How Does Participatory Budgeting Work?
How does participatory budgeting work?
Step 1: Identifying issues and priorities in your community/building
Community Housing Unit councils throughout Toronto Community Housing hold community planning meetings in the fall each year.
At the building level, tenants:
- identify and prioritize the issues
- choose their top capital priorities
- use a democratic process such as ballots or dots to prioritize the issues
- present the top five priorities to their Community Housing Unit council
Step 2: Ranking the Community Housing Unit priorities and allocating the capital funds
At the Community Housing Unit Council level, Tenant Representatives:
- rank the priorities from the buildings across the Community Housing Unit
- participate in deciding how the Community Housing Unit capital funds should be distributed against those priorities
- decide on the projects that will be funded by money set aside for tenant decision making
- identify one priority project for the Community Housing Unit that cannot be funded by the amount that the Community Housing Unit has and requires extra funding
- submit that priority project to the Inter- Community Housing Unit Group
- select a tenant delegate and a tenant alternate to attend the Inter-Community Housing Unit meeting
- communicate to other tenants in the Community Housing Unit
Step 3: Inter-CHU Group Meeting
The Inter-Community Housing Unit Group is made up of one tenant delegate and one alternate from each Community Housing Unit. The role of the Inter- Community Housing Unit group is to decide which capital projects submitted by the Community Housing Unit Councils will be funded by the 20% of the funds set aside for tenant decision making. This is done through a democratic decision making process decided by the tenants.
Presentations are done by the representative from each Community Housing Unit and the delegates are asked to vote while taking into consideration the needs of all of the communities as presented. To help the Inter-Community Housing Unit group with their decision making, they are given information on:
- all capital projects submitted by each Community Housing Unit to the Inter-Community Housing Unit group
- list of each Community Housing Unit’s priorities along with estimated costs
- Inter-Community Housing Unit presentations
Monitoring the projects
Building and Community Housing Unit plans are posted in each building. They list each project allocated funding, the cost and the completion dates.
- Community Housing Unit Managers must give the Community Housing Unit council monthly updates on the progress of the capital projects identified
- Tenant Representatives will update the tenants in their building about the status of the capital plans in each building
Who designed the participatory decision making process?
A working group made up of tenant volunteers from the October 2003 Tenant Forum worked together with Toronto Community Housing staff to develop this process. The working group developed the criteria for the distribution of capital funds in the amount of $9 million per year and evaluated the process from the previous year. The working group will continue to evaluate and improve on this process each year.
Learn more: