Oh, but you are in a very fundamentally different position. The mandate of TCHC is “to provide affordable housing, connect tenants to services and opportunities and work together to build healthy communities”. The mandate of private sector is to maximize profits...period. Who's best interests do you think are going to be served by leaving social services for the most vulnerable and marginalized people up to the private sector?
I was only questioning your math. In your first post on this you said that "sorry, but there simply aren't enough private owned affordable housing units to put these nearly 1/4 million extra people"....I was suggesting that the majority of those people (by your own numbers) are already housed so you don't need to find units to put them in.
Yes the private sector has a profit motive. What the Province has found through its current affordable housing strategy is that they have been able to meet those needs and working with the feds/cmhc/municipalities has been able to produce over 10k new affordable housing units in the province. It is not a perfect program and not all of those units were developed by for profit companies but it shows there is a formula where affordable housing can be produced and maitained through collaboration.
First off, it would require more than 15% off it's value to entice private developers to purchase it. Secondly, selling off assets is not a sustainable way to manage operating budgets. The city will lose the borrowing advantage of those assets, the huge mortgage subsidies from the province and feds (as well as other upper level government funds for social housing), not to mention the $300 million in revenues these assets generate.
All for what? So the city can be on the hook for escalating rent vouchers based on higher market rents that will cost us more in the long run? No direct control over social housing units? So we can make the responsibility of social housing somebody else's problem? And let's face it, most people in favour of "privatizing" public responsibilities don't care about those who need it...they just want it out of their hair and not have to deal with it.
I am not close enough to know what the discount would need to be or, even, if the $6 billion is a real number. All I was doing was answering your question "And what private company in their right mind would think they could make a profit by buying TCHC's housing stock without raising rents, and therefore raising the city's rent subsidies?". There are two ways, yes, to make that portfolio of housing profitable (and, therefore, attractive) to the private sector.....one is raise the rents as you suggest...that is likely not politically acceptable or practical (most people living in the units are there through need not desire) but the other way is just reduce the price.
Not sure what you mean by the loss of $300 million in revenues being a bad thing. Are those revenues "net", ie is the city making $300 million? If they are then this portfolio is already profitable and you should either be advocating a reduction in the rents (because apparantly profit in housing is bad) or we would not be discussing this issue because the city would be rolling in cash and instead of criticizing the spending at TCHC we should be lauding them for doing a great job and giving the employees some of that as bonuses before they leave to go work for a private sector company.
Likely I think those are gross revenues and are exceeded by the expenses in operating the portfolio. In which case, the gap between the $300 million and the expenses (ie the loss) could be the starting point of the amount of subsidy a private sector buyer should/would seek for purchasing the units.
Look, lets be clear, I don't know enough about this portfolio and its economics to know whether a sale is or is not a good idea. What I do know, from experience, is that there are different models for delivering affordable housing and the government is not the only way to do it (it may be a good way, it may be the easiest way for the public to get its head around and, in the end, it may actually be an efficient way). There are alternatives that balance the fiscal needs of the city and the housing needs of the community. To not, at least, look at the options is (IMO) far to dogmatic a position to take.....particulalry in a city like Toronto at this time when we have tenants upset about the amount of housing and quality of housing available while, at the same time, the fiscal conservatives are not happy with the performance of the TCHC......now would seem the perfect time to, at least, look at the alternative models!
