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Auditor's Stable Housing Report (excerpts and notes)

p.6: Applicants can refuse an offer up to three times before they are removed from the centralized waiting list. Reducing the number of times an applicant can refuse an offer for housing can help:•accelerate the pace at which those in need of assistance get access to housing; •ensure providers are able to efficiently fill vacancies; and•reduce wasted subsidy funding due to vacant social housing

 

p.10: ...the City’s Housing Allowance Subsidy Program provides some financial assistance to recipients to use towards rent in the private market. At the time of our audit, the program focused on households experiencing chronic homelessness. Generally, this housing subsidy program is administered separately from the centralized waiting list for RGI, and information is not shared between programs.

list of subsidized housing addresses (mostly TCHC)

City of Toronto Housing Allowance info page

 

p.11: There are 1,375 over-housed RGI tenants living in TCHC buildings. By finding a way to re-house tenants in an appropriately sized unit, about 1,550 more people will obtain housing

 

p.12: By making better use of housing units, more people can access RGI assistance. Furthermore, re-thinking how units being held for revitalization can be best used, like those in Regent Park and Lawrence Heights, also opens up opportunities to provide relief to the emergency shelter system.

Strengthening internal controls over eligibility reviews, performing reviews of income and assets when people apply for RGI assistance, and correctly determining the amount of RGI assistance. Of particular note is that Access to Housing does not verify household income or whether the applicant owns any significant assets. Applicants self-declare their income when they apply to be added to the centralized waiting list.

In June 2014, the Auditor General made recommendations for service integration – the use of 'one door' for applicants – among the Shelter, Support and Housing Administration, Children's Services and Employment and Social Services divisions. The recommendation was for the Divisions to explore opportunities to:
a.share information for the purpose of verifying eligibility for each program; and
b.collaborate on investigations regarding mutual clients who may be involved in irregular activitiesSimplifying the application process for the various social assistance programs will enhance the customer service experience, especially amongst people living in unstable housing situations, and save time and money.\\ Human Services Integration has not yet been achieved. Five years have passed and RGI assistance has not been integrated with any of the other income-based programs. Management is working toward this milestone and estimated that service integration will result in $2.391 million in net annual efficiencies starting in 2022.

 

p.15: (Recommendations) 1.Immediately fill vacant social housing units with people needing subsidized housing;
Start with filling vacant bachelor units for seniors....Focusing on those who are a priority, such as people experiencing homelessness, may relieve pressure on the emergency shelter system
Where possible, communicate by email, text or phone

 

P.16: ...ensure people experiencing homelessness looking for stable housing have the necessary supports in place to have successful tenancies...

 

P.20: The City provided $364.3 million in social housing subsidies to help fund the rent for over 64,000 households in 2018. Table 4 summarizes the number of RGI units in buildings operated by TCHC and the other 260 providers.

Table 4: Social Housing Units by Provider, in 2018
TCHC 48,380 (75 % of Total RGI Units)
Other 14,481 (23 % of Total RGI Units)
Private Market Rent Supplements 1,530 (2 % of Total RGI Units)
Total 64,391

 

P.21: In some instances, applicants need both a housing unit and financial assistance. In other situations, they may have housing but the rent is too high and they need RGI assistance. The number of people needing RGI assistance is greater than the number of subsidized housing units available.

 

P.31: To enable households to make informed selections about buildings they are willing to move into, the City should ensure better information is made available to applicants. This information should be available by building, by project/community, and by housing provider, and should include:
historical wait times for units
building information such as size, amenities, rating for state of good repair or other attributes
neighbourhood information about local schools, child care and other community services
any other factors that applicants typically consider relevant in choosing where to live.

 

P.34: The City continues to subsidize the cost of the vacant social housing unit regardless of how long the unit is left vacant. Our review of the vacancies recorded in 2017 and 2018 found the following average times to fill the vacant units:
85 days for TCHC
50 days for non-profit and co-ops
165 days for rent supplement units in the private market. Housing providers continue to be paid even when units are empty.
The longer the cycle takes, the greater the amount of subsidy funding is wasted which could have been put towards helping more households in need. There is room to improve these results and reduce the vacancy time.
For RGI housing provided through a private landlord, the length of time the City will continue to subsidize vacant units is specified in the operating agreements.

A puzzle: the city's subsidized housing website says: "A housing allowance is a non-repayable subsidy to help eligible households pay the rent. The allowance is paid directly to the individual, so it can be used in the private market, and it’s portable, so it moves where they move." But the auditor's report seems to suggest that the subsidy is paid to landlords...?

 

P.36: The City's main way of reaching out to applicants to confirm their interest in remaining on the waiting list continues to be via mail. We estimate that Access to Housing mails out approximately 78,000 letters per year at a cost of about $70,500 plus the labour costs / time associated with this work20. Management estimates 10 per cent of mail is returned unopened. Even if mail is returned, letters will continue to be mailed until a caseworker goes into the system and updates the file to flag that letters should no longer be mailed. There are many returned letters where files have not yet been updated to stop mailings. The amount spent annually to mail letters to applicants is equivalent to providing RGI assistance to nine individuals or families for an entire year based on an average annual RGI subsidy of $7,200.

 

P.37: Overall waiting time for RGI housing can range from two to 14 years21. Priority applications get RGI housing assistance much faster than general applications. On average, most households obtain RGI housing within 2 years of being deemed a priority.

