Mayor John Tory says he got right off the plane from Delhi Saturday and on the phone to deal with reports of 3,540 Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) units sitting vacant.

“I’m completely disatisfied with this,” said Tory. “It’s clearly not satisfactory we have as many units empty for as long as they are.”

He said he’s asked for a report within 30 days from interim TCHC CEO Greg Spearn on how the housing authority can do a better job of filling the vacant units “right away.”

Tory also spoke to the interim general manager of the city’s shelter, support and housing division, Paul Raftis, about providing a report – again, within 30 days – on how to clean up the centralized waiting list, now being managed by the city.

“We’ll do whatever is reasonable to get these things fixed,” the mayor said.

The Toronto Sun reported Saturday that while some 177,000 people wait for subsidized housing in Toronto, TCHC brass are sitting on 3,540 vacant units, 1,590 of them immediately rentable.

The other 1,950 units are sitting vacant either because they’ve been boarded up, are being held for superintendent offices or have been set aside to use to relocate tenants.

TCHC’s vice-president of asset management, Graham Leah, told the board Friday, they made 19,000 offers to people on the centralized wait list last year but couldn’t reach 14,000 of them because the info was “stale or outdated.”

He also said offers are being turned down either because “security is compromised” or the building is in poor shape.

TCHC Board member Vince Gasparro said the housing authority’s revenues are flat, yet expenses keep rising.

“When you have a stubbornly high vacancy rate, it only exacerbates the problem,” he said. “This is an issue that needs to be fixed immediately.”

Phil Gillies, secretary of the mayor’s task force on community housing said the repair backlog didn’t start in 2013 – but that the units have not been properly maintained for 20 years.

That, coupled with TCHC’s financial woes, he said, is why a big chunk of the portfolio needs to be broken up and moved to other not-for-profit agencies.

Gillies agreed the wait list is probably not being “vigilantly maintained” as to whether those on it are in real need, still looking or still qualify for subsidized housing.

SLevy@postmedia.com