Introduction

Canada's largest landlord, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), is in the process of revitalising the country's oldest and largest public housing community, Regent Park. The 15-year ‘revitalisation’ of the community will transform 70 acres of rent-geared-to-income (RGI) subsidised housing into a mixed-use, mixed-income neighbourhood, with new market housing and a New Urbanist-style redesign. The proportion of RGI-subsidised units will decline from 100% to only one quarter, in order to accommodate the community's new ‘social mix’. The TCHC is executing a similar redevelopment approach in two of its other public housing communities, Don Mount Court (now called ‘Rivertowne’), and Lawrence Heights. Both of these areas, like Regent Park, are in sought-after areas, sited on potentially valuable urban real estate. While the social and economic benefits promised by socially mixed public housing redevelopment have received much attention in the academic literature and local media, very little has been written about how such ‘revitalisation’ may affect residents’ political networks and ability to influence governance decisions. Indeed, even if benefits do result from the forced imposition of social mix on public housing communities (a claim we find highly dubious; see August, 2008), redevelopment stands to create significant power imbalances between the new majority of residents paying market rent for their housing, and the minority of tenants in subsidised housing. Focusing on the redevelopment underway in Toronto, this chapter explores the implications of socially mixed public housing redevelopment for tenant participation, organisational structure and political capital.

Social mix in Canada

Canada has no nationally driven social mix policy, or even any national housing policy. The Canadian federal government devolved its responsibility for housing to the provinces in the 1990s (in Ontario, housing was then further devolved to municipalities). As such, current attempts to promote social mix in Canada are the result of locally based decisions made by individual municipalities, local public housing agencies, and in some cases, the provinces, in the absence of federal funding. Despite this lack of any nationally driven agenda, the social mix ideal has, since the 1990s, been cemented into mainstream Canadian notions of what constitutes ‘good planning’ (August, 2008).