London's public housing is in disrepair, and the price tag to fix it is over $100M

CBC

27-05-2025

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London's stock of affordable public housing is largely in disrepair, according to a report penned by city bureaucrats that asks councillors to sign off on a plan to spend big to solve the problem.
That dire assessment pegs 63 per cent of the housing in London and Middlesex Community Housing's (LMCH) inventory as being in "poor" condition, and five per cent of that stock at "very poor" condition.
"I have lots of complaints," said Michaela Garlick, a public housing resident who has lived in LMCH's Limberlost community for four and a half years, and says the report's findings are no surprise.
Garlick is one of several residents at Limberlost that told CBC news they have become accustomed to waiting over a year to have basic maintenance requests filled. She's personally been waiting months to have a peeling and unusable bathtub fixed, and waited over a year to have a broken staircase fixed.
"[It's] absolutely horrible. It's not fair to us and it's not fair to my kids, to live in poor conditions," Garlick said.
Still, she said, emergency requests like leaks are often promptly solved.
LMCH, by its own count, provides 3,258 housing units for more than 5,000 people across 32 properties. At its Southdale housing complex, where Misty Murphy has lived for 20 years, similar concerns exist.
"When I moved [into a new unit in the complex], we had to bang down screws that were sticking up out of the floor. My outside water tap still doesn't work [three years later]," Murphy said.
"It's not an emergency issue, so I guess it's just kind of put on the backburner."
The need to triage repairs to such an extent isn't something that LMCH is proud of, but it's something that's currently necessary, said Paul Chisholm, LMCH's CEO.
"It's not acceptable," Chisholm said of the level of disrepair at LMCH facilities. "Unfortunately, it's not a surprise to us. We do know we have an asset that's over 50 years old, and many of the the elements of the buildings and sites we operate have a life expectancy of less than 50 years."
Chisholm said LMCH continues to maintain its most critical infrastructure, and is making progress in catching up, especially since it no longer has the "very limited" capital budget it had prior to 2020.
"We want to get to a fair and then a good state of repair across our portfolio," Chisholm said.
Achieving that elusive "good" condition is easier — and cheaper — said than done, though. Only six per cent of LMCH's units fall into that category, and the report landing in a council committee meeting Tuesday says it would cost $110.03 million over 10 years to bring that number up to 100 per cent.
According to Chisholm, a portion of the maintenance needs would require significant work, like replacing 50 year old plumbing, and completely rewiring aging electrical infrastructure.
He said while LMCH is on track to make progress in making repairs at its current level of funding, more money is needed to reach the goal in a reasonable timeframe, and suggested that could some from other levels of government.
Ward 6 Councillor Sam Trosow is in agreement.
"They need more money, and ultimately, I think the province is going to have to step in here because in fairness, there's only so much the municipality can do," Trosow said. "We can't break the municipal budget over there."
Despite the agreement, Trosow said he doesn't believe LMCH has handled funds they've received to date well, and that will play a role in his vote on the proposed course of action.
"I'm not seeing any improvement. I am constantly getting complaints from tenants that live in their buildings," he said.
Trosow and other councillors will consider the report during Tuesday's meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee.
That report currently says council should approve an updated plan that recommends the $110 million path to bringing the status of LMCH's properties back to good.