He’s Toronto’s affordable housing guru, the man who for 40 years has worked behind the scenes at city hall, Queen’s Park and Ottawa to keep affordable housing on the political agenda.

Sean Gadon is far from a household name, but when it comes to gathering grants, finding financing and proposing partnerships to build affordable housing, he is the person politicians, private developers and non-profits have relied on to get the job done.

He was the first paid staff member of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations in the 1970s, policy adviser/chief of staff to Ontario Liberal housing ministers in the 1980s, and policy adviser to Toronto mayors Barbara Hall, Mel Lastman and David Miller.

In 2006, he became director of Toronto’s first affordable housing office and has led the city’s new housing secretariat since it was created last year.

Along the way, he has provided advice to everyone from federal cabinet ministers to academics and advocates.

Gadon, 65, retires Jan. 17. In a wide-ranging interview with the Star, he shares how he navigated the ever-changing political landscape in the battle to build affordable housing. And as Toronto’s homelessness crisis deepens amid an ongoing housing affordability crunch, Gadon offers some thoughts on the future.

After helping the provincial government create some 70,000 units of affordable housing between 1986 and 1993 — and then watching both Ottawa and Queen’s Park cancel their programs — how did you end up at Toronto City Hall?

I was walking on Nathan Phillips Square one day about a week after Barbara Hall was elected mayor (in 1994) — I had helped her during the election in the west end — and I see her sitting up in her office overlooking the square. I waved at her and she signals for me to come up. I left her office about an hour later with a job as her executive assistant at Metro council.

It turned out to be an amazing turning point in my career and in my life, because I was thrown into the politics of Metro. This guy who grew up in Mount Dennis, lived in Tommy Douglas Co-op beside Regent Park, had been a tenant organizer, and worked with the province in a political capacity as an executive assistant/chief of staff for housing ministers, was suddenly back in local politics. I was not “a downtowner.” I was someone who actually understood Metro. I found myself working alongside the different mayors from the different municipalities — Frances Nunziata (York), Mel Lastman (North York) ... and (Metro councillors) Jack Layton and Olivia Chow. And I learned how to pull the vote.

I left city hall when Lastman won the election (for mayor of the amalgamated city of Toronto) against Barbara (Hall) in 1997. But in the spring of 1999, when I was working for (former mayor) David Crombie on housing for the 2008 Olympic bid, (Lastman’s chief of staff) Rod Phillips called and asked me to manage council relations for the mayor. Crombie and others encouraged me to take the job. So I did.

You have also worked for former mayor David Miller. How did you work for mayors whose political views and personal styles were so different?

I’m a professional. I’m not a fan of (those who say) “it’s very complicated and we have to study it.” If politics is the “art of the possible,” my job is to make “possible” happen. And figure out how we collectively get to a solution where we can say “yes” to a problem. I think they all appreciated that.

Can you give some examples?

I remember Mel (Lastman) coming back from a meeting in the west end one day in May or June 1999 and saying: “Nobody is swimming. When I was a kid, I remember everybody was swimming in the lake.” So I spoke to Rod Phillips and opened a file called “Swimming in the Lake.” I went to (former planning commissioner) Paul Bedford and said the mayor wants people swimming in the lake. We need a waterfront plan. And so we wrote this plan called: “Our Toronto Waterfront, the Wave of the Future.” It was the genesis of the “three amigos” (Lastman, then premier Mike Harris and then prime minister Jean Chrétien) pledging $1.5 billion towards waterfront revitalization (in 2000) that became a cornerstone of Toronto’s 2008 Olympic bid. Although we didn’t win the bid, it kick-started Waterfront Toronto, including the (2015) PanAm Village in the West Don Lands that is now affordable housing for seniors, students and families.

In 2002, about 100 homeless people were evicted from a tent city on the waterfront and told to go to shelters. But I had been working for several months with others to design a program where they would be given a portable housing benefit so they could rent their own apartments. I told the mayor we have a solution that would allow them to be housed. But when I told him how much it was going to cost, he asks me where the money is going to come from. With Mel it was all about the pitch. So I said, well, that’s the beauty of this. It’s going to come from Mike Harris. He didn’t miss a beat. He said: “Do it.”

