New Stats Can study: Youth crime patterns in Toronto neighbourhoods

I once showed a map of Toronto’s 2005 summer of shootings to a sociologist at the University of Hawaii and, without ever having visited our city, she was able to point out the main commercial districts, transit lines and low-income areas. These are the areas where urban crime cluster, she explained.

Perhaps easily apparent, the patterns are always more interesting at a more granular level of detail.  So a new Statistics Canada report from the Crime and Justice Research Paper Series. has again given Torontonians another glimpse into criminal activity in our city. This time, author Mathieu Charron has focused on youth crime in Toronto. (His earlier 2009 paper on Toronto looked at broader patterns of crime.)

About 175,000 youth, aged 12 — 17, lived in the City of Toronto in 2006, the year which Charron used for his analysis. Using census tracts as a proxy for neighbourhoods, Charron looks at the geographic distribution of youth crime, and the characteristics of the places associated with it. He maps all police-reported incidents which involve a youth.

As anticipated, his maps show concentrations of youth crime along transit lines, in commercial areas, and then less frequently, around schools. But the study also finds some other interesting and confirming patterns:

• About 1/3 of reported youth crime occurs in outdoors public spaces, and another third in commercial establishments. School properties accounted for the location of 12% of other reported incidents (2/3 occurring during supervised school activities). Public areas and local residences surrounding schools do not necessarily experience more youth crime, although local businesses do.
• Neighbourhoods with lower mobility (i.e. residents more likely to have lived there for five years or more) experience less crime. Charron suggests more stable social networks may be part of the explanation for this.  And, as shown in other studies, neighbourhoods with higher levels of immigration are also less likely to experience some forms of youth crime. Family cohesion is usually seen as a contributing factor.
• Neighbourhoods with more access to resources also are less likely to see youth accused of crime.
• Central Toronto neighbourhoods (i.e. easily accessible) are more likely to experience youth crime in public areas.
• Youth are more likely to be accused of a crime when they live in neighbourhoods with high adult crime rates, or higher residential mobility (people move homes more frequently) or where residents are economically vulnerable (low-income areas). Here, Charron cites other studies which attribute low levels of social control and/or exposure to violence as important contributing factors.
• The characteristics of a youth’s home neighbourhood are more likely to predict whether youth become involved with the criminal justice system than the locations of where crimes take place. (Does that mean there are bad neighbourhoods? No, just vulnerable ones, with fewer resources.) This may be related to another of the study’s findings, that youth are more likely commit crimes outside their own residential neighbourhoods.

The most frequent sites of youth crime in 2006 were in commercial establishments, largely because of high traffic and opportunity. Property crime, especially shoplifting, accounted for 3 ⁄ 4 of the reported incidents. The maps Charron includes appear to confirm concentrations around shopping malls. The biggest apparent hotspot was Scarborough Town Centre with more than 250 incidents per square kilometre. Other crime hotspots (east to west) appear to be Yorkdale Shopping Mall, Dufferin Mall. Eaton Centre, Laird/Eglinton or Thorncliffe area, Cedarbrae Mall and Malvern Town Centre. These all showed rates between fifty to two hundred and fifty reported incidents. Outside of these large commercial centres, Charron found neighbourhood establishments, such as convenience stores and restaurants, were also vulnerable. Charron found a strong overlap between commercial areas which reported youth crime and adult crime, although youth were more likely to be involved in outlying neighbourhoods in the city.

In his next area of focus, outdoor public spaces, Charron found the prevalence of youth crime was much smaller, by a dimension of 25 to one (The upper range of outdoor events was only 10 incidences per square kilometre). As our Honolulu sociologist predicted, reported incidents were concentrated along transit and subway lines, in lower-income areas and near commercial areas. Charron also found some support for the “bored teenager syndrome,” that the number of reported crimes were higher in neighbourhoods with a higher number of youth, including central areas of the city where youth tend to gather and where household incomes are higher. Subway and other natural gathering points also attracted higher crime levels. The highest areas, reporting more than ten incidents per square kilometre, were around the University of Toronto, the Yonge Street downtown south of Yonge, Yonge and Finch, around Donlands and Danforth and the surrounding area (where five high schools are concentrated). Smaller problem pockets were found at Jane, south of Finch, the Mount Dennis area, Mount Pleasant and Eglinton (another high school), Pape Village, Greenwood Park, Kennedy subway station and its environs, and the Kingston Road and Morningside area.

