When city councillor Joe Cressy said this week that allowing the closure of even one unit of social housing run by the Toronto Community Housing Corp. would be a “collective failure,” he was right.

Unfortunately, this is a familiar tune when it comes to TCHC. The corporation has been the subject of collective failures by all levels of government in recent years.

It’s long been clear that Toronto’s biggest landlord and only major social housing provider is in turmoil.

Just over a year ago, a major report called Tenants First concluded that the corporation is plagued by a “fundamentally broken” business model and a monolithic organizational structure that prevents it from meeting the many different needs of its tenants.

The social cost of these failures is enormous. TCHC is the landlord of 110,000 Torontonians, while an additional 181,000 people remain on a waitlist for subsidized housing. Its tenants include some of Toronto’s most vulnerable: 93 per cent live in poverty and 7 per cent face mental illnesses severe enough to qualify them for supportive housing. The city cannot afford to let these populations lose, or continue to go without, affordable housing.

Passing a motion proposed by Cressy, directing the TCHC not to close any more social housing units over the next two years, was the right call in a moment of crisis. It should minimize harm to TCHC’s current tenants, given that as many as 1,000 units are at risk of closure. But much more needs to be done to address the corporation’s problems.

What TCHC really needs is a complete overhaul supported by all three levels of government.

That starts with funding. The provincial and federal governments have not yet committed a one-third share to TCHC’s 10-year, $2.6-billion repair plan as the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro reported on Wednesday. Without this help, the city will have to find hundreds of millions of dollars in its 2018 and 2019 budgets for repairs in order to avoid closing units.

Funding commitments for repairs from the province and Ottawa are long overdue. While the federal government has promised billions of dollars countrywide for social housing projects, it has not assigned a dollar amount that will go to TCHC. The province has invested some funds in Toronto housing repairs, but has been mum on TCHC’s 10-year plan. Both governments need to step up immediately to help prevent Toronto’s social housing situation from degrading further.

The city is looking into options such as mortgage refinancing to make up some of the cash it needs for repairs. But it should also acknowledge the seriousness of the social housing funding shortfall and finally consider new revenue tools like an increase in property taxes.

Lack of funding is the elephant in the room when it comes to TCHC, but it is not the end of the corporation’s problems. If and when the huge backlog of repairs is completed, the corporation will still need to figure out how to move forward in a sustainable way and serve tenants better.

There is some reason to be cautiously optimistic on this front. The Tenants First plan, unanimously supported by council on Tuesday, includes measures that may help make TCHC more manageable and more tenant-focused.

Its most significant proposal is creation of an independent entity for senior tenants. The new body would manage 14,000 units of social housing.

The plan is commendable and in line with recommendations of the June 2016 Tenants First report. The city and the corporation should also work closely together to achieve the other aims outlined in that report. They include creating a more even income mix in Toronto’s social housing communities, and forging better connections with independent non-profit housing organizations and service providers.

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Cressy also said this week that “we should be having a debate about how much housing to build, not how to better maintain and govern the housing we have.”

He’s right about that. To get to that point, governments first must put money toward TCHC’s repair backlog. Then the corporation might stand a chance at benefiting from reforms put forward in the Tenants First plan.