It’s all about the community at St. Luke’s Table drop-in
It’s just after breakfast in the basement of St. Luke’s Anglican Church.
The tables have been cleared, awaiting lunch. It might be a little early and there’s no alcoholic inducement, but Thursday morning means it’s time for karaoke at St. Luke’s Table.
Go Tell It on the Mountain, My Way, Proud Mary, White Christmas. The songs, performed with maximum enthusiasm and varying levels of expertise, keep rolling from the corner where the karaoke machine is set up.
“Never have so many songs been butchered by so few,” observes Kevin William Jones wryly from a table far way from the musical action.
Jones is a regular at St. Luke’s Table, a day program for the precariously housed that has been operating since 1983. Some participants are homeless, others have their own apartments. But the majority live in the rooming houses scattered around the neighbourhood.
Jones, 51, has been unable to work since he had a stroke when he was 18, leaving his left side paralyzed. He moved into a nearby rooming house last June and pays $650 a month for his room, which leaves about $500 for everything else. St. Luke’s Table offers not just meals, but community away from the confines of a room, he says.
“This place is a godsend. It helps so many people.”
About three-quarters of the participants at St. Luke’s Table live in rooming houses. Most have monthly incomes of between $600 and $800, says team leader Kim Latka.
“Their standard of living is below poverty standards. Their rooms are often the size of small closets. There’s a big problem with bed bugs. There may be no locks on the doors. And they are often afraid to make a complaint because they’ll be evicted.”
St. Luke’s is at the corner of Somerset Street West and Bell Street North — ground zero in one of the city’s most rooming house-intensive neighbourhoods.
There are about 1,333 licensed rooms in Ottawa, almost 70 per cent of them are in west-central Ottawa, which ranges from west of Elgin Street to east of Island Park Drive, according to a “report card” released in early December by the Somerset West Community Health Centre, only a block away from St. Luke’s.
By the city’s definition, a rooming house has a minimum of four rooms with shared bathrooms and a kitchen. But it’s not unusual for some houses to be chopped up into at least a dozen rooms. Respondents to the study reported rodent and bed bug infestations, clashes with other tenants and rooming house managers, lack of hot water and garbage removal.
Stan Currier has lived in a rooming house for about a year. After paying the rent, he has $500 a month left over to pay for everything else. Currier suffers from depression and anxiety. He’s looking for a new place to live. Meanwhile, he’s stressed out.
“If I moved, it would have to be someplace close by,” he says.
Nicole Gregorie has her own apartment. A one-time chef, she has been a busker under the name Nikki G for about 20 years, playing her guitar and belting out the Eagles, the Beatles and Elvis on sidewalks in Westboro, the Glebe and Elgin Street
“It’s very hard for me not to be able to work,” she says. “I’ve made a living out of this. It’s a hard living, but it’s a living.”
Gregorie performs at every St. Luke’s open mike night on the last Monday of the month.
“We’re all old and battered. But when we come here, there’s the camaraderie and the friendship. Without this place I would never make it. Sometimes at 8 a.m., I’m here waiting. Because after two weeks, I don’t have any money for coffee,” she says.
“Bruno the cook can make a gourmet meal out of a can of tuna fish and a jar of peanut butter. There are rooming houses spread out all over this neighbourhood. People will walk for half an hour in the snow to get a coffee and some breakfast.”
The Somerset West Community Health Centre report card draws a dire picture of the reality of life for rooming house tenants. Some reported paying almost threequarters of their income for their room. (In Ontario, “affordable” housing should count for 30 per cent of gross annual income.) More than half used food banks and soup kitchens. Almost three-quarters had at least one mental health condition and eight out of 10 reported using drugs or alcohol to cope.
But the study also concluded that rooming houses played an important role in Ottawa’s low-income housing ecosystem. For many tenants, a rooming house is all they can afford — and that shaky foothold on housing is the only buffer that’s keeping them from a homeless shelter.
The St. Luke’s day program starts at 8 a.m. with breakfast and a lineup at the door. Mental health and addictions counsellors and a nurse are available to participants. There’s a seasonal bike clinic and a weekly sewing clinic, a phone and a computer.
“If we can’t help someone, we’ll find someone who can,” says Latka. “We’re here to build community. This is a place for people to feel that they’re not being judged. I think people just feel comfortable here. They feel safe.”