The building at 90 Shuter Street is the Homes First Society’s first project to replace the low-rent housing and rooming house stock that was lost in the late 1970s real estate boom. Purpose-built, it has 17 “rooming houses,” i.e., 17 four- and five-bedroom apartments, two per floor in the 11-storey apartment building. The rooms are large. Drywalled concrete block walls provide sound and fire separation.

The design maximizes individual privacy. There are only four or five people per apartment and only nine people per floor. The small groups facilitate group interaction, decision making, and problem solving. Tenants have keys to stop the elevator only on their floor, to promote the sense that the apartment-front-door is the door-to-the-street.

The lounge in elevator lobbies on each floor is for interactions between the two apartment groups. The ground-floor common space (with kitchen), by the front door, is for “drop-in” relationships on the way in or out, parties, and programs. The second floor common room is for organized meetings, parties, and programs. The top-floor deck provides outdoor space away from “friends” on the street. A top-floor workshop space is available for hobbies and for community economic development. Offices on the ground floor are for staff and tenant management, and agency service delivery.

The partnership of community agencies, citizens, tenants, and staff at 90 Shuter represents a holistic, community-development approach. Tenants self-selected into the initial groups, in a unique organizing process that allowed them to develop expectations and group rules before occupancy. Community members from the Board sat on committees with tenants and staff to ensure due process, to help solve problems, and to consider evictions.

In the year 2000, in a mean-spirited political climate where “the bottom-line” rules, this holistic philosophy has a low standing in many people’s eyes. Yet, when you see a former “biker” chide an agency worker for marking up the paint on moving-day – “Hey!! This is my house!!” – the benefits of the approach are obvious.

Bill Bosworth