The final location Charron examined are crimes which were reported to have happened in private residences. Largely concentrated in neighbourhoods with average employment incomes below $50,000 ⁄ year, the geographic pattern mimicked that of outdoor crime, especially outside the central part of the city. Charron found that crimes which occurred in houses were more likely to be property crimes, such as breaking and entering, theft and mischief. Crimes which occurred in apartments and other dwelling units were more likely to be violent offences. Residential crime was less likely to occur where there was a higher proportion of recent Canadian immigrants, where there are fewer youth or lower adult crime, or where local residents have access to more resources.

Charron concludes though by saying that neighbourhood characteristics, such as economic vulnerability, have less of an effect on youth crime than they do on adult crime — perhaps speaking to the early resiliency of youth.

More up-to-date data on crime in the city can be found through the Toronto Police Services Crime Statistics site and the City of Toronto’s Wellbeing Indices.

Power and privilege in Saskatoon and Toronto: Recognition of racism as foundational element of social determinants of health

Speaking recently at an event hosted by the Wellesley Institute, Dr. Cory Neudorf  leans forward in his seat when asked a question related to the social determinants of health (SDOH) of people of colour and Aboriginal peoples. It’s not what you expect from a public servant, and his answer shows the commitment he has to making real changes to the health of all city residents and the depth needed to accomplish that.

As Chief Medical Health Officer for  Saskatoon Health Region, Neudorf has steered the prairie city to a broad public buy-in for attacking poverty. He has moved the discussion of public health from personal behaviours towards a recognition of the systemic and policy barriers which can keep groups of  the region’s residents in poverty.

Early analysis showed the three drivers for poor health outcomes in Saskatoon, when Aboriginal Status is controlled for, are income inequality, education, and age. So how, then, I ask, does race play into a public health agenda?

Neudorf response is nuanced. Admittedly, these discussions are controversial, he said, because if other factors account for poor health outcomes, then some will argue there is no need to focus on Aboriginal status or Race (or other social demographics) as a factor for consideration.

In contrast Neudorf argues these social demographics are foundational elements that run across all the other determinants of health, so that our conversations about policy and program interventions have to be re-framed to build on them. Far more than simply naming them, Neudorf says, we have to talk about how racism is systemic and institutionalized, and why, simply, there are different prospects for people, not because of their race, but because of racism.

Neudorf explains the discussion has only started as te Saskatoon community has done some qualitative work to explore how racism impacts social determinants of health. They hope to determine when targeted responses are appropriate compared to broader population-based responses (or when both are in order).

Neudorf also explained the equity audits the regions health systems were undergoing. An important equity test for the system is to look not at the health pathways for a “typical” patient, but instead at the flow-through of all patients.

In sum, he says, these conversations are about inclusion.

Toronto’s Chief Medical Officer David McKeown, also in attendance, agreed with Neudorf and elaborated, focusing on the position of Toronto immigrants. Racism, McKeown explained, has to be named as an important confounder of health patterns. During earlier comments, McKeown also pointed to need to examine the various dimensions of inequity that make specifically tailored responses important.

These comments, by their admission, were not new points — activists and some academics have been making these points for years (eg. Colour of Poverty/Colour of Change campaign and their call for disaggregated data). What has shifted, though, is that those, closer to power, are now saying the same things too. It’s an optimistic turn.

(For more information about the session, see another post I wrote on the Wellesley Institute website. Neudorf’s presentation is also available there in video format. For more on what others have said on the topic, see below in More.)

Growing class divide means some children may be denied a generational legacy

Once, as part of a group exercise to identify personal values, I had to answer the question, “For what would you be willing to die?”

“I would rush into the street to save a child!” I said. My colleague nodded his agreement and we talked a little more about how becoming a parent changes your perspective on what should be valued. So, when it came time to report back to the larger group, I described our shared generational commitment to protect those younger.

“Oh!” he interjected, “I didn’t mean I’d die for any child; I was talking about my children.”

