In an e-mail last week, the hospital network said it would offer a legally binding agreement to involve the tenants on Close Avenue and other properties in the Parkdale area of Toronto.The largest academic hospital in Canada received praise last week for a plan to turn part of its land into affordable housing, but the announcement was bittersweet for local community associations and long-time tenants located at one of the hospital’s sites.
Late Saturday, UHN chief executive Kevin Smith contacted tenants by e-mail to assure them that their concerns over their current housing would not be disregarded, said community organizer Victor Willis, who was among the recipients of the missive. The hospital network became the owner of those houses, a dozen two-storey semi-detached Victorian homes, in 2011 when UHN integrated with Toronto Rehab, which itself had inherited the properties from a previous merger. There are about 30 tenants, some of whom have lived for three decades at those addresses, on Close, Dunn and Springhurst Avenues.
In a statement e-mailed to The Globe and Mail on Friday, UHN said that it was committed to working with the community to develop its project, and would look at all its available land, including the two empty houses.