Toronto Budget Check (version 1): Toronto Shelter, Support & Housing Administration 2016

This is the fourth in a series of blogs in which I’m experimenting with presentation of the Toronto budget. See the first (for PFR) for some more commentary about the components and motivation. Put simply this approach pulls apart the budget into its core component types, and thus should make it easier to understand and debate. In particular, the layout pulls out

• Direct Subsidies to Persons (estimated) This is flow-through, and is not a direct operating cost
• Capital staffing costs (estimated) This doesn’t belong in the operating budget, and distorts the operating picture. See here for an explanation.
• Inter-Divisional adjustments These are book-keeping entries among divisions and agencies, and do not impact overall revenues or expenses
• Contributions from and to capital accounts These are separate from operating costs, used to make cash infusions and savings contributions

This leaves current operating revenues and expenses (more or less) clearly stated to represent what an operating budget really should do: reveal day-to-day costs of operating an enterprise, so that those costs can be fairly understood, compared, debated, and refined.

Here is the result for the Housing division (SSHA):

Source: Henrik Bechmann

If these estimates are at all realistic, it appears that the City’s costs for subsidized housing are rising rapidly, as are the provincial contributions.

Here is the operating portion of the two Services defined by SSHA:

Source: Henrik Bechmann

I haven’t been able to find a clear indication of exact subsidies to persons totals, so for now I’ve created rough placeholders. These came from examination of account categories related to Activities taken from open data sets. I’ve taken the totals from the most likely candidates of each activity related to providing subsidies. Obviously this is a very rough approximation of the subsidies offered.

Note 1 to the Services Statement directly above:

Source: Henrik Bechmann. See the embedded sources for more detail.

Note that for 2016 I had to rely on the preliminary budget, as the approved budget version did not include activities.

Please give me feedback about any of this! mail at budgetpedia.ca

Henrik Bechmann founded the budgetpedia project in 2015, and is currently the project lead (see budgetpedia.ca). The opinions expressed here are his own.