[getsmart-l] Another take on Affordable Housing - Rooming Houses

[John O'Gorman]

When I first came to Toronto, young, single, and newly employed, the place that I could afford most easily was a rooming house - neat and clean and with other neat and clean tenants who, for one reason or another were starting or were starting over. One of the keys to the place being well-run was that the landlady lived downstairs.

Later in life we lived BESIDE a rooming house where several tenants came and went and we had a nodding acquaintance; one of the roomers was the Cub leader for our sons. One of the keys to the place being well-run was that the landlady lived downstairs.

Rooming house provide very affordable housing, as this article argues, but they do not benefit when and if  the landlord is an absentee landlord/lady!!


http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=162253
Zoning out the poor
Roger Brook NOW Mar. 23/08
I’m no stranger to the tight end of the housing market.

When I first arrived in Toronto, I took a room at Parkdale’s Queen’s Hotel, but was informed that because it was a hotel I would not be permitted to stay long-term.

Within a month I found another spot in a rooming house, but was cheerfully told by the landlord that “bachelorettes are only for one person” and that I’d have to leave once my wife arrived.

How could I argue? “Bachelorette” implies that tenants are supposed to be single, and there are, of course, safety and other standards to consider.

But bylaws designed to protect tenants all too often end up blocking the kind of organic intensification that turned former inner-city suburbs like Parkdale into diverse neighbourhoods.

In Toronto’s overheated real estate market, chopping off the bottom rung of the housing ladder means pushing people into illegal units or onto the street. It’s hard to climb back up when you lack an address.
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