In a democracy, elected representatives are supposed to reflect the interests of their constituents. That mission doesn’t always match up with reality, partly because voters don’t all hold the same views about what is important.
As a pure survival strategy, elected representatives can be tempted to pursue the interests of the voters who elected them, hopefully securing those same votes to return to office after the next election. It’s not surprising that voters who hold different views about what is important feel excluded: they are.
The issue of multi-tenant housing in Toronto is a good example. Multi-tenant homes (rooming houses) had been banned in most of the city’s residential districts at least as far back as 1996 and quite possibly for as long as there have been zoning by-laws. In spite of the ban, tens of thousands of people live in multi-tenant homes.
Toronto residents who live in multi-tenant housing have avoided actions that would draw attention to their housing situation. Speaking up in favour of making multi-tenant homes legal is not wise, especially when your elected representative officially supports the ban.
Voting in a municipal election, which generally requires providing proof of address, also carried risks. These examples illustrate how residents in multi-tenant housing have been excluded from democratic processes and access to safety protections. Meanwhile, Councillors were elected and re-elected by voters who supported the status quo.
In Toronto, something finally shifted on December 2022, when the Council voted to allow multi-tenant homes in most residential districts. Read more at CBC: Toronto city council has debated it for decades. Now, it’s finally legalized rooming houses city-wide
Toronto is certainly not the only city where significant chunks of its population are excluded from formal political processes and their interests are overlooked. Some people see participatory budgeting as a possible way forward.
Participatory budgeting has been actively tested in New York City. It started with two pilot projects, where residents were given opportunities to recommend how public funds should be spent. The first was directed at youth, who as a group have very low voter turnouts. The second was directed to populations that were most adversely affected by the pandemic. The second pilot specifically included people who call the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) home and who are also under-represented at the polls during elections.
Both pilots were rated a success. The people who were involved reported they felt more engaged in decision making and wanted to stay involved. Going forward, the budget has been expanded to include all five of the City’s boroughs, with an amount specifically allocated to the communities that were hit hardest by COVID.
This sounds wonderful, until you see the scale of the project. The participatory process affects $5 million of the City’s budget of $111 billion. Still, it’s a start. Read more about New York’s experience at Next City1: How New York Is Giving Residents A Voice In The City Budget
In Porto Alegre, Brazil, participatory budgeting has operated on a city wide scale beginning in 1989. The city government created 16 budget regions and an open community-based process to identify and decide on public spending priorities. Using this model, basic services like water, sanitation and roads were extended to parts of the city where none had existed previously.
All residents had an opportunity to be involved. Altogether 14,000 of the city’s 1.4 million residents had direct input to the City’s budget decisions. At 1.0% of the population, this might seem small, but compares well to Toronto’s Council, where 27 people decide expenditures for 2.8 million people (that’s 0.00096%). Creating the budget regions and the community based decision making process also took away some of the barriers that might have prevented people from being involved in Toronto. Read more about city-wide participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre in Next City: How Cities Use Participatory Budgeting To Build Place
