The Last Word: Why is progres so slow on supportive housing? A consumer perspective

CrossCurrents

Editorials do not necessarily reflect the views of CAMH. We welcome submissions from our readers. For information, contact the Editor, CrossCurrents, 33 Russell St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S1, tel 416 595-6714, e-mail: hema_zbogar@camh.net.

Lana Frado

There are perhaps thousands of fine people who have lent their time and goodwill advocating for more housing. Service providers in the housing business spend countless hours lobbying for more units, writing proposals and developing properties. Hospitals, mental health workers, anti-poverty activists, consumer activists, psychiatric survivor activists, disability advocates, academics, faith groups - all have supported the fight for more housing for mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors. Housing, we say, is a right. Imagine, we say, in a country like ours….

Yes. Imagine in a country like ours that your neighbours, your local city councillor, your mayor talk about the need for “consultation” before more of “your kind” move into a community. Imagine demonstrations against you, appeals to municipal processes to keep you out. Imagine having to stand up in your local community centre and having to argue for your right to move. But righteousness prevails and supportive housing is built.

Imagine now that people who have the knowledge and the power to have you detained and medicated hold the keys to the door of that elusive rent-geared-to-income apartment. Where documents like “support service agreements,” “support plans” and “licensing agreements” are common trade. You read sentences in them like, “I agree that this agreement supercedes the Tenant Protection Act.” Or, “I agree to accept the services of XYZ agency as a condition of my tenancy.”

Imagine that your interview for your new apartment requires questions about your relationship to your family, your sexual orientation and your medical history. Have you ever been arrested, by the way? Did you think you had served your sentence? Well the onus is on you, my friend, to prove that you’re safe enough to house.

Imagine that your housing support worker, half your age, offers you a referral to a harm reduction program one day. You are confused. You rarely even drink. But you are informed that you smelled like alcohol the other day when you came to drop off your rent cheque. A free ticket to an afternoon baseball game received at a drop-in and a bottle of beer to celebrate a warm summer day, you explain sheepishly. Because you have to. Don’t you?

Imagine monthly inspections of your home. Surprise visits from support workers. Just trying to be helpful. Or, letters from your landlord diagnosing your request for necessary repairs as a symptom of your mental illness. Imagine being told during your lease negotiation that your apartment was a privilege afforded to you by the taxpayers of your province - not a right.

Imagine all of these things and more. Bed bug infestations. Broken locks and peeling paint. Imagine that your landlord phones your doctor to recommend a medication increase.

It is a given that within the mental health system there will always be those who feel they are in a better position to make decisions on our behalf than we are. Both those with honourable intentions and not-so-honourable ones. There are also people working in the system - driven by competitive proposal calls, municipal by-laws, unrealistic expectations on behalf of funders - who find themselves co-opted into out-of-control situations. What do you do when a building is falling apart and full of tenants? When workers of all manner of competency and service models are in and out of a building interacting with tenants? When contracts with private landlords go haywire? When tenants are demanding repairs while funding falls behind?

It is incumbent on those responsible for providing housing, both funding and service, to ensure sustainability. To ensure that rights are not violated out of desperation to control unmanageable financial issues. Or that lack of management, training and supervision in legal issues results in bigotry and rights violations.

The range of housing options must be expanded to allow consumers and survivors to choose both their housing and their supports. The power of that choice backed up by having control of dedicated funds. We don’t need web sites with referrals to more waiting lists.

Agencies must develop a capacity to work from an anti-oppression framework and an analysis of the historical oppression of those who have used the mental health system. Finally, affirmative action strategies directed to hiring consumers and survivors in mental health services will both improve access to peer advocacy and enrich traditional service provider practice.

While we celebrate each project funded, and each tenant housed, where does the shift from the right to housing to housing rights take place? We cannot continue to mortgage people’s dignity for shelter.

Lana Frado is executive director of Sound Times, a member-driven consumer/survivor initiative that provides support, education and recreation for people who use or have used the mental health system.

• Print Bookmark