This is a disaster.

The provincial and federal budgets released this week, I mean. I'm not talking about the thin transit broth that the mayor is conspiring with two different transit ministers to present as a SmartTrack meal.

The disaster for this city is the comprehensive failure of the upper levels of government to come to the aid of some of Toronto's most needy residents as their homes quite literally fall apart around them. I'm talking about Toronto Community Housing, forgotten or flogged off in these budgets.

As they crow about tax rates and infrastructure and pat themselves on the back for restraint, let us rain scorn on Premier Kathleen Wynne and Prime Minister Stephen Harper for their negligence, their heartlessness. But when we're finished crying “Shame!” we need to look hard in the mirror and ask ourselves if we're prepared to step in and do ourselves what they have refused to do for us.

Just over three weeks ago, Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard) assembled the city's press to present a demand for provincial and federal funding to the tune of $1.7 billion for desperately needed repairs to Toronto's social housing stock.

“The moral and business cases illustrated by this study make a bulletproof case for why the Ontario and federal governments should invest now to repair housing.”

At the roots of that moral and business case was the reality that if the repair tab is not met, the social housing provider would be forced to shutter 7,500 units in the next decade because they'd be unfit for human habitation, while fully 90 per cent of its units would move into a status of “poor” or “critical” condition. The city of Toronto has already committed more than $800 million to the total cost; Tory was demanding the other levels of government chip in the other two-thirds.

I wrote at the time that Tory needed a “Plan B,” because the province and the feds were likely to screw us, as they always do when it comes to social housing. Asked about it on CBC Radio the next morning, Tory said he'd be a fool to reveal his Plan B and weaken his negotiating position before Queen's Park and Ottawa had shown their hands.

This week the federal and provincial governments both presented budgets. And when it comes to funding the needed repairs of Toronto Communtiy Housing, they contain a grand total, combined, of $0.

Some $130 billion for provincial infrastructure over 10 years! Plus $37 billion a year in federal tax breaks and cash payments for families with children.

But a request for $85 million a year for the next decade, to save and improve the homes of Toronto's poor? Nope.

$0. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

So how about that Plan B now?

Councillor Gord Perks (open Gord Perks's policard) thinks he has one. Because some of the repairs would lower other annual maintenance and energy costs, and looking at how the timing of repairs are needed and could be financed over time, Perks thinks a property tax increase of about 1.5 per cent would cover the costs of a 30-year loan for the needed money. He told me early this month that so far he had not been able to get city staff to officially crunch the numbers to see if his estimate is accurate, because they were backing the mayor's play for the benevolence of the bigger governments.

I think it's time to bring out the calculators to do the math. And when we're done with the math check, it's time for a gut check.

Are we ready to do the right thing? If it means a 1.5 per cent dedicated tax increase, like the one we approved for the Scarborough subway extension? In this taxophobic city, the answer is not certain.

But maybe. We approved that subway extension on a line with a daily ridership of about 40,000 people, so that their commutes could be improved, made a few minutes faster and a bit more comfortable. We did it in part because politicians said people in Scarborough “deserved” a subway.

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What about the 160,000 people — more than 6 per cent of Toronto's population — who live in social housing? What do they deserve? These are people unable to afford Toronto's runaway rents and mortgages, the families who most need our help and support. We're not talking about their commute times, or their travelling comfort, we're talking about their homes.

We own those homes, collectively, through our government. We can choose to pay a bit to make them places worth living in, or we can choose not to and face the human consequences.

Kathleen Wynne and Stephen Harper should have helped, and could have, but they chose to ignore their obligations to Toronto's needy. Will we do the same? Or are we ready to come up with a plan of our own?