one letter by a member of our community
January 17, 2022In September 2020 the house my apartment was in sold and I was issued a N12 eviction notice. I had lived at that address for 7 years. Within that time rent prices in Toronto had doubled but ODSP assistance remained the same and my wage at my part-time job income had also not gone up.
For the next 10 months I fought my eviction while looking for a new place to live. I won a LTB tribunal in December only to be issued another N12 the same day. I ended up viewing dozens of apartments and applied to be a tenant at 11 of them. Repeatedly, landlords rejected me. One rejected me twice after the first tenant he accepted fell through. I have an excellent credit rating and have paid rent on time for my entire adult life. Every application would ask me my income and want proof of that, which required I disclose that I receive ODSP.
In desperate need of assistance, I called and talked to someone at West Toronto housing help. I contacted the Federation of Metro Tenants Association. I became an ACORN member, I connected with tenant rights advocates in my community, including Cole Webber at Parkdale Legal. Despite all of this, I was not informed that I was eligible for a housing allowance. The tenant activists I came into contact with were shockingly unsympathetic to mental health problems and made things worse.
The existence of TTHAP was first brought to my attention by claude wittmann when I participated in his Being Scene housing survey. It was through the contact info he provided that I connected with EPIC. I can't imagine what would have become of me had I not found claude via Workman Arts.
My crisis by no means ended once I was assigned an EPIC housing worker. My worker, Deanna, was terrible at finding listings. The few she found were completely inappropriate. I was much more capable at finding places without her. The vague information she shared with me was that I was eligible for a housing allowance between the amounts of $100 and $400 or whatever would (bizarrely) bring my rent to between 65 and 74% of my income. Exactly how the allowance is calculated and by whom was never made clear. When applying for apartments landlords wanted to know that I could afford rent before accepting me as a tenant but this was impossible without knowing the amount of housing allowance I would receive. In the end, with help from Claude, who had already been through this process, I found out I could receive $500 and only then was I able to successfully find housing (although I didn't officially get my housing allowance amount until after I signed a lease). Deanna and her supervisor were often condescending and purposefully opaque. They would contradict themselves and didn't understand the reality of finding housing for someone in my situation. The reality was that I had to lie about my source of income in order to be accepted as a tenant. It was made very clear to me that private landlords would not knowingly rent to someone receiving ODSP. After I finally signed a lease EPIC themselves threatened my new housing by insisting they needed to contact my new landlord and discuss my housing allowance directly with him, once again claude stepped in to remedy the situation.
The reason I became a WA member was because I needed to reconnect with the arts community after a prolonged absence due to ptsd, depression and unrelenting chronic pain. For me, it was impossible to continue an art practice while living in crisis. My hope is that a place like WA functions to lift vulnerable artists out of crisis, out of isolation, out of survival mode, so that their creativity can thrive and flourish. A housing worker is a necessary part of that. This population needs someone who understands mental health and the unique housing barriers we face.
about add