In 2001, Toronto Community Housing, Toronto's newly amalgamated public housing authority, embarked on the dramatic redevelopment of Regent Park, one of the world’s largest and Canada’s first public housing communities. To ensure that they built a new, positive, and trusting relationship with Regent Park’s residents from the very start, Toronto Community Housing engaged Public Interest to carry out a number of public consultations and research studies.
Transforming this vibrant yet troubled community from social housing project to mixed-income residential neighbourhood has involved
Public Interest’s initial task was to build a meaningful connection between the residents, their landlords, and the architects and planners in order to create a collaborative design process. Our team recruited more than 30 Regent Park residents to work as community animators to find the best ways to build a real voice for a broader percentage and range of residents than had ever been involved before.
Having achieved this goal, Public Interest was asked to come up with the best possible relocation strategy to maximize the likelihood that as each block of buildings was emptied and demolished, the residents were able to choose the area they wanted to move to and to complete the move in a timely, supported way. This process involved researching large-scale relocations from around the world and developing and testing a community relocation strategy through a thorough process of engaging the community. We were then asked to help train the relocation staff. The first phase of the relocation was completed successfully.
A related challenge for the City or Toronto was to try to ensure that as Regent Park's population changed and ultimately almost doubled, there would be a suitable range of community services and facilities in place. To initiate this planning process, Public Interest conducted a rigorous mapping and analysis of existing services, which involved projecting the future demographics and service needs of the new Regent Park. This research laid the groundwork for the later process of creating a social development plan for Regent Park.
Public Interest’s East Downtown Employment Study, conducted for the City of Toronto and the federal government, involved a detailed survey of residents in east downtown Toronto (including Regent Park) to find out about their use and experience of training and related employment services. We analyzed effective approaches from other areas and recommended a model that would increase residents’ likelihood of accessing supports to enable them to achieve stable employment.
All of these elements are related to the creation of healthy, revitalized, connected area of the city.
During this major revitalization of a large social housing community more than 50 years old, Public Interest developed a unique community engagement model that is now the standard for community work in Regent Park. This model has been used for two years to involve the community in all aspects of the redevelopment and has consistently produced participation from about 1,000 Regent Park residents (10–12% of the population).
Access to stable employment has long been a problem for many residents in east downtown Toronto. To address this issue, Public Interest was contracted by the City of Toronto and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada to review employment practices in low-income neighbourhoods in east downtown Toronto and to recommend alternative models of service.
