This is the first official campaign for Property Taskforce: www.abandonmentissues.ca

Last night we had our campaign launch and the room was overflowing with over 150 people, including local city councilor Gord Perks. Allan Lissner displayed 3 diptych photos on housing themes, St. Christopher House brought maps of socio-economic neighbourhood change, and we had a slide-show running of around 50 images of abandonded buildings. We also displayed our own map, with pins stuck in reflecting the location of abandonded buildings in town.

Panelists:

Victor Willis, Executive Director of PARC, speaking on the city’s first property expropriated for affordable housing (1495 Queen St. W, next door to the event)

Josephine Gray, Plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that is being launched against the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) on behalf of several thousand of its tenants for neglecting building and municipal codes.

Anna Willats, Organizing Member of the Women Against Poverty Collective

David Wachsmuth, Organizing Member of Abandonment Issues, speaking on recent trends in affordable housing in Toronto, the issue of abandoned and underutilized buildings, and strategies for the Use It or Lose It campaign.

The local media picked up on the story:

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/271420

http://origin.www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/10/29/tto-housing.html

Here's a run-down of the project and the call-out for our first event:

Panel discussion and map exhibit

Monday, Oct. 29, 2007
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Parkdale Activity - Recreation Centre
1499 Queen Street West
Speakers, maps, and campaign information

Help solve Toronto’s abandonment issues!

Join a group of housing activists to map the city’s wasted,
abandoned, and underutilized buildings, lots, and spaces and
push for the adoption by Council of a bylaw allowing them
to be expropriated and turned into affordable housing.

The project

We want our research to support a campaign for a Use It or Lose It bylaw that would see abandoned buildings expropriated by the City redeveloped as affordable housing or community infrastructure along socially just lines.

This project is about mapping missing housing and social centres, but it is also a critique of gentrification, neighbourhood blight, and the local and global forces that cause both of these problems. Through this project we hope to promote awareness of how the issue of abandoned buildings, and the lack of affordable housing and social services are connected to larger patterns of displacement and instability that stem from social and economic inequality.