ABOVE: Toronto priority neighbourhoods given a second look. Mark McAllister reports.
TORONTO – Sandra Dattilo, uses her local community hub to help her write a legal document; another service she uses to give her kids a safe space to play after school.
She lives in Rexdale and used the Rexdale Community Hub to learn how to write an end-of-tenancy notice for her landlord. It’s one of the many services the community hub offers.
The service was created following the designation of Rexdale as a ‘priority neighbourhood’ in 2005, one of 13 such communities to receive much needed funding for social projects.
One of those projects was the Rexdale Community Hub near Kipling Avenue and Finch Avenue West. The project is just what its name suggests – a literal hub of social services for the community.
“The community hub is a one-stop shop for a number of community based organizations and a city of Toronto department providing social services, health services, legal services, children services and senior services,” Safia Ahmed, Chair of the Rexdale Community Hub said. “
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It really eliminates the need for community members in this community to be travelling across agencies. So it allows them to actually come here and get their business taken care of.”
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Now, city staff is beginning to revaluate which neighbourhoods in Toronto qualify as ‘priority neighbourhoods.’
The process however is lengthy and complicated; it won’t be debated by city council until mid-2014. Staff, along with partners at the United Way, Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) and the Centre for Research on Inner city Health are collecting and analyzing huge sets of data. That information is then used to determine which communities need more help.
“So we worked with them to help us identify what were the best indicators to tell us what’s really happening in Toronto neighbourhoods,” Chris Brillinger, Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration with the city of Toronto said Monday. “Once we’ve identified the indicators, where do we set the benchmark to create criteria to decide this neighbourhood would be recommended for neighbourhood improvement status, this neighbourhood wouldn’t.”
In 2005, Brillinger said staff had $13 million in capital funding to begin to address the problems of the city’s priority neighbourhoods and as a result created approximately 1200 programs or projects. The Rexdale Community Hub, he said, is proof the programs can be effective.
“The Rexdale Hub is a good example, we know it has made a difference in the neighbourhood, has made a difference for the people living in those neighbourhoods.”
But what happens if Rexdale is no longer a priority neighbourhoods after the process is completed? Brillinger said, the programs won’t immediately lose funding.
“I know that people are concerned about a removal of resource from their neighbourhood if they no longer have a designation,” he said. “The city is not about to act in a way that we would lose ground. So where we’ve seen improvement and it’s no longer a neighbourhood improvement area, we would transition out in a way that would leave the neighbourhood stable.”
And people in the community, like Dattilo, believe some of the programs created are helpful for her and her family.
“So this provides me with not only assistance and looking after someone, it’s very important for me to do, so I can find suitable housing for the children and myself. But the kids are also there and learning and having fun and interacting with other kids from the community.”
– With files from Mark McAllister
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