My partner’s narrow protection of his genetic progeny shocked me — and reminded me never to ask him to babysit. However, many of us do recognize a wider common good, a place where all children and youth are protected and secured by the village that is us.

Youth are cited as one of the top concerns for residents across our city’s neighbourhoods. United Way Toronto’s environmental scan, Torontonians Speak Out, identified this in 2002, so that it became one of the community funder’s top three priorities (neighbourhoods and newcomers being the other two).

More recently, Trish Hennessy, from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), has been doing focus groups with Environics, to understand Torontonians’ voting records and public policy priorities. Among other interesting findings, she has found some deep resonance around issues of legacy. This is among voters who have voted in the current municipal administration, they too are talking about the next generation. As this boomer bulge ages, it is considering what it wants to leave behind and to whom.

The question is what shape that legacy will be, and for whom will we leave it?

Recent comments from Bowling Alone author and professor Robert Putnam cast a dreary light on the future of North America’s children. In the interview cited in Harvard’s Social Capital Blog, Putnam argued that, while Americans are seeing more

integration along religious and racial lines, there is an opposite trend when it comes to class, mainly, he believes, because of the widening gap in incomes. Americans are less likely today to marry outside their class. Children from lower classes are less likely to spend time with their peers or take part in community activities and have less confidence, while the trend for middle-class children is the opposite.

In sum, he explains, children have very different access to life opportunities dependent on who their parents are.

This growing income gap is not news to Hennessy’s colleagues at the CCPA; economists Armine Yalnizyan and Hugh Mackenzie have shown that unless we think about growing levels of inequality, many more will be further left behind on an economic level. The lack of economic opportunities has similar echos around access to education, housing, and other social determinants of health.

Mobility between classes may also be on decline in Canada, although the Conference Board of Canada ranks us 5th out of 11 peer countries.. American mobility is even worse, according an editor at Time magazine and others those who monitor such things.

Yet, youth are still hopeful. For instance, Joseph Rowntree study released this fall in the U.K. showed that youth from low-income families in the U.K. do have aspirations for higher education. Parents, too, want high achievement for their children. In the last Toronto District School Board (TDSB) student/parent census (2008), almost 9⁄10 parents said they want their kids to go to university. Among low–income families, that only fell to 8⁄10.

So, are these our children, too? Will we provide them the opportunities and encouragement they want?

I believe we will. We must.

102 Things NOT To Do, If You Hate Taxes (Canadian version)

Adapted by Sandra Guerra and Diane Dyson from Stephen D. Foster Jr.

Posted in: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/05/18/102-things-not-to-do-if-you-hate-taxes/

– May 18, 2011

So, you’re a citizen who hates taxes? Please kindly do the following.

