean said the TCHC hasn’t been using eviction as a last resort, as its guidelines suggest, and has been sending poorly written and confusing letters to seniors behind in their rent instead of making personal contact.

The TCHC has also agreed to all of Crean’s recommendations, including more direct contact with tenants — personal visits or phone calls — non-threatening communication written in plain English and updating tenant files objectively and without personal comment.

Read the report here.

Earlier in the morning, council backed Coun. Michelle Berardinetti’s motion to set up an angel cradle — a spot at hospitals where mothers can drop off babies they are unable or unwilling to care for.

The meeting was scheduled for two days, but a debate on Wednesday about replacing the grass on a University of Toronto field with artificial turf pushed it to a third day. In the end, council decided not to block the installation of the turf for the Pan Am Games when a motion to designate the field a heritage landscape failed.

Also on Wednesday, the mayor’s outspoken older brother said he wouldn’t run in the next election.

Coun. Doug Ford made the comments at city hall, adding he’d have lots of time to help Mayor Rob Ford with his campaign for re-election in 2014.

“I won’t be running next time,” Doug Ford said. “At least down here I won’t be running. I’ll be running away from this place in 16 months.”

In April, Coun. Ford said he would run for Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party if Premier Kathleen Wynne called an election in the spring, and he has expressed interest in sitting as an MPP in the past.

Read the full city hall agenda here.

With files from CityNews.ca staff