[URBAN NOTE] Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn on the ousting of Sewell

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn looks at how urban activist John Sewell got ousted from his position as head of Toronto's public housing, and the scandal it caused.

The headline was tucked in the bottom right corner of the 1988 Labour Day weekend edition of the Saturday Star: “Get rid of Sewell Hosek asks Premier.” Queen’s Park columnist Rosemary Speirs reported that following a blow-up in Ontario Housing Minister Chaviva Hosek’s office, the rookie politician recommended to Premier David Peterson that fiery former Toronto mayor John Sewell’s contract as chairman of the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority (MTHA) not be renewed when it expired that November. “John Sewell may be a chairman who bruises bureaucrats and angers housing ministers in his drive for more, better-run public housing,” Speirs observed. “But isn’t dynamic leadership during a time of housing crisis worth the price?”

Hosek didn’t realize the forces she was about to unleash. What followed was one of the noisiest of the scandals during the two decade existence of the MTHA before it helped form the Toronto Community Housing Corporation in 2002. Beyond outrage from the media, opposition, and tenants, the messy end of Sewell’s tenure included figures who tied into the scandal which helped sink Peterson and the Liberals at the polls in 1990.


Sewell had been involved in housing issues from the time he was first elected to City Council in 1969. During his mayoralty (1978-80), he had to deal with concerns raised about Cityhome, the city-owned non-profit housing corporation which specialized in mixed-income projects, like the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. Throughout 1979 and 1980, Cityhome was turned into a political issue by aldermen Art Eggleton and June Rowlands, who felt its homes should only be offered to low-income tenants—Rowlands was especially incensed that families with incomes up to $44,000/year (adjusted for inflation, approximately $135,000) were allowed to live in subsidized spaces at a time when there was a crunch for low-income housing. Representatives of the real estate industry consistently criticized the agency for receiving advantages unavailable to private developers. Cityhome proponents like Sewell pointed out the subsidies helped achieve the desire income mix. Everyone tossed around every statistic they could find supporting their argument.

During the 1980 municipal election campaign, mayoral candidate Eggleton seized on the optics of privileged people getting into Cityhome, even though he had sat on its board for years. “He rode with the herd,” Sewell reflected recently in his book How We Changed Toronto, “supporting Cityhome when it looked good and now attacking it when it looked bad. He saw the opportunity of making political mileage with his attack.” Housing commissioner Barry Rose was fired, partly serving as the scapegoat for bad management which preceded his term. Eggleton and Rowlands made a series of proposals, including adding citizen representatives to the Cityhome board, instituting stronger approval checks, limiting spaces solely to low-income tenants, and placing a moratorium on further development. Few of what were viewed as strictly political moves were enacted after Eggleton won the mayoralty and Rowlands was returned to council. Sewell feared that, following his defeat, Cityhome would be scrapped, but the agency went on, its housing across the city eventually winding up under the watch of TCHC.

Amid the political tussles over Cityhome, the province formed a new agency to watch over the Ontario Housing Corporation’s (OHC) Metro Toronto properties. Launched in August 1980, the new MTHA was one of a series of agencies created to oversee OHC sites in individual cities. The initial hope was to change the gloomy image of public housing. Sewell occasionally noted MTHA issues during his mid-1980s stint as a municipal columnist for the Globe and Mail.