The subsidized housing conundrum

Carol Goar is the queen of The Star's bleeding hearts. Here she writes on the apparent roadblocks in the way of building more subsidized housing:

TheStar.com - A vacancy of political will

Socialists always label it a 'lack of political will' when they don't get the lavish spending programs they want. (Come to think of it - spending programs could never be lavish enough to satisfy them.)

I have a different idea of where this lack of political will resides. As Royson James of The Star explained a few weeks back the City has:

95,000 subsidized housing units
65,000 people of the waiting list
4,000 who moved off the list in 2003

Now consider a few things:

1. Most of the 65,000 are not homeless - they are people who want to live in subsidized housing but currently living in some other accomodation. Hey - who wouldn't want a deal!

2. Based on the 95,000 units and 4,000 turnover in one year, the average social housing tenant resides in the subsidized unit for 23.75 years. I'll bet my bottom $ that many of these could afford to find an normal, private sector apartment. In fact, a number of people in a city housing in my area are regulars at my bagel place. If they can afford to eat breakfats out every morning, they can certainly find an apartment.

Hence the political will that is missing is that which will implement stricter means testing on current and prospective social housing tenants.