Interesting column by Margaret Wente

The Globe and Mail columnist visits the Toronto public housing complex where two people were shot during a barbecue and tells us what she sees.  Here's an excerpt (H/t : FiveFeetofFury)

Like every other social housing complex, Danzig has its share of three-generation families. Today the average length of tenancy at Toronto Community Housing is 10 years. But at places like Danzig, with larger units, it’s longer. Many of the teenagers have always lived in public housing. And it’s hard to see how their mothers ever will get out of here.

Mr. Thompson is a city councillor who grew up in Scarborough, partly in public housing. Also, he’s black. He argues that we need to crack down on misconduct. Social housing, he says, has become a haven for bad actors and criminal enterprise. We tolerate activity that no private landlord would put up with. “You have people who start their little cottage industry – drug activities, or a chop shop. And they know they’ll never be evicted.”

These are the people who don’t participate in job programs, because they’re not interested in $15-an-hour jobs. Often they don’t live in social housing themselves, but use it as a base for their activities. Social housing also provides them with a prime recruiting ground. They make friends with single mothers, and recruit their sons.

In Toronto, nobody gets kicked out of social housing for bad behaviour – not even for criminal activity, or owning a gun. With 164,000 tenants, Toronto Community Housing is the second-largest housing provider in North America. Last year it evicted a grand total of five people for bad behaviour, although it does have the tools to issue evictions in such cases.

“These people are pretty smart,” he says. “They understand the system is broken, and nobody is prepared to fix it.”

Something else is broken too. Social housing, conceived as a temporary backstop until people got back on their feet, has turned into a destination.

“Some of the kids I remember from public housing went on to become vice-presidents of insurance companies, teachers, politicians,” he says. “They didn’t have a feeling of being deprived, that this was their destiny, that this was where they were going to end up.”