Build more neighbourhoods like St. Lawrence: Cathy Crowe
This video is part of the series, “A fully housed Toronto,” first published by the West End Phoenix.
I am Cathy Crowe, and I’m a longtime street nurse in downtown Toronto. And I’m currently a public affiliate at TMU University.
Why is there a housing crisis in Toronto today?
Up until 1993, Canada had a national housing program similar to Medicare, funded fully, federally. And when we had that program, we built 20,000 units a year across the country and close to 4,000 just in Toronto. We built co-op housing, seniors housing, social housing, public housing, all of those words that we hear about housing, and it was affordable.
And that program was killed. It was destroyed in 1993 by two federal governments, the Conservatives and the Liberals. And since then, of course, everyone has seen homelessness worsen to the point that we call it a disaster now, an emergency.
But in Toronto, we have 80,000 households on the waiting list for social housing and maybe 10,000 people that are homeless. And who knows if they’re even on any list. So it’s a huge crisis.
What can we do to create a fully housed Toronto?
We have to organize social movements to fight for rental housing. We have to push politicians really, really hard to step up and fight for money from senior levels of government.
And we won’t get out of this mess without the money.
We should have a special stream of housing for co-op housing, for example. We should have a special stream to augment and fix the old high rises that we have in existence that were built like in this community where we are right now. This whole community in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood was built when we had a program, and it’s still successful.
Why is creating a fully housed Toronto important to you?
I fell into it quite accidentally.
I became a street nurse just because it was a place where I could nurse to my full potential. But I’ve personally benefitted. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I was a single mom, I moved into co-op housing that allowed me to go back to then Ryerson to get my nursing degree. And I live in co-op housing now, and I’ve always seen the benefit of having housing for my patients.
It used to be that if we worked really hard, I could find housing for somebody. Now it’s impossible. It’s totally impossible. So as a result, I’ve seen the people I’ve been the nurse for get really, really sick. And there’s been an extremely high death rate. And I just find that unacceptable. We’re a very rich country with a lot of poverty; but we’re a rich country, and we can be ending this. We just have to allocate the money.
Should the St. Lawrence neighbourhood model be emulated elsewhere?
Urban planners around the world think that’s a great idea because they all come here and walk this community to see it and to learn from it. It’s a bit of a novelty in Canada, but it can be replicated, absolutely.
Parks, green space, library, schools, affordable housing equals safety and health.
So, it should be replicated. We are really, really proud that this was built.