So we did it. Since then, the federal government changed the Affordable Housing Program to include funding for rent assistance, or what they referred to as housing allowances. The big move coming this year will be Ontario and the federal government bringing forward the Canada Housing Benefit, which will provide a supplement for people facing affordability problems. And it will be portable, which will give people the choice of where they live.

How did you handle David Miller’s plan to evict the homeless from Nathan Phillips Square and other public spaces in 2005?

When David Miller was mayor and brought in a bylaw to prevent people from sleeping on Nathan Phillips Square, I said people need an alternative. They need somewhere else to go. So I took David for a walk up to Elm St. to Laughlen Lodge, which was owned by the Rotary Club. It was empty. So we rented the space and it became Toronto’s first respite centre. After that first winter, we purchased the building and the YWCA won the proposal to build affordable housing there. Then I shepherded the Y through the process of getting financing from Infrastructure Ontario. I was very committed to that building for a couple of reasons. One is because in 1837 it was the first so-called “poor house” in Toronto. I thought it was incredibly symbolic that we would take a building with that history and convert it into 300 units of affordable housing with a daycare and Indigenous housing component — a mixture of uses right in the downtown core. I also have a strong commitment to ensuring that women have housing.

The city owns the land. We leased it to the Y for 50 years and they raised $16 million to help build it. It’s a perfect example of a success story in the new world where housing is not 100-per-cent government funded.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

How do you run a municipal affordable housing office with so little government funding?

Councillors ask me to help them write motions that include affordable housing and that gives me the mandate to see what can be done. So I juggle different pots of funds that come from federal-provincial sources and the city, and we magically create projects and the partnerships with private and non-profit groups that build, own and operate it. When it is successful, it flourishes and it changes people’s lives.

I’ve brought this sense of optimism around a social issue that people usually feel is difficult or too complex. I made my career by saying, no, it’s a basic, fundamental human right. And it’s something that we can fix and solve. And there’s a recipe to do it.

It seems governments today are only interested in funding housing benefits. When you worked for the province, you said governments have more control when they invest in bricks and mortar. Have you changed your mind?

In the course of the last 25 years we’ve seen people with low incomes lose ground, particularly singles on social assistance. And so I think housing benefits or housing allowances are absolutely appropriate. However, in the long run, everyone will agree that those programs are inflationary if there isn’t housing for people to move into. So we need supply too. I’m of the view now that we need a combination of both and we’ve needed a combination of both for some time.

The city’s first 10-year affordable housing plan fell short of its 10,000-unit goal. You have just completed the city’s next 10-year plan. Will this plan be more successful?

We achieved 7,000 units over 10 years (in the first plan) — and that includes four years under (mayor) Rob Ford. So I don’t think that is so bad.

The next plan is rooted in the national housing strategy and the right to housing. And that is a fundamental shift. Central to the plan is a housing commissioner who will hold the city to account and monitor the implementation of the right to housing.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has questioned whether the Liberals’ 2017 national housing strategy can deliver on its promise to lift 500,000 Canadians out of core housing need. What is your view?

I believe the national housing strategy is just the foundation or the building blocks from which we then can launch further initiatives. I’m buoyed by the fact that we have a minority government in Ottawa. And the action on housing under this new government, I believe, should ramp up even further.

You have threatened to retire before. Why now?

It’s a real honour to end my career with a framework that will have a lasting impact on how housing is delivered and that recognizes that everybody in the city needs the opportunity to have a home.

But I couldn’t do any of this work without getting permission to do it. And my career has been peppered with elected officials who have trusted me and empowered me to help them make progressive change.

That is what has kept me here so long — the ability within the job to bridge the gap between the civil service and the political realm. And in the process, to support the democratic process.

My mother is the start of all this. She gave me one piece of advice. Always be a pebble in somebody’s shoe. Always go out there to make a difference. And I hope in the work that I have done with so many people, that we have made a difference in this city and that we have made it more livable and a more just city.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.