From The Toronto Star: Published Oct. 5th 2002

It's a waiting game for a decent place to live

Needy languish an average of five years on city's subsidized housing list

Charles Mitchell



Every day, Sahra Abdi's seven kids asked her why they had to live in a motel.

In the summer, Abdi, 32, and her family shared two small rooms in a motel on Kingston Rd. in Scarborough. There was no room service and no mints were left on their pillows at bedtime. There was one small bathroom in each room, no living room and no separate kitchen. The refrigerator was so small, it barely held what one college student could consume in a few days. In fact, the rooms looked more like a first-year university student's dormitory than a home for two parents and seven children ranging in age from 1 to 18.

"My children are not happy to live in a shelter," Abdi said. "They ask me many questions: When are we getting a house? Why (do) we live here? Why didn't the government give us a house?"

The Abdis have since moved out, their whereabouts unknown. But they are still on the waiting list for subsidized housing in Toronto. They have been waiting for nine years.

"They say (if) you are a large family (and) you need four bedrooms or five bedrooms, then you have to wait 12 years," Abdi said.

In June, close to 62,000 people were on the list, according to Toronto Social Housing Connections, a department of the Toronto Community Housing Corp., which runs housing programs.

In the meantime, the needy may share cramped accommodations, rent places they cannot afford, turn to shelters or motels or become homeless. Some of Toronto's homeless have become squatters, like, until recently, the denizens of Tent City, or the poverty activists who turned a derelict building into their Pope Squat this summer.

Abdi arrived in Canada in 1993 after escaping the civil war in Somalia. In June, the family's landlord raised the rent on the North York condominium where they had lived since their arrival. At the time, Abdi was upgrading her nursing skills in college and her husband was laid off from his job in a cola factory.

With nowhere to turn, they moved into one of the six motels on Kingston Rd. the city uses to house some of its needy. In 1995-96, the number of motels used as shelters peaked at 13 because of an influx of refugees. The city is now trying to phase out the use of motels and accommodate people in shelters instead.

The average wait for subsidized housing is five years, but can be longer. It works on a points system: If you are homeless or younger than 18 or in an abusive relationship, you get more points and move higher up the list.

"It doesn't mean if you're number 62,000, you'll never get in," noted Brad Duguid, a Toronto city councillor and board member of the Toronto Community Housing Corp. "If you're high needs you may get in, but if you're not you'll have a long wait."

William (J.D.) Hooper, 30, and his fiancée, 31-year-old Patty Fish, said they are already fed up after waiting for subsidized housing for two years. Until recently, they lived in a Kingston Rd. shelter for homeless families for more than a year.

Both would rather have affordable housing than subsidized housing, but convincing anyone to hire them or rent them an apartment is difficult. Hooper has been in and out of jail on drug and robbery charges, but said he is ready to be responsible.

"We always get 101 different excuses why they wouldn't rent to us: We don't accept welfare. Or the places are just too much," Hooper said. "I don't want to live on the streets. I don't want to live below anyone else. I want to be treated the same way anyone else would be treated."

Recently, the couple found a basement apartment. They receive a little more than $900 in welfare payments each month, and their $700 rent leaves little at the end of the day for food, clothing and transportation.

Fish lost her three children, from previous relationships, while she was living temporarily in a two-bedroom apartment with her mother, brother and kids. She hopes that finding a permanent home will give her the legal footing she needs to have her children, ages 8 to 13, returned from foster care.

"I gave up there for a while," she said. "Soon, I can go trying to get my kids back."

Recently, several initiatives have been announced to address the housing problem.

The province, city and federal governments announced in August a project to build a 92-unit affordable housing complex in Scarborough. Fifty-seven of the units will serve as permanent housing for those who are homeless or paying rent they can't afford. The rest will be transitional housing for people who need help making the shift between life in a temporary shelter and the community.

The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing also said last month that it would subsidize another 1,000 units under the rent supplement program. It already supplements the rent on 8,000 units.

At the end of September, in response to the Tent City debacle, the province announced it would give the former residents of that makeshift neighbourhood rent subsidies that are expected to average $500 a month. Officials said the subsidies were cheaper than moving them into the shelter system.

In Monday's throne speech, the federal Liberals offered a vague pledge to spend more on affordable housing and on a program that helps reduce homelessness.

But Duguid says government initiatives are not the ultimate answer.

"We need affordable housing — that's what we need," he says. "People shouldn't need to rely on the state. They should be able to find housing that's affordable to them somewhere in their community."

Copyright 2002. All rights reserved.

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