Essential Service Workers + Housing

Here we are ‘Zooming’ through Week 5 of physical distancing or “working from home”.

But what about those people who can’t work from home?

We depend upon many of these people to keep us alive and healthy.

How quickly we’re operating at the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — making sure that we’ve got our Physiological (food, shelter, clothing, water, air, sleep, etc.) and our Safety needs covered — and then saying, “Phew, that’s enough for today.” We’re a long way from worrying about Self-actualization !

But who are the people upon whom we depend to keep us alive and healthy?

How much do we pay them?

Where do they /can they live?

The people upon whom we depend are everyone involved in getting food into and out of the grocery stores; everyone involved in making sure that our utilities (water, sewage, electricity, natural gas, phones, and the internet !) operate; everyone involved in the chain of first responders; everyone in the non-elective healthcare sector, from doctors and nurses in the Emergency Room to personal service workers in your mother’s long-term care facility; cleaners for all of these facilities; and transit workers to get all of these people to work; and many more.

Many of these people barely make a living wage, and as such their choices of where to live are limited — and often nowhere near where they work, nor provided with plentiful rapid transit.

Going forward, we might want to rethink this.

Although we are now seeing the effect of this dependence upon low-paid essential service workers on a global scale, three previous 21st-century disasters have already pointed to this.

These disasters are Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Hurricane Sandy in New York, and the Grenfell Tower Fire in London.

The hardest hit part of New Orleans was the 9th Ward. The people whose homes were wiped out there were the cleaners, the bus drivers, the personal service workers, the hospital orderlies, the grocery stockers, the very people that the rest of New Orleans depended upon. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, they were bused away from New Orleans to shelters in neighbouring cities and states. Most didn’t have homes to return to, nor insurance to rebuild their homes. New Orleans’ recovery from the hurricane was severely hampered by the loss of these essential service workers.

Sustainable won first prize in an international design competition for a Passive House for the 9th Ward. We carefully considered how to create a house that would be resilient through the next hurricane — or other interruption of functioning utilities — in a sub-tropical climate so that the residents could carry on in their service of others in New Orleans.

Similarly, the hardest hit part of New York was Far Rockaway — a convenient 90 minute ride from downtown Manhattan on the A Train. Again, the people whose homes were wiped out were the very same essential service workers upon whom the rest of New York depended upon. Even if their homes weren’t destroyed, they were likely damaged, as was the A Train bridge that connected Far Rockaway to the mainland. The convenient 90 minute subway ride was now an arduous 3 hour bus ride — if the bus came. Without cleaners, coffee shop and food court staff, or transit workers, the bankers and stock market workers of Wall Street had a hard time getting back to their business-as-usual.

Again, Sustainable won first prize in an international design competition for a Resilient House for Far Rockaway.

Additionally, Sustainable was invited to consider how we might take such a resilient approach to a whole neighbourhood in Far Rockaway.

We looked at many layers, both natural and man-made, to mitigate the effects of future floods in order that the neighbourhood could still function so that the residents could carry on in their service of others in New York.

Sustainable: Far Rockaway

A similar essential service interruption played out after the tragic London fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017. Grenfell was a 24-storey tower on a small public housing estate, surrounded by the expensive homes of Chelsea and Kensington. After the fire, not only were many of the residents of Grenfell relocated to the outskirts of London, far from the convenient transit of Kensington, upon which they depended to get to their essential service jobs; but so were the evacuated residents of the other towers that had similar cladding — cladding that was seen as the primary cause of so many deaths. As at Wall Street, the financial centre of London (The City) was adversely affected by the inability of so many essential service workers to arrive at work.

In 2018, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, launched his Building Council Homes for Londoners program; while the council housing game was raised in Hackney; with this project described as “a mixed new neighbourhood of real architectural quality” and “some of the best council housing ever built”.

In Toronto, we have a potential Grenfell just waiting to happen. On the periphery of our city, we have an aging stock of 1,000 residential towers (many built at the same time as Grenfell) where many of our essential service workers can just afford to live. Should disaster strike but one of these towers, will the surviving residents be relocated further away from the inconvenient transit upon which they depend upon today?

