When Social Housing Sticks Out Like a Sore Thumb

Why is it that social housing has the uncanny capacity to be so easily recognizable as social housing?

It may seem like an odd question to posit, but really why should social housing look like social housing? Isn’t the enterprise to integrate social housing (and I mean physically) into the urban fabric entirely lost by failing to design it in a way that matches – not disturbs – the urban façade? And by that virtue, isn’t the whole effort to integrate low-income populations into society completely lost by having them be so effortlessly identifiable as low-income populations?

It doesn’t have to be this way… design may have the power to distinguish social housing as social housing, but it also has the power to better integrate it (and its dwellers) into the city. Even if cost is the concern, I am not completely convinced that social housing has to look as bad and cheap as it does.

For example, why does this particular building in the Annex inner-city neighborhood of Toronto have to be enclosed by an unsightly black fence? Setting aside the obvious aesthetic problems such a fence causes (to both the passerby and surrounding residents), it does nothing to integrate the building and its dwellers into the neighborhood – in fact; it only further isolates them from their neighbors. I am even more boggled and upset by the fact that the property has a large, beautiful park as its front lawn, but refuses to allow any outside residents from enjoying it.

If the fences were removed, and the public was given access to the park, not only would the entire neighborhood be more comfortable with the idea of having social housing next door, but the social housing residents would actually be given the opportunity to meet their neighbors! It seems absolutely ludicrous that a park owned and operated by the City is only accessible to private residents whose homes are subsidized by OUR tax dollars! I am not asking the City to sell the space and build expensive condos – I just want everyone to share the space, which is not such a revolutionary idea!