1. Do not use a hospital.
2. Do not use Canada Pension or Old Age Security.
3. Do not become a member of the military.
4. Do not ask the Canadian Forces to help you after a disaster.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt.
6. Do not call the police to stop intruders in your home.
7. Do not summon the fire department to save your burning home.
8. Do not drive on any paved road, highway, and interstate or drive on any bridge.
9. Do not use public restrooms.
10. Do not send your kids to public schools.
11. Do not put your trash out for city garbage collectors.
12. Do not live in areas with clean air.
13. Do not use a rehabilitation centre after your operation.
14. Do not visit National/Provincial Parks or Conservation Areas.
15. Do not visit public museums, zoos, and monuments.
16. Do not eat FDA inspected processed food.
17. Do not eat any Canadian food Inspection Agency or Health Canada inspected meat or produce.
18. Do not bring your kids to public playgrounds.
19. Do not walk or run on sidewalks.
20. Do not use public recreational facilities such as basketball and tennis courts.
21. Do not seek shelter facilities or food in soup kitchens when you are homeless and hungry.
22. Do not apply for educational or job training assistance when you lose your job.
23. Do not use food banks when you can’t feed your children.
24. Do not use the judiciary system for any reason.
25. Do not ask for an attorney when you are arrested and do not ask for one to be assigned to you by the court.
26. Do not apply for any student loans.
27. Do not use cures that were discovered by labs using federal research dollars or provincially funded university research facility.
28. Do not fly on federally regulated airplanes.
29. Do not watch the weather provided by Environment Canada.
30. Do not listen to severe weather warnings from Environment Canada.
31. Do not listen to tsunami, hurricane, or earthquake alert systems.
32. Do not apply for affordable housing.
33. Do not swim in clean waters.
34. Do not allow your child to eat school snacks, lunches or breakfasts.
35. Do not ask to implement the Federal Emergency Response Management System (FERMS) when everything you own gets wiped out by disaster.
36. Do not ask the military to defend your life and home in the event of a foreign invasion (or a snow storm).
37. Do not watch television
38. Do not use your cell phone or home telephone.
39. Do not use the internet.
40. Do not use any Health Canada FDA regulated medication or health products.
41. Do not apply for government grants to start your own business.
42. Do not apply to win a government contract.
43. Do not buy any vehicle that has been inspected by government safety agencies.
44. Do not buy any product that is protected from poisons and toxins by Health Canada’s Consumer Product Safety.
45. Do not save your money in a bank that is CDIC insured.
46. Do not use Veterans benefits or military health care.
47. Do not use Department of National Defence Education Allowance to go to school.
48. Do not apply for unemployment benefits.
49. Do not use any electricity from companies regulated by the Natural Resources Canada.
50. Do not ride trains. The railroad was built with government financial assistance.
51. Do not live in homes that are built to code.
52. Do not run for public office. Politicians are paid with taxpayer dollars.
53. Do not ask for help from the RCMP, CSIS, ETF, the bomb squad or the Provincial Police.
54. Do not apply for any government job whatsoever.
55. Do not use public libraries.
56. Do not use Canada Post.
57. Do not visit the National Archives.
58. Do not use any form of home care.
59. Do not use airports that are secured by the federal government.
60. Do not apply for loans from any bank that is CDIC insured.
61. Do not ask the government for a grant or to help you clean up after a natural disaster.
62. Do not ask Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to provide a subsidy to help you run your farm.
63. Do not take walks in National Forests.
64. Do not ask for taxpayer dollars for your business.
65. Do not ask the federal government to bail your company out during recessions.
66. Do not seek prescription care when you age.
67. Do not use OHIP/medicare.
68. Do not use any form of income supports, worker’s compensation or disability payments.
69. Do not use electricity generated by Niagara Falls.
70. Do not use electricity or any service provided by the any of the Power Plants.
71. Do not ask the government to rebuild levees when they break.
72. Do not let the Coast Guard save you from drowning when your boat capsizes.
73. Do not ask the government to help evacuate you when all hell breaks loose in the country you are in.
74. Do not visit museums or historic landmarks.
75. Do not visit fisheries.
76. Do not expect to see animals that are federally protected because of the Endangered Species List.
77. Do not expect plows to clear roads of snow and ice so your kids can go to school and so you can get to work.
78. Do not camp in provincial or national parks.
79. Do not work anywhere that has a safe workplace because of government regulations.
80. Do not use public transportation/transit.
81. Do not drink water from your tap.
82. Do not whine when someone copies your work and sells it as their own.
83. Do not expect to own your home, car, or boat. Government organizes and keeps all titles.
84. Do not expect convicted felons to remain off the streets.
85. Do not eat in restaurants that are regulated by food quality and safety standards.
86. Do not seek help from the Canadian Embassy if you need assistance in a foreign nation.
87. Do not apply for a passport to travel outside Canada.
88. Do not apply for a patent when you invent something.
89. Do not adopt a child.
90. Do not use elevators that have been inspected by federal or provincial safety regulators.
91. Do not use any resource that was discovered by the Geological Survey of Canada.
92. Do not ask for energy assistance from the government.
93. Do not move your parents into a nursing home.
94. Do not go to a beach that is kept clean by the local or provincial government.
95. Do not use money printed by the Royal Canadian Mint.
96. Do not complain when millions more illegal immigrants cross the border because there are no more border patrol agents.
97. Do not attend a university.
98. Do not see any doctor that is licensed.
99. Do not expect that all drivers are licensed to drive.
100. Do not complain when diseases and viruses, that were once fought around the globe by the Public Health Agency of Canada, reach your house.
101. Do not work for any company that is required to pay its workers a livable wage, provide them sick days, vacation days, and benefits.
102. Do not expect to be able to vote on election days.

