Almost 70% of London's public housing is in disrepair, and the price tag to fix it is $110M
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Update: London councillors voted 12-to-1 in favour of accepting the plan that recommends $110 million in spending to bring the average LMCH property status to "good". Now that it's made it through the committee stage, the report will go to council for final approval on June 3.
London's stock of affordable public housing is largely in disrepair, according to a report penned by city bureaucrats that calls on councillors to spend millions to solve the problem.
The staff assessment found that 63 per cent of the housing in London and Middlesex Community Housing's (LMCH) inventory is in "poor" condition, and five per cent is in "very poor" condition.
The report coming to a committee meeting Tuesday says it will cost $110 million over 10 years for the average across all public housing to be brought up to a "good" 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 who told CBC news they have become accustomed to waiting more than 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 says it 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 repair 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 extent of the repair issues at LMCH, and how they're triaged, is something LMCH is not proud of, but it's something that's currently necessary, said Paul Chisholm, the organization's CEO.
"It's not acceptable," Chisholm said. "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.
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 LMCH is on track to repair what it can with its current level of funding, but more money is needed to do it in a more reasonable timeframe. He suggests more money could come from other levels of government.
Ward 6 Councillor Sam Trosow agrees.
"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."
Trosow said he doesn't believe LMCH has budgeted well with the money it has, 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.
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