Toronto Sun, Wednesday, May 19, 1999
By SUE-ANN LEVY
Politicians will be asked at a meeting here today to approve more than $100,000 for the city's tenant group of choice, even though it only has a few thousand members while claiming to speak for all Metro renters.
And a report before the Community and Neighbourhood Services committee suggests the Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations (FMTA) be considered for further funds from the city's grants pot because the Mayor's homelessness task force feels the association needs a top-up.
The FMTA is the same organization singled out in this column in December for its connections with left-wing city officials.
It has had a lock on city funding for more than 10 years.
Each year the association's "purchase of service" contract has been automatically renewed with no tender put out to competing groups.
This year, it seems, is no exception. The bulk of the $152,510 in funding for the city's 1999 eviction prevention strategies - some $97,510 - will go to the FMTA's tenant hotline service, which runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.
The report suggests FMTA get another $10,000 to update, print and distribute its 1998 Tenant's Survival Manual as well as two "checklists" to accompany the manual. It appears FMTA will also have a hand in a new $20,000 eviction prevention kit.
The top-up amount from the grants pot - "to ensure callers could get through (the FMTA hotline) to receive information" - remains to be seen, although the report suggests there is an extra $3.7-million for homeless initiative funding which could be used for eviction prevention activities.
Now, I have absolutely nothing against the concept of eviction prevention.
A victim myself of a slum landlord who tried and eventually succeeded in evicting me seven years ago, I feel for those poor tenants who don't know their rights and end up on the streets in the already overcrowded and costly shelter housing system.
Luckily, I had some money to pay a lawyer to fight my landlord. But what about the vast majority of people who don't?
Still, my concern is with throwing money at an association - which at last count had only about 5,000 members out of 1.2 million city tenants - without any fair tender process or at the very least, an independent audit of their work last year. The city's own report recommends giving FMTA the money first and then conducting a "service review" - a little too late.
Jenny Gonsalves, a Cityhome tenant who lives at 22 McCaul St., says she's "absolutely disgusted" and "extremely angry" that FMTA is again being awarded funding when her organization, now 42,000 tenants strong, has as much experience in tenant advocacy.
"No evidence is presented in the report before us that this strategy has prevented one eviction," she says in her written deputation to the committee, which she had to deliver because they have no money for even a fax machine.
Councillor Gordon Chong, who sits on the CNS committee, wonders whether it's just been "convenient" to keep using FMTA. "You've got to make sure staff does a stringent review of them ... and looks at alternatives."
But you just have to review the statistics on the FMTA hotline, provided in the report, to wonder whether taxpayers are getting the best bang for their buck. The report says staff responded to "almost 7,500" calls last year, which at 50 weeks for the year, amounts to $13 per call and about 3.75 calls per hour or 33 per day. The nighttime eviction hotline - funded for 16 weeks to the tune of $7,871 - answered 650 calls. That works out to about $12 per call and 2.7 calls answered per hour.
There are no specifics on how many evictions the hotline prevented, only that 25% of calls were related to evictions.
Commissioner Shirley Hoy and housing general manager Joanne Campbell couldn't be reached for comment. But FMTA executive director Howard Tessler told me yesterday the 3.75 calls per hour is as "much as we can handle" and that they spend "more than" 15 minutes with each caller.
He says he's "not sure" how many evictions they prevented last year and they're too busy to keep track. Tessler did say they were actively involved last month in stopping a slum landlord who was trying to evict 60 tenants on Augusta Ave.
"We're the cheapest thing going," he says. "We do provide a service that is absolutely necessary."
That may be so. All I'm saying is they should be held to taxpayer scrutiny - just like any other group that gets a city handout.
Sue-ann manages to get more information on this group but misses some issues, such as why
have what were once grants become "purchase of service" contracts which avoid even the
meagre scrutiny of the city Grants Committee?
In spite of the title of this article, by last year, (their year ending March 31, 2001,) the FMTA was receiving over $250,000 under various "contracts" with the city, expected to exceed $320,000 for the year ending, March 31, 2002..
When the FMTA was claiming some 5000 members back in 1998, their own annual report showed that they only recieved $15,865 from memberships which range in cost from $5 (for group memberships) to $15 (for individual memberships) for tenants and some members have been know to give more on the assumption they were giving to a worthy cause. Even at $5 for every membership their own books prove they could not even had 3200, and it could easily have been much much less.
Their lastest financial statement shows that for the year ending March 31, 2000, the FMTA received $10,288 for membership translating to an absolute maximum of 2057.6 members, but those numbers have plummetted, and for the year ending March 31, 2001, they only received $4,618 in membership due translating to a maximum of only 923.6 members! I have received many complaints about this organization, and I think their own membership numbers say it all. And now their group membership fees have gone up to $10 per tenants.
Maybe the city Auditor Jeffrey Griffiths should have been interviewed and asked if this is proper city proceedure.
A city auditor's report of late 1998, said the FMTA had amassed a bank balance of over $63,000 and it questioned who owned that, the FMTA or the City which provided the funding. And I am hearing from my sources the FMTA's went on a spending spree like drunken sailors who had made it to harbour after a year on the high seas, to spend all of this bank balance before the City Auditor could have a chance to claim the money back. The money was spent on hiring their friends, not that you would know it with their dying membership numbers.
And remember that these `statistics' on the number of hotline calls are provided by the group themselves; there are no checks or balances whatsoever to verify these number are true. Now the City gets the FMTA to write reports on their own work on the city Tenant Defence Fund contract; When you look at the two letters of complaint that I have found are on the public record at City Hall, one from the High Park Tenants' Association and another from the West Lodge Tenants' Association it is clear that the City wants the FMTA to do a whitewash on their own City funding. Clearly they can not be trusted to do honest reporting on their services.
It is clear from these numbers that these services could be provided at a much cheaper rate just by hiring unionized city workers. Not only would it be less expensive even after all benefits were paid out, but this would ensure that the work was actually being done, the statistics to verify it would be available and you know they would actually arrive to work on time and not shut off the hot line early to get a head start to get home before the rush hour.
We need to question our city council why this state of affairs has not only gone on for so long but has continued to worsen, with this group's funding increasing 10-fold from $30,000 in 1996 to over $250,000 by 2000 (year ending March 31, 2001) to over $400,000 for 2005, and yet there seems to be less accountabilty for this money.
Go back to the Federation of Metro Tenants Associations Story