But, like in post-Grenfell London, it doesn’t need to be like this. Let’s look at the terrific downtown Toronto housing cooperative at 60 Richmond St E, completed in 2010, by Teeple Architects.

From the description provided by Teeple Architects: “The client program — a housing co-op for hospitality [hotel and restaurant] workers that would be economical to build and maintain — was a key inspiration for the design [of an 11-story, 85-unit mixed use building] which incorporates social spaces dedicated to food and its production. The result is a small-scale, but nevertheless full-cycle ecosystem described as “urban permaculture”; the resident-owned and operated restaurant and training kitchen on the ground floor is supplied with vegetables, fruit and herbs grown on the sixth floor terrace. The kitchen garden is irrigated by storm water from the roofs. Organic waste generated by the kitchens serves as compost for the garden.”

Often overlooked in the shadow of these amazing ‘extras’ is the simple fact that this housing is within walking distance, or convenient 24-hour transit, of many of the hotels and restaurants in which the essential service residents work.

Going forward, I suggest that we create more affordable, inclusive housing prioritized to our essential service workers — we now all know who they are — located on our best transit routes.

According to Toronto’s Housing Now website, we have the beginnings of such a plan.

“City Council initiated Housing Now in December 2018 to accelerate the development of affordable housing and mixed-income, mixed-use, transit-oriented communities on 11 City-owned properties. This first phase of Housing Now has the potential to create more than 10,000 new residential units, including over 3,700 affordable rental units, with rents averaging 80 percent of Toronto’s average market rent.

Housing Now will create a mix of affordable rental, market rental and ownership housing options to serve Toronto residents. The new affordable rental homes will remain affordable for 99 years, providing quality housing opportunities for future generations. The affordable homes will be affordable for households earning between approximately $21,000 and $52,000 per year.

The creation of new housing on City-owned lands will provide Toronto residents with opportunities to live affordably near transit hubs and close to places of work, education and services. Investment in these well-located sites will also contribute to the broader community by delivering new amenities, revitalized public spaces and improved access to transit.”

Let’s get on with this !

Sustainable has developed a concept for one Housing Now site at Warden and St Clair — steps from the Warden subway station — for which we won 2nd prize in an international ideas competition for Rethinking the Future. Our Warden Hilltop Village creates an intergenerational, mixed-use housing development that advocates for affordability, quality, sustainability and inclusion for all vulnerable groups — including children, youth, persons with disabilities, people living with HIV, older persons, indigenous peoples, refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants — as specified in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — Leaving No One Behind.

Physical, mental and social health drives all the design decisions in order to have a positive impact in the people, the city and the planet.

The private aspects of the buildings show a systematic and regular face to the urban landscape. The shared areas provoke a joyful explosion of colour.

The public courtyards and semi-public spiral street corridors pump out social activities from the oasis at the heart of the building to the exterior.

Warden Hilltop Village becomes an intergenerational, inclusive vertical attractor by catalyzing social activities. The community public spaces on the lower levels could be customized according to each neighbourhood needs. The proposed design for this block, allocates missing amenities in the area like: a local market that would spill out fresh products on weekends, a free coffee shop for residents, an educational and child-minding facility, and a coworking and community event space.

The building catalyzes intergenerational interactions through planned and “ad hoc” activities that take place in a wide range of shared spaces which are connected through a spiraling promenade from the ground floor to the roof:

• public courtyard,

• semi-public street and roof top,

• semi-private front porches, and

• private apartments.

The traditional front porch is replicated in the entrance of every apartment as a semi-private space in order to foster communication and social interaction on above grade levels.

Double height semi-public spaces are located on above ground as an extension of the semi-public street”. They can be turned into playgrounds, game rooms, dining rooms, lounge spaces, greenhouses, yoga rooms, etc, in order to host intergenerational activities as needed.

This is the least that we can offer to our, often, most vulnerable yet most depended-upon fellow citizens !

If we have learned a few things through this pandemic, then let this be one of them.

Warden Hilltop Village