The push to sell off Toronto Community Housing Corp.’s portfolio of 619 single-family homes has been overshadowed by a new report which recommends selling only 55 of the homes, each worth more than $600,000.

The plan, Putting People First, also calls for selling up to 100 of the homes to the tenants, with interest-free financing from Habitat for Humanity Toronto.

The 55 homes are expected to net $35.5 million after being sold, while other savings and revenues will give TCHC a total of $120 million in new money for repairs over the next two years, said Councillor Ana Bailao, chair of the working group set up to figure out what to do with the homes.

TCHC, backed by Mayor Rob Ford, originally wanted to sell 872 single houses to raise funds for fix up the crumbling housing portfolio, which has a repair backlog totalling $751 million.

In March, council voted to set up a working group chaired by Bailao to come up with a plan.

“We recognized that some of our proposals might not be popular,” Bailao said Monday at a city hall news conference. “Some may want the status quo while others think we should have gone further, but we think we have found the right balance.”

Ford’s office didn’t respond to the Star’s request for comment. The report will be discussed by council’s executive committee, chaired by Ford, on Oct. 9 and then go on to council Oct. 30 for final approval.

Bailao said 38 of the 55 homes to be sold are occupied. She said tenants will be notified before the list is released.

One of the TCHC single home tenants is Rosie Da Silva, who was anxiously waiting to hear if her home is one of the 55 to be sold.

“I’m going back to work and then rush home to see if I’ve gotten a letter,” Da Silva said. “I feel like I truly am living on quicksand today.”

Toronto benefits from having economically mixed neighbourhoods as opposed enclaves of rich and poor, Da Silva said.

“Nobody should be economically and socially isolated because of their income,” she said. “Mixed neighbourhoods produce happy and healthy communities.”

Tenants should be congratulated for speaking up in defence of their homes over the past 18 months, said Susan Gapka, a TCHC tenant and housing activist.

“It’s very promising and hopeful,” Gapka said.

Almost all the tenants wanted to know more about the potential to purchase their homes from TCHC, said Neil Hetherington, chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity Toronto.

Habitat is proposing, subject to city council approval, to provide interest-free mortage financing to tenant purhasers. The program would keep mortgage payments to an affordable level of about $400 a month.

“There seems to be broad acceptance of that by the tenants and also by the city,” Hetherington said. “The tenants have a real stake in where they’re living.”

Bailao warned that the city needs help from federal and provincial governments to address the massive repair backlog which is growing each year.

“While these are tough economic times for all orders of government, we need our federal and provincial partners at the table,” she said.

TCHC president and chief executive officer Eugene Jones said the backlog will worsen if new money isn’t found.

“We need more money for repairs, we need new sustainable sources of funding and we need it now,” said Jones.

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“Without new money, within five years many more of our buildings will have declined into a state of critical disrepair. They will be unsafe to live in and far too costly to fix. Action is clearly needed now.”

The Bailao report changes the conversation from selling social housing units to fixing them up, said Michael Shapcott, housing director at the Wellesley Institute.

“Over the past year, there’s been a climate of hysteria generated by certain political interests to justify a massive sell-off of housing,” Shapcott said. “What this report does is shift the conversation so we’re no longer doing that sell-off.”