Months after a scathing audit report exposed how one of the city’s newest public housing projects became one of its worst—councillors on the Governance Working Group have received an update.
According to city staff, two or three disruptive tenants at the London Middlesex Community Housing (LMCH) building at 122 Baseline Rd. W. are currently before the Landlord and Tenant Board.
“Once the more problematic tenants have been relocated, this will hopefully just be able to be serviced as an affordable apartment building and it will be less disruptive,” said Coun. Skylar Franke, whose ward includes the troubled building.
In February, an independent auditor’s report detailed the lessons learned since constructing the 61-unit building that opened in 2022.
City Hall contributed $3.7 million of the $19.1 million construction cost.
Although the building was designed as affordable housing for people requiring few support services, auditors determined it was occupied with high-acuity tenants to qualify for federal Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) funding.
- 54 per cent homeless or at risk of homelessness
- 23 per cent dealing with mental health/addiction issues
- 23 per cent women and children fleeing domestic violence
In 2022, the building had an annual maintenance budget of $444,000, however, two years later the amount rose by 35 per cent.
Last June, residents complained to CTV News about rampant drug use, violence, insects, and graffiti.
A month later, 48-year-old tenant Darko Lukic died in hospital after being found critically injured outside the building - four people have been charged in relation to his death.
Franke said efforts are underway to change the tenant mix to match the building’s original intended purpose, “There are people in that building who are very high acuity and need highly supportive housing, and that apartment building is entirely meant to be low acuity affordable housing.”
Coun. Susan Stevenson again expressed concern that at-risk women and their children were housed alongside high-acuity individuals.
She wants to learn more about how the decision was made to alter the tenant mix.
She suspects it was a decision of the former Housing Development Corporation (HDC), whose board of directors was dissolved by council around the time that the design was being completed.
“[Council] began the HDC in 2015 and in 2020 they started to dissolve it, but it’s still not dissolved. It still owns property. I believe that somebody there was maybe making the decisions on this,” Stevenson told CTV News. “Where is the oversight and the transparency when it comes to public safety issues?”
Franke points to a second public housing building in her ward that opened last summer as evidence the problems experienced at 122 Baseline Rd. W. are not being repeated.
“Staff have already learned from the mistake, and we saw with 345 Sylvan they took a very different process for how they picked tenants,” she said. “So I think at this point, it’s more important for us to learn from the mistake and make changes.”
City staff will prepare a report this fall about the changes made to address the problems highlighted in the audit report.
