Questions about supportive and transitional housing

Everyone wants to protect the value of their property. Perhaps that is why the property values surrounding supportive and affordable housing were the subject of over 100 studies in the US and Canada over the past 40 years.

These studies looked at the impact of every type of affordable and supportive housing: large and small, new and renovated, for families and singles, for people with mental illness, or addictions, or youth, or ex-offenders, or seniors. They have looked at the impacts on property values and saleability, often over many years, and compared them with similar properties with no affordable or supportive housing nearby.

The results provide overwhelming evidence that affordable or supportive housing does not lower surrounding property values. In fact, the astonishing news (from such major studies as NYU’s 2008 research on 123 supportive housing developments) is that the values of property close to supportive housing can go up faster than others in the neighbourhood.

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You probably already have people with mental illness living in your neighbourhood. Perhaps they are your neighbours, your friends, or members of your own family.

If so, you already know that most people with mental illness are not a threat to you or your children. In fact, the most common mental illnesses, such as depression and severe anxiety, tend to cause people to be more introverted and isolated than anything else. It’s no surprise, then, that representatives of Toronto’s Police Service report that supportive housing in their division rarely generates complaints from neighbours.

Still, it is hard not to be alarmed when we read frightening stories in the media – even if we know that the stories are reported because they are unusual. A common theme in these stories is that they are about people who were not receiving support. It is this very “support gap” that supportive housing fills.

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Supportive housing residents like quiet, attractive neighbourhoods – just like everyone else. That’s why supportive housing aims to blend into the neighbourhood.

They’ve been pretty successful. In fact, one Toronto study found that most people didn’t even know there was supportive housing on their street, and those that did know had no complaints.

If concerns do arise, address them by treating the supportive housing tenants like anyone else. If you have a local resident association or host a street party, invite them. If you have a dispute, work it out the same way you would with any other neighbour. If the issue you can’t work out involves a City by-law, call the City’s by-law enforcement division. And in the unlikely event you spot criminal activity, call the police. In other words, treat supportive housing tenants as you would expect your neighbours to treat you.

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People with mental illness want to live in neighbourhoods that work for them, in the same way that new immigrants, families, or young singles will tend to live in neighbourhoods that meet their needs.

That usually means locating supportive housing in areas that are affordable, both because many people with mental illness have low incomes, and because government-funded housing is designed to be as economical as possible. The best options for supportive housing are small apartment buildings, large houses or building sites suited to multi residential development – ideally near public transit and affordable shops. For that reason, supportive housing is often drawn to older downtown neighbourhoods, particularly those that have not yet gentrified, and neighbourhoods with good transit service.

That doesn’t mean these neighbourhoods are saturated with supportive housing. There are only 5,000 people living in supportive housing in all of Toronto. Even if they all lived in a single Toronto ward (and they don’t; they are all across the City), they would make up only 8.1% of the total ward population (the average population is 61,000). The reality is that there is just not enough supportive housing anywhere to meet the needs.

The best people to judge whether a neighbourhood is “suitable” are the people who will be living there. That’s why supportive housing providers regularly consult with tenants in their existing buildings and those on their waiting lists when they are considering new locations.

That doesn’t mean every building will suit everyone, and applicants can and do turn down a building or unit they don’t want. It does mean that the decision rests with the individual, not with his or her future neighbours.

Many supportive housing organizations do offer rent supplements for people who want to live in “regular” apartment buildings. But some people find apartment living lonely, and prefer to live in a community of peers, with services offered right in their building.

In Toronto, we aim to offer both options, so tenants can find the place that works best for them.

The unemployment rate among people with mental illness is very high. That’s a social problem that has to change – and supportive housing is part of the solution. For many people, supportive housing has provided the stable base from which to get or complete an education, get support, and rejoin the workforce. That’s a benefit for everyone.

In fact, supportive housing is one of the least expensive ways to help people find their feet – less than half the cost of a bed in a homeless shelter, and less than 1/20th the cost of a hospital bed.

This confusion about planning requirements has been the source of too much bad feeling between supportive housing providers and their neighbours. It’s time to set the record straight.

Supportive housing is governed by the same planning laws and regulations as every other development. Many supportive housing developments are “as of right” — no special planning approvals needed, and no public information or consultations required. This is likely the same as when you bought your own house. You just moved in, without asking your neighbours’ permission or providing them with information.

If a development does not conform to the Official Plan or Zoning By-law, then the developers must consult the owners in the immediate neighbourhood. But this consultation is about the land use – density, residential vs. commercial, set backs, design – not about how the building will be managed or who will live there.

What kind of information should you expect? Consider the information you’d provide if you needed planning approvals to add an extension to your house. You’d probably be ready to answer questions about the extension’s height or cladding. But you wouldn’t expect questions about your medical history, how you supervise your children, whether you planned to hire a housekeeper, or how late you stayed out at night.

Look at it this way. Our tax dollars pay for hospitals, but that doesn’t give us the right to cruise around hospital wards and decide who should be there, what treatment they should receive, or how the building should be managed. Instead, we elect officials who support policies we believe in. We have a civil service that carries out these policies. And we have professionals who make decisions according to the standards of their profession.

It’s the same with housing. We have province-wide funding programs and city-wide housing policies, and staff who make decisions to put those policies into action. Housing providers are accountable to their funders, and have the same legal obligations as any other property owners and landlords. Those responsibilities do not include reporting to neighbours or consulting them about day-to-day management. They do include responding to specific problems when they arise, in the same way you would respond to your neighbours if they had a complaint about you.