 

P. 40: Ensuring Applicants that are a Priority are Given Priority People experiencing homelessness are waiting for subsidized housing. We are concerned that people who should be getting priority are not. For example, we noted that there are 3,250 households waiting for RGI assistance who list an emergency shelter as their current address. Two-thirds of these applicants will not receive any priority for RGI housing because they have not been identified as experiencing homelessness in the waiting list information system. Effectively administering the waiting list not only helps to ensure the City is properly prioritizing applicants for the limited number of RGI units that become available, but it may also ease pressure on the emergency shelter system.

 

P. 46: Portable housing benefits enable the City to provide housing assistance to people regardless of where they live, even if dedicated social housing units are unavailable. In other words, the housing subsidy is used toward paying rent in a market-rate rental unit. This means the City can help more people in need of housing assistance in a timelier manner and reduce the need to wait for a social housing unit to become vacant. This is consistent with the Mayor’s 2016 Task Force on Toronto Community Housing recommendation that the Provincial Government be requested to prioritize legislative changes to permit RGI subsidies tied to the landlord to be converted into portable housing benefits.

This also means that the City may be able to increase the number of households it provides RGI assistance to, so that it can meet theminimum prescribed service levels required by the Province as set out in the Housing Services Act, 2011. The Act requires the City to provide 73,346 households with RGI assistance. The City reported that there were 64,391 units occupied by households receiving RGI assistance to the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in the 2018 Service Manager Annual Information Return.

 

P. 53: …the subsidy funding impact can range from $222 to $684 per month depending on the size of the housing units.

P.58: Until such time as the building is completely vacated and ready for demolition, more and more units within the building will become vacant and will not be rented out to any new tenants. In the past, units have been left vacant for anywhere from several months to five or more years before they are demolished. Units require a thorough cleaning before use. According to data provided by TCHC, currently, there are more than 185 such units being held vacant in Regent Park and Lawrence Heights31. On average, these units have been vacant for 13 months. During the audit, we visited 10 per cent of these units. The photographs below show examples of the buildings and units awaiting demolition. In our view, the majority of units are useable32but require a thorough cleaning. Some units would benefit from minor repairs such as painting. A small proportion of the units would need significant work.

 

P.60: The relief these units can provide to the emergency shelter system may be significant. For example, the City spent approximately $47 million in 2018 on hotels to temporarily house families in about 800 hotel rooms. There may have been an opportunity for savings if the City had been able to leverage these TCHC units as a short-term strategy.

 

P.64: In 2016, the Fraud & Waste Hotline received a complaint about a housing provider who by-passed the centralized waiting list and housed family and friends with RGI assistance. The fraud occurredfor a few years. The allegations were investigated and substantiated by SSHA. Management has not yet completed a comprehensive review to strengthen its internal controls in order to detect and prevent this type of fraud.In response to the substantiatedFraud & Waste Hotline complaint, SSHA reported that the Division was going to use centralized waiting list activity data on a monthly or quarterly basis to identify housing providers who do not use the centralized waiting list properly to fill RGI vacancies. Improved monitoring procedures were projected to be in place by the second quarter of 2018. We found that proposed changes to improve monitoring were not made in 2018 and the monitoring of housing providers is not being completed as required.

 

P. 68: We observed a significant number of instances where it was obvious that the waiting list data was incorrect. For example, there were 50 waiting households with primary members of the household aged 100 or older including one that is 135 years old and 35 others with birthdates of 1900/01/01 or 1901/01/01. Incorrect data negatively impacts an applicant's chances of obtaining housing. For example, there are 241 households with monthly income of more than $10,000 including three households with monthly income over $1 million and 13 other households with monthly income over $600,000. The system will prevent these households from appearing on lists the housing providers use to make offers when social housing units become available.

 

P. 69: Despite the poor quality data in the waiting list information system, this data is used for management reports, including budget reports on the number of people waiting for housing, as well as on the City's website.

There are fairly simple measures that management could take to identify data integrity issues, including the use of spreadsheet analysis, as we did in this audit. Additionally, whenever Access to Housing or housing providers identify inaccurate, incomplete, or out-of-date information, it should be corrected right away.

 

P.70: The My Choice Rental Pilot was launched in February 2014; however, to date the system has not been implemented. The proposed system for selecting households from the waiting list will make information about vacant housing units available to relevant households. Those who express interest in the unit will be contacted in order of their ranking on the list.
The pilot project observed a:
1.Decreased number of phone calls needed to fill a vacant unit from 9 to 2\\ 2.Increased acceptance rate of offered units from 24 to 76 per cent\\ 3.Decreased length of time to fill a vacant housing unit from 45 to 25 days.

In July 2014, Council directed the Division to take steps to implement a choice-based system across the City's entire social housing portfolio. The new system is expected to provide added functionality to support the management of the waiting list. It will also enable eligible social housing applicants to take a virtual tour of available social housing units online and choose a unit that meets their needs. Access to Housing has been working with the corporate Information & Technology Division, since 2015, to acquire a new system.

Five years later, the system is still not available. At the time of our audit no vendor has been selected and a new system is not yet in place. The Division has an approved capital budget of $6.9 million to advance this project. Approximately $1.1 million has been spent and the majority relates to salaries.

 

P.75: It is necessary to break out of the silo mentality, think outside the box, and break down barriers, and in doing so achieve outcomes of helping more individuals and families to achieve stable housing.

Stopped p.76

 

 

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Content last modified on September 25, 2019, at 02:57 PM EST