Rebuild plan for Toronto public housing complex moves forward, 3 years after ceiling collapse

A Toronto metropolis assembly committee has approved a connection to redevelop a westbound extremity nationalist lodging analyzable that was condemned 3 years agone due to the fact that of a ceiling collapse.

The readying and lodging committee decided astatine its Thursday gathering that it volition urge that metropolis assembly question national backing for the "initial improvement proposal" to rebuild Swansea Mews, a Toronto Community Housing Corporation spot located astatine the intersection of the Queensway and Windermere Avenue.

Tenants were forced to permission Swansea Mews successful May 2022 aft a ceiling collapsed, injuring a woman. The analyzable was marked for demolition aft the collapse, erstwhile engineers recovered each of the buildings unsafe for habitation, and it has since been vacant.

The redevelopment connection calls for not lone the replacement of the 154 rent-geared-to-income units that made up the archetypal complex, but besides the gathering of 550 to 700 caller units, according to a metropolis unit study from past month. 

This redevelopment volition see "three residential improvement blocks, a ample unfastened space, a caller roadworthy web and an wide plan that volition beforehand assemblage information and dependable readying principles," the study reads. 

Coun. Gord Perks, seat of the readying and lodging committee, said the support is "a elephantine measurement forward." 

"This is going from talking astir however 1 time we'll physique thing determination to really having a connection … We're disconnected to the races now," helium said. 

Funding talks to hap aft national election 

If metropolis assembly approves the proposal, which Perks said helium is assured volition happen, the metropolis volition request to unafraid national backing archetypal earlier applying for a builder's licence to let the tract to beryllium demolished. 

But the timeline connected securing national backing is unclear, helium said, arsenic the metropolis volition request to hold until aft the national predetermination to prosecute successful backing conversations. 

"Nobody tin conjecture what the lodging programme volition look similar aft the election," Perks said. 

The onshore the spot is connected volition besides person to beryllium rezoned to physique the 3 residential improvement blocks. Rezoning volition necessitate nationalist consultation with those surviving successful the surrounding neighbourhood. 

Perks said the metropolis volition enactment to unafraid national backing and alteration zoning permissions successful parallel. The metropolis has besides begun conversations with erstwhile tenants of Swansea Mews to get their input successful the plan of the caller community. 

Everybody who lived successful the spot has a close to instrumentality astatine akin rents and akin portion sizes to what they had earlier the metropolis condemned the building, Perks said. But the nonstop premix of rent-geared-to-income units versus those astatine marketplace rates depends connected national funding. 

Once shovels are successful the ground, helium said it whitethorn instrumentality astir 2 to 3 years earlier tenants determination in. 

The connection volition beryllium considered by metropolis assembly connected April 23.