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Culture


RSS FeedsThis great-grandmother was forced from her home of 31 years. Hers is the face of a broken public housing system
(The Star Religion)

 
 

17 may 2018 17:27:00

 
This great-grandmother was forced from her home of 31 years. Hers is the face of a broken public housing system
(The Star Religion)
 


Edna Rose is exhausted. The great-grandmother is piling everything she owns into cardboard boxes while a large white moving truck parks outside next to her beloved garden where decades ago she planted peach and nectarine trees, then later flowers in honour of family. A cast-iron skillet she brought with her from Jamaica almost 40 years ago and a worn metal pot good for making rice and peas for a crowd go into a box. So does a bottle of white wine from her son’s wedding — never opened in the house of a God-fearing Mormon — and many framed photos of her “great-grands.”The 76-year-old then takes a step up a wobbly ladder near the ground-floor window to pull down lacy drapes that have yellowed in the sun.“I am climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” Rose says as she inches her way to the top.“If I fall don’t catch me. Just let me die.”On this October day, the “nana” to more than 70 grandchildren and great-grandchildren is moving out of a two-storey townhome in a block of public housing in the Firgrove community near Finch Ave. and Jane St.This has been Rose’s home for more than 30 years. Her townhome unit, No. 111, is being shuttered for good, as are 133 other units in the complex. Toronto city council voted to close the 1970s-era buildings after community housing officials determined they were no longer safe: the foundations and walls were structurally unsound and there was not enough money for repairs.Firgrove is a stark example of Toronto’s public housing crisis.Decades ago, the provincial and federal governments decided they no longer wanted to be responsible for some 2,100 buildings — $9 billion of publicly owned assets — and the mostly vulnerable and low-income tenants who live in them. That left social housing in the city’s hands and severely underfunded. In recent years, hundreds of Toronto Community Housing units have been boarded up, and within the next five years ...


 
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