SERVICES IN A TOWER
AT JANE & FINCH

CLARA STEWART-ROBERTSON
Manager, Green Change, Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre

“The Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre worked hard to integrate itself into the base of a residential tower long before RAC zoning came along. They’re doing an amazing job bringing services to the community, and they provide a great model for other tower neighbourhoods to learn from.

Being located at the base of a tower community is crucial to our mandate. But at first it was difficult making connections to the street – to reach the people that needed us. It took a long time to figure out the zoning changes required to improve our connection to residents, and then to establish working relationships with City. The year or so it took us to achieve this delayed our funding commitments and made it a real challenge to build a space, keep the community involved, and even keep our
basic programs running.

In the end, however, our hard work paid off and we’ve built a fantastic community centre that is tightly woven into the fabric of Jane and Finch.

With the RAC zone, these kinds of programs are going to be much easier for people to achieve. This gives real backing to the ethic of Tower Renewal. Now it will be much easier to get key players at the table, easier to build relationships between landlords and service organizations, and easier to change actual built form. Most importantly, it opens up opportunities for residents because things can start to happen at the neighbourhood scale, everything is more attainable, there are more related resources, more collaborative relationships, a better work environment, a healthier community.”