Supportive Housing Toronto - When Leadership is Off Course

A fresh new start in Housing quickly becomes a harmful environment without strategic and proactive pivots in 2021 for those to whom Leadership owe their employment. A Lived Experience article series to influence thought and action in recovery systems from homelessness.

In Supportive Housing in Toronto, since early Covid 19, Case Management engagement has been at an all time low, leaving Tenant clients without regular medical care monitoring, and Front Line staff overwhelmed in a year full of challenge. Lack of critical case management with mental health and substance use illness, even in our new recovery pilot supportive housing models, sees Tenants as the Holiday Season arrives without built-in supports for connection - that were needed months ago - to offset the isolation, suicidal ideation, and yet more fatalities that a year without enough mental health and other high needs attention have compacted.

Management, Leadership and even the most empathetic staff have been off course in Covid 19. Supportive Housing funds given for Tenant use by Governments were spent on, in some cases, infestation control - which was already the Landlord’s responsibility. What wasn’t invested in for adults in supportive housing was Staff time with Tenants, safely, even one on one to bring Tenants into virtual connection and positive online in-house programming recognizing for us that Supportive Housing is community. Staff in a union environment took precedence over Tenant wellness and spaces as even large common rooms closed when they could have been environments for learning on zoom and other safe platforms. Outside of adult supportive housing and shelter environments, our world quickly transformed to supportive online facetime and connective learning. So did mental health survivor initiatives and youth recovery housing sites - but we did not in adult supportive housing, and perhaps especially in aging-in-place environments, this should have been the response to Covid 19 for healthy home communities.

Progressive and preventative programs for mental health wellness and recovery for health and home and Pro-active support to medical attention lacked in a critical time for many high need Tenants from homelessness. We continue to fight a costly uphill battle without built-in programs with Tenant involvement, co-design and buy-in as the way forward for supportive housing. If our mission statement includes Tenant involvement at every level of decision making, supportive housing continues to fail to ask Tenants what they want, and what Tenants want is for you to turn your focus proactively to it. By large, the answer is employment, and you are our employers.

Paying for spraying infestations and costly extreme cleans are the outcomes of lack of much preventative knowledge sharing and learning - unless we, living and lived experience - are shown and encouraged differently we will continue to ‘belong’ with harmful habits in harm reduction environments without what we need alongside, asking us to co-develop, co-design, co-lead with our meaningful involvement and leadership. Very small group work is far easier than the outcomes of a community left with only a victimization culture of drug dealing and theft. And that is perhaps 50% of supportive housing. Programs, no matter how small, of positive relationships and shared knowledge with Tenant leadership is a focus we are missing, and until we can see the investment in built in programs with providing online learning devices and reliable internet we will face Holiday and Holiday of the two worst months in out-of-Homelessness living.

For those who hand us a information pamphlet and say to your Team “you can only do so much” you are missing what we want, active involvement in cooperative Peer environments with inspiration to motivate us forward and positive connections - especially in second wave Covid 19 in December to help us all reach the goal of recovery.

Elizabeth Tremblay is lived experience Toronto Peer Supporter and Mentor to homeless systems recovery. Next in the article series: Healthy Lives, Healthy Homes: Programs for recovery isolation sites.