Attendees gather in Regent Park for the How We House Walking Tour Experience.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
On Sept. 28, there was a stain on my shirt.
To clarify, it was a pretty big stain – coffee I think – and I’d thrown the shirt on and ran out the door without noticing it. As I sat on a step on the paved forecourt at Regent Park Boulevard and Dundas Street East and listened to the How We House speakers, I finally spotted it. And I immediately felt self-conscious, perhaps even a little embarrassed. So, as if holding my hand to my heart during the national anthem, I placed it there to cover it. About 10 minutes later, I remembered the windbreaker in my backpack, so I put it on, even though the morning was warming up.
But I’d like to leave that stain for a minute to tell you about the folks I was listening to. Greg Cook, an outreach worker, author, and housing advocate, told the assembled crowd that 15 years ago the number of unhoused people was about 5,000. Today, that number, according to city statistics, is more than 11,000.
“Not having housing kills you,” he said. “Life expectancy is 30 years less if you don’t have housing in Toronto.”
He told us a little about the history of social housing, and that Canada was one of the last Western countries to “institute a social housing supply program” in the 1960s and, how, by the 1980s, funding began to dry up.
Regent Park, however, began in the late-1940s and was created by the Housing Authority of Toronto. Rent, then, was set at 20 per cent of a person’s income. Now, it’s 30 per cent. He finished by saying that, over the past three or four decades “government policy to not build social housing has had massive consequences.”
Housing at the Fred Victor Mission.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
Next, Brad Sider, a chaplain at Gateway Men’s Shelter told us: “The shelter system is pretty bleak, but there are positives.” For those of us – myself included – who’d never visited one, he painted a picture: “It’s not like McDonalds. … Shelters are different, each of them have their own cultures. … There are a number of shelters that are faith-based, so they take on their own unique qualities and culture; there’s city shelters, there’s youth shelters, there’s women’s shelters.
“The experience that someone has at Maxwell Meighen [Centre], where you have 300 residents, is very different than the one you might have at Gateway, where you only have 70,” he continued. At Maxwell, the No. 1 compliant was “security and theft.”
Mr. Sider said he’d been thinking a lot about what a person in a shelter would need to heal if they’re sick or hurting, mentally. “It’s just like any of us,” he said. “We need sleep, we need nutrition, and we need peace of mind.” The nutrition, he said, is “okay,” but sleep is difficult if you’re sharing a room with three other people and one of them has a mental health issue. And peace of mind can be hard if you’re worried about your stuff.
Now I’ll have to skip a few speakers to say that our group did, indeed, look at architecture. Saleh Sheihk told us about his Canadian Ontario Housing Benefit (COHB) subsidized, accessible unit at One Park Place North. But, “the city is not building enough,” he said.
We walked over to meet Debra Dineen at Oak Street Park. After a little personal history, Ms. Dineen took us through the grounds of the treed and beautiful Oak Street Co-op, where she lives. “We have no functions going on this weekend, oddly,” she said. “One of things you won’t see today is the amount of people who actually come out and sit and take up space and meet their neighbours, … Co-ops are an active community.”
Next, we met Ina Labuschange. Born in Canada but spending most of her life in the U.S., Ms. Labuschange had her green card taken away and was deported when she was caught with a “little bud of marijuana the size of my pinky.” Not knowing anyone here, she “lived in a tent in the Don Valley” for eight months. During that time, she’d come up to 40 Oak St. (Fred Victor Housing) to take a shower, do laundry and have breakfast.
Walking through the Oak Street co-op.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
“It’s really hard to be homeless, because you have to carry all your [belongings],” she said. “And it was very embarrassing because people look at you differently.” Eventually, however, “all the stars aligned” and she got an apartment at Fred Victor. To give back, she decided to volunteer in the community, which “has enriched my life.”
Walking to the remaining Regent Park buildings from the 1940s – a phased redevelopment process means they’ll be replaced within a few years – our group met Maseeda Majeed, who told us she’d been living in Toronto Community Housing for the past 20 years. Before finally landing a TCH apartment (her family waited six years, but today it can be 15 to 20 years), her father worked three jobs to support his wife and five children. In order to see him when she was 11- and 12-years-old, Ms. Majeed would wake up early to help him with his newspaper delivery job.
“I did it because the 10 minutes after [delivering] all the papers, me and my dad would sit and he’d order a tea at Tim Horton’s and I would get a plain bagel, toasted, with butter, and that was the longest I’d see my dad the entire week.”
Gardens at the Oak Street co-op.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
Securing TCH housing at 30 per cent of one’s income, she said, not only meant her dad could give up his paper route, “it changed the overall component of the family. … What we don’t see is health of a family; we saw our dad more than we’d ever seen him, we learned things like my dad used to swim in the river …[and] he’s a history and geography nerd.”
I met a great many more people. And I learned a great deal, too.
Like Ms. Majeed, I grew up in a seven-person house. But my father supported us with one job, and was present at the dinner table every night. I knew he could swim. I’ve never been on a wait-list for housing. Unlike Ms. Labuschange, I have never experienced homelessness. I’ve never experienced lining up for a meal or bed at the Maxwell Meighen Centre. I’ve never had to worry about my belongings.
What I have experienced is a stain on my shirt. But I could launder it that same day. And if I’ve ever been hungry, it’s because it was my choice to eat a light lunch. And that’s the point. There really are the haves, and the have-nots, and we need to get to know one another.
The How We House Walking Tour Experience was facilitated by Angie Hocking, community minister with the United Church of Canada.