The fact is, we pay for the lifestyle we expect. Without taxes, our lifestyles would be totally different and much harder. Canada would be a third world country. The less we pay, the less we get in return. So next time you object to paying taxes or fight to abolish taxes for corporations and the wealthy, keep this quote in mind…

“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Pros & cons of collecting demographic data to improve educational equity for students

On Monday, more than sixty school board staff and community members from Ottawa and the GTA area gathered at York University for a roundtable on the topic of student demographic data and educational equity.

Sponsored by the Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research, the project hopes to corral the various ways boards are using non-academic data about students to better serve their academic needs. It’s a topic that is difficult to summarize within an afternoon’s work, however Peel region’s Paul Favaro set the stage, highlighting many key challenges.

These questions are complex on multiple levels, however, we cannot be frozen into inaction, Favaro said. The meeting organizers, Professor Carl James, others, and Favaro urged the group to move through these challenges to ensure all students are offered equitable opportunities.

When 40% of the variance in student achievement can be explained by factors external the classroom and school, we need to understand the pathways and mechanisms that are at play here, Favaro said. It is a question of grounded in fundamental principles, he said.

If we agree all students deserve the best educational opportunities regardless of their backgrounds and that large inequalities exist both within and outside the classroom walls, what is the benefit of collecting data which tracks students according to socio-economic class, race, sex, or other such grounds?

Favaro detailed the some of the positive and negative aspects of collecting student demographic data.

Benefits include:

• Assessing which groups are vulnerable and are underperforming / under-served
• Programming better targeted
• Able to monitor and assess improvements / accountability
• Encourages the fulfillment of each student’s potential
• Moves closer to providing an educational system that is free of bias
• Increases achievement in society and among vulnerable groups

Drawbacks however were also noted:

• May (re-)produce reduced sense of academic competence, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Members of vulnerable groups may feel stigmatized
• May increase prejudicial attitudes and stereotyping if critical analysis not used
• May lead teachers to implicitly or subconsciously teach students from some groups below their actual potential
• Added pressure on members of high-performing groups
• Contributes to labelling & false homogenizing
• May be used by those in dominant positions to keep vulnerable minorities down
• Potential backlash from parents & community members from high achieving groups [preserving their rank]

Another barrier to building a stronger evidence base identified by the attendees is the unwillingness of school administrators, teachers, parents and the general public to explore these uncomfortable issues, because, as one attendee described it, we risked a loss of our “Canadian innocence,” our self-image of being a fair place.

Former B.C. Deputy Minister Charles Ungerleider gave closing remarks, identifying the need for national participation in the creation of these solutions. He is writing a paper for the Canadian Education Association on the topic to which we can look forward by the end of the year.

A cohesive vision of how to measure the strength of local community services

In a timely piece of research, given the current budget debates at the municipal level, St. Michael’s Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH) released a report titled Community Service System in Toronto neighbourhoods: What should the City pay attention to?

The report concluded “Torontonians want the Community Service System to offer programs that are accessible, available and well funded.”

The CRICH research centre asked Torontonians to respond to the question

“If the City of Toronto wants to know if the Community Service System is working well in a neighbourhood, one thing it should pay attention to is…”

Eight key areas were identified as important to take into consideration when measuring if community services were working well at a local level:

• Accessibility & Availability (9 ideas)
• Supporting Civic & Social Engagement (9 ideas)
• Collaboration & Evaluation (9 ideas)
• Funding (6 ideas)
• Meeting Residents’ Needs (5 ideas)
• Improving Social Outcomes (5 ideas)
• Resident  Involvement (4 ideas)
• Staff and Volunteers (4 ideas)

Sessions were held across the city. Funders and non-profits were also asked to provide input in separate sessions from city residents. Groups for additional languages and youth were also set up.

In follow-up sessions, the researchers asked participants to rank the importance of the identified areas.

Locally available services came out on top (only being beaten out by funding when community organizations responded).

Comparisons of the results across groups are interesting. The researchers did further analysis of the responses and found little difference in the responses between men  and women, between native English speakers and those who speak it as a foreign language, residents and staff at community agencies, people who use community services and those who don’t.

