Tenant organizing at Cityhome : a history of umbrella organizations / by Jim Ward. : NH15-914/1992E-PDF

This study documents the work carried out by tenants as they attempted to develop umbrella tenant organizations in housing owned and managed by the City of Toronto's non-profit housing corporation - Cityhome. The study spans a period from 1976 to 1992. During that period the tenants of Cityhome developed three umbrella organizations. The second and third organizations built on the experiences of their predecessors. Although each of the three organizations differed in their approaches the major reasons for their development were similar, these were: (i) to work towards more direct involvement of tenants in Cityhome policy development; (ii) it was felt that a city-wide tenants' organization could deal with the larger issues more effectively than a large number of project-based tenants' organizations; (iii) the belief that a city-wide organization could be effective as an advocacy body; (iv) a city-wide organization was seen as necessary to monitor the consistency of policy implementation. This study argues that six minimum conditions have to be met if the organization is to be successful. These six conditions are: (i) the maintenance of an active and interested membership; (ii) clear goals; (iii) an environment conductive to tenant organizing; (iv) good leadership; (v) the presence of at least one paid staff person; and (vi) dependable resources. The experience of each of the organizing efforts is examined in light of these minimum conditions. The major obstacles to success for the umbrella organizations have been the difficulty in maintaining ongoing tenant involvement, the competition for tenant attention between specific "home site" issues and city-wide issues, and personality conflicts. The third umbrella organization, the Coalition of Cityhome Tenants, is still thriving and is probably the most successful of the three organizing efforts. This is largely because it has been able to build on the successes and to learn by the mistakes of the two previous organizations. However, the lack of dependable funding for a paid coordinator has meant that the continuing success of the current organization has to depend entirely on the commitment of volunteers.

Lien permanent pour cette publication :
publications.gc.ca/pub?id=9.908697&sl=1

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