Habitat for Humanity is still welcome in Scarborough, but a nine-home proposal from the charity homebuilder, in which city staff can find no flaw, is not.
Scarborough councillors voted Tuesday to avoid approving a rezoning required for the project on a Birchmount Road vacant lot, which the City of Toronto sold to Habitat in 2010.
The city declared the land at the northeast corner of Highview Avenue surplus before offering it to Habitat as a site for affordable housing, a choice approved by the area’s former councillor, Brian Ashton, and by Toronto council as a whole in 2009.
After pressure from neighbours who see the lot as an unofficial park, the current councillor Gary Crawford said it should be referred back to the planning department to explore "all potential options," including a swap for other city land.
"This is not about Habitat for Humanity at all," said Crawford, insisting he supports the charity and has worked as a volunteer on some of its other Scarborough projects.
But Crawford agreed with residents that the city - which advertised the potential sale in a newspaper, and in 2012 notified the owners of adjacent homes - did not properly consult people in the Cliffside area about what to do with the land.
He told Scarborough Community Council he found out about the sale two years ago when Mayor Rob Ford approached his office about a ribbon-cutting Habitat had scheduled on the lot.
"I had no idea what he was talking about," said Crawford, adding he called Habitat to say, "There’s going to be no ribbon-cutting."
The charity later held two community consultations in the area but those were "rather poor," said the councillor, who said any solution to the impasse "will be up to Habitat," though he favours turning the lot into parkland.
Several neighbours spoke Tuesday against the project, for which Habitat will pay the city $100,000 after it builds the eight semi-detached and one single detached houses.
"More concrete, less green space, is not what this community needs," said Agnes Milne, who lives more than 200 metres away from the lot and said her concern was for a sugar maple there.
The maple is one of three mature trees and two immature ones the development would remove, though Habitat would plant 22 trees on the lot as replacements and seven more on the public boulevard.
Sue Mason, another resident, said she was "absolutely gobsmacked" to hear of plan to destroy a green space she loves. The lot should have been designated a park when the chance came, she said.
Mason and other Cliffside residents recalled Crawford managed to prevent the sale of vacant land - nearby on Danforth Avenue across from Variety Village - known as the sugar bowl or fish bowl, which the city in 2011 declared surplus. Crawford later announced the land was no longer surplus.
David Bronskill, a lawyer for Habitat, said the Birchmount land was never considered as a possible park.
Despite objections the proposed semi-detached Habitat homes don’t fit the neighbourhood, they are single-family homes no different from others in Cliffside and city staff agree the project is "appropriate," he argued.
"On its planning merits, it is a no-brainer," Bronskill concluded, adding the Ontario Municipal Board would think so too.
Habitat Greater Toronto Area CEO Ene Underwood, who joined the organization after the sale, said she realizes long-term residents would be "very much taken aback," but suggested it wasn’t Habitat’s fault there was no neighbourhood consultation in 2008.
The homes - occupied by people who helped build them and have a track record of employment - will be a good thing for the area, even if the consultation process was flawed, she said.
"There are things we could have done differently in a past we can’t change," said Underwood, who added Crawford’s land swap idea "will not move us forward" in meeting Toronto’s goals for affordable housing.
Norm Kelly, Toronto’s acting mayor, said the city sold the land to Habitat for housing, so "we are legally and ethically committed" to honouring the deal.
The Scarborough-Agincourt councillor called Crawfords’ desire for a swap "a proposal which is basically a wing and a prayer," and said he won’t support deferral unless Crawford comes up with a proposed solution between now and the next city council meeting.
Other councillors, however, objected to how the deal was done.
"You understand there’s been a bungling of the process and these residents feel blindsided?" Michelle Berardinetti asked Underwood, later saying a similar sale to Habitat occurred, without the knowledge of neighbours, in part of a green space in her ward.
"If there is a land swap (to stop the Birchmount project), why not do it?"
Scarborough councillors who previously voted to approve the sale - none opposed it - thought there had been a neighbourhood consultation, said Berardinetti, who was elected after it happened.
Mike Del Grande was, in the end, one of those councillors who sided with Crawford on Tuesday against the zoning change. "There was a wrong made," he said.
Habitat had faced hostility before in Scarborough, when along with Women’s Religious Projects (WRP) Neighbourhood Housing, it built 60 semi-detached homes at the eastern end of Hainford Street in West Hill.
That project destroyed 17 bylaw-protected trees and large quantities of brush in what neighbours of the site considered a five-acre community park, though it was actually an unused transportation corridor.
Dianna Armstrong, said she started volunteering with Habitat six years ago during the Hainford Avenue project and saw people living nearby were very upset over the loss of the green space.
Armstrong told community councillors she has helped build more than 70 Habitat homes, keeping in touch with someone in each family, and seeing "how proud they are to be a part of that community" after moving in.
"I can assure them the houses (on Birchmount) will be well kept," and the new residents will be great additions to their neighbourhood, she said.
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