Letter (one of many) to Community Council for their Laneway Housing meeting, June 2017

My name is Jutta Mason and I’m here to ask the community council to expedite the excellent recommendations of the Lanescape report.

I live near Dufferin Grove Park. When my husband and I moved there in 1984 with our three young children it was a lively neighbourhood with quite a few small rental apartments and rooms for students. Ours had been a student rooming house. There was a pleasing mix of ages and backgrounds on the block, with the predominant languages being Portuguese and Ukrainian, then English, plus a bit of Arabic, Croatian and Mandarin. To afford the mortgage on our $117,000 house, we had a cousin renting our then-still-illegal basement apartment and a friend renting our third floor.

Now the character of this neighbourhood, and many others in the central city, has changed. Ours has become a garden district, with many (now single-family) houses expensively renovated. Many front and back yards are filled with lovely plants and native bushes and trees, instead of the former scrubby grass where kids played tag or catch. The mortgages on these houses can best be covered if there are two adults on the sunshine list. When parents bring their kids to the Dufferin Grove Park adventure playground, they keep doing business on their phones while the kids play. Everybody’s wired.

I’m homesick for the variety there used to be in the neighbourhood. So when I heard about the laneway suites meetings that Councillors Bailao and MacMahon set up, my heart leaped. Here is an opening! Finally a way to bring renters back into the neighbourhood, people who want to live here but now can’t afford to. It won’t be the same as before, but at least there will be a bit more of a mix.

But there’s more to be hopeful about. I want to tell you a quick story about my friend Hedy, who used to rent our third floor. She’s over 70 now and has cancer. She’s in a single room in an acute care hospital. Even though she’s getting weaker, she may live quite a while longer – nobody knows for sure. I’m told that many of us when we get old will sooner or later have cancer. So I asked Hedy for advice: what kind of a place would you rather be in, as an alternative to this acute-care hospital room? She said she longs for three things: (1) a cat, to keep her company and make some fun; (2) a garden to sit in, or look out on, and (3) – at the moment I was talking to her – a really good piece of pizza with interesting toppings like feta cheese on it.

If Hedy could rent a little laneway suite at the back of a garden in our neighbourhood, she could have all those simple things. Instead of being in a hospital, she could employ a visiting caregiver, together with a few other laneway residents. She could have a cat, which you can’t do in a hospital. She could have the pleasure of a garden right out her window. Friends could visit her and we could eat some really good pizza together, from one of the many places nearby.

Time is too short for Hedy to have this situation. But her wish list is a good reminder of the rest of my generation’s big bubble. Our old age phase has begun. Some of us will hang around a long time, wanting the kinds of simple things that Hedy wants. With this city’s laneways, we have an astonishing resource to make it possible. Please remove the blocks quickly, and don’t be too worried about mistakes. We can collectively learn from mistakes, and as we make this happen, it will be interesting and engaging.