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Photo by Stan Behal/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

It’s 2018 and police resources are very stretched, as we’ve heard many times. Hiring more security and to date 108 community safety officers is only effective if they actually do something.

Many, as I’ve learned, just stand there and allow the drug dealers, the pimps and the criminal element to do as they please, and to proliferate. In other words, much of it is window dressing created to give the good tenants a false sense of security.

As I’ve written many times, tenants in bad buildings — and there are many — are living on floors with drug dens and amongst crack whores and drug dealers who prey on the addicted and mentally ill.

It seems no amount of exposure of the conditions in these buildings has motivated TCHC officials to do something.

Evictions for criminal and illegal behaviour is perhaps one of the best ways to send that message.

But I’m willing to bet not many evictions involving the criminal element are being pursued aggressively, at all.

Let’s talk statistics first.

We used to see actual metrics on evictions and many other issues in the CEO’s report. That ended this past spring and now all we get is a sanitized report indicating all is well, based on Milsom’s say-so.

Malloch told me there have been 82 evictions for cause so far this year but he doesn’t have an actual breakdown of which ones were for serious crimes.

“We track the number of evictions, but do not track the reasons for the evictions,” he said.

For the record, evictions for cause can mean substantial interference with the reasonable enjoyment of a unit or units — such as high traffic, noise and unauthorized people in a building instead of drug dealing.