However, depending on one’s connection to community agencies, some interesting differences emerged when identifying what’s important to measuring the health of the community service system. So while residents, community organizations, and funders each identified the same issues as priorities, they placed them in different orders.

City residents identified the most important ideas as Accessibility & Availability, Funding, and Resident Involvement (almost tied to Collaboration and Evaluation); The top three ideas identified by community organizations were Funding, Accessibility & Availability, and Collaboration & Evaluation (almost tied with Resident Involvement; Funders identified Accessibility & Availability, Resident Involvement and Collaboration & Evaluation as their top three areas.

Still the cohesion and strength of the research results affirm the importance Torontonians attach to community services that are available and stable.

Now that the CRICH report has been done, city staff will use it to build a strong neighbourhood-level measurement system.

(Disclaimer: I participated on the advisory committee for this workgroup, doing training in the methodology used.)

 

A critical look at international city rankings

“Well, big deal,” the Montreal Gazette sneered in Montreal and its place in the world, its editorial response to a recent international survey on urban quality-of-life. Montreal was behind Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. As a native Montrealer, I have to concur with the Gazette’s summary:

…rankings tend to favour an ideal, cleanly scrubbed and tidily tended city – which is essentially a suburb.

The editorial consoled readers, throwing in that New York City came 56th on the list.

So how accurate is the measuring stick for the wide range of surveys which rank cities?

This is the question that Toronto’s Intergovernmental Committee on Economic and Labour Force Development (ICE Committee) asked when it commissioned a review of the various urban ranking surveys last year.

As expected, the final report found methodological weaknesses in the comparisons and poor interpretations of the findings by the media and public creates more confusion than clarity when it came to grading the world’s cities. The report author reviewed forty-four rankings and identified seven key lessons:

• Audience and purpose matter
• Beware of over-simplification
• Look at the scores, not the rankings
• Be wary of data that has been overly manipulated and processed.
• Longitudinal data are more useful than one-off “snapshot” studied, but watch out for iterative studied that change the rules as they go.
• Stale source data may leave a false impression.
• Make sure that apples are being compared to apples.

Probably the fairest explanation for why these studies continue to pop up in the media is attributed to Joel Garreau:

 ”These lists are journalistic catnip. Fun to read and look at the pictures but I find the liveable cities lists intellectually on a par with People magazine’s ‘sexiest people’ lists.”

(Still, if you lean towards parochialism, patriotism, or partisan, if you believe Toronto is the centre of the world, you will be glad to know that Toronto generally does well on these international scorecards.)

The complex origins of vacant and abandoned homes in a neighbourhood

Recent lessons from the housing crash in the United States described families simply walking away from their homes, leaving their front doors unlocked, because they couldn’t afford to carry their mortgages anymore. Financial abandonment is one of the starkest reasons residences are left untended.

However, like most things, it’s always more complicated. Just how empty and derelict does a building have to be to be abandoned? The octogenarian who lives only in two rooms of her house, having sealed off the rest, still holds domain over it all. But what if she was hospitalized? And then sent to long-term care? And then failed to pay her taxes?

In my neighbourhood, I can think of eight homes that, depending on the definition used, are vacant or abandoned. None of them, that I know of, are haunted or marijuana grow-ops:

• After a fire started by a basement tenant put one family out of their new and hard-earned home, their re-building was abandoned because of lack of funds and the complexity of (re-)building without a contractor.  That’s been about ten years now since they lost their dream.
• Another house on the same street also suffered a fire. The house attached to it also suffered damage. Neither household had insurance to re-build. It took two or three years for the first home to be sold to a speculator, who hired cheaply, and then sold it with fresh paint and pot lights “as is.” The family moved out of the attached house, and the landlord rented to a poorer tenants less able to complain.
• There are three other homes in the neighbourhood where elderly residents have moved to homes for the aged, none of them interested in selling. One of these homes has been empty for over twenty years, the other fledges various young family members every few years, and the third has rats for inhabitants.
• Another family home in the neighbourhood was sold to the owner’s brother who had no interest in living in it nor in renting it out. It has sat, preserving the family capital, for a quarter century.
• Another home was bought by a resident in the adjoining house, so as he could enjoy some peace, but the cost of re-zoning the properties to make them a single home is too prohibitive. So, officially, that home is empty.
• A final house in my neighbourhood acts as a storage locker for a couple who live across the street from it. Vans are unloaded into and out of the house but no one lives there. Census-takers knock futilely every five years. (Another neighbour tells me of a similar house a few streets away which someone else uses to keep their cats and dogs housed – and yes, it smells.)

When this was a working-class neighbourhood, houses were cheap, and few took note of these alternate uses. This was long before housing prices climbed, when only affordable housing activists and a few academics saw such rough, unused gems as valuable housing stock.

In 2008, the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC), an activist group called Abandonment Issues and York University’s City Centre partnered to look at cycles of reinvestment and disinvestment in the Toronto area. They explored the housing cycles that happen as neighbourhoods are abandoned and then “discovered” again, creating a small building boon of condos and flow of capital. Some good pressure was raised over the issue but not much changed on the legislative front.

Nowadays neighbours are more likely to talk about the property values of these half million dollars homes left derelict or vacant.

In response to the idea of impact on local property values and the loss of additional housing stock as shortages grow, some other municipalities have adopted “Use it or Lose it” laws.

The City of Toronto’s Affordable Housing Office may, too, be exploring the issues these vacant and abandoned homes create. That’s good news if it doesn’t just provide new fodder for housing speculators.

Census 2011 looms as a failure

I couldn’t convince my own mother to do the long form census from Statistics Canada. Oh sure, she, the mother of a researcher, meant well but it is v-e-r-y long. At least, I console myself,  she recycled the form, meeting that civic participation bar.

A colleague explained that he had tried to complete the on-line the National Household Survey (the long form census) more than three times but he finally gave the task to another household member because each question required another hunt through the family files: housing costs, education levels, etc. Why couldn’t they make it easier, he asked?

This is a small sample, to be sure, but, like doing our taxes, filling out long government forms is no fun. So the response rate to the survey has got to be poor or very uneven.

Jennifer Ditchburn from Canadian Press quoted, “a lot of people shut down the conversation quickly when they find out it’s not mandatory.” She also reported Statistics Canada is not following up on incomplete Household Surveys and is settling for incomplete ones.

What will happen to the quality of the data, then? I recently asked a medical officer of health. He too had heard about the low response rates and despaired how this was what had been predicted during the discussions before parliament when the census revisions emerged. We’ll have to do estimations, he explained, to test how reliable the data is and then we will muddle through.

And that epitomizes the very issue with the census – a census is, by definition, a count of every household (or in the case of the long-form census, one in five random households). This census is no longer a census, but simply a sample of the Canadian population.

While the progress of the data collection is not public, other hints of the (non-)returns tell a worsening story.

The short-form census, the one that basically asked us to re-type what was on the mail label and add family language, must have a poor response rate too.

At the community agency where I work, clients were confused by government messaging. Hadn’t the whole debate about the census concluded that it was voluntary? Staff have had to explain that the short-form census is still required, while the long-form one, no longer called the census, is not.

Confused? I’ll say. So are others, as documented in the Hamilton Spectator and the Halifax Chronicle Herald this week (see the comments section for further evidence even).

I feel particularly mournful about this because, as governments move towards integrated policy responses, such as poverty-reduction strategies, and as our computational capacities increase, the census has become integral to good evidence-based decision-making. So just as the need and our capacity to explore better policy-making are emerging, our ability to do so has been undercut.

What a crying shame.

Wellbeing Toronto

Long awaited, Wellbeing Toronto is launching this morning through the City of Toronto website.

Keep hitting refresh! It will be here soon.

The Toronto Star has given a sneak peek in today’s edition. The site lets users select and map , across the City’s 140 social planning neighbourhoods, from a menu of indicators, ranging from one of Toronto’s top ten languages, applications to universities, or robberies. It also maps locations of various civic sites, community hubs, rate payers associations and other neighbourhood features.

While it’s bound to have some bugs as it launches (I couldn’t see a legend), this is a significant contribution to the civic dialogue of the city – as long as more than real estate agents use it! (My conflict-of-interest? I sat in on two advisory panels during its development.)