Woman in Renfrew demands supportive housing for child
‘I had to do something about this,” Keefe says of camp-out in support of daughter
Bonnie Keefe has been on a hunger strike since Monday, when she pitched a tent outside Renfrew’s town hall in the hopes of landing a supportive housing bed in a group home for her disabled daughter.
“If I have to stay here until Christmas, I will,” she said.
Keefe’s daughter Jenny Napier has the mental abilities of a fiveyear-old. She has been bounced from crisis bed to crisis bed as far away as Cornwall after an already tenuous life started to unravel about a year and a half ago.
Jenny calls her mother many times a day, often in tears.
“She threatened to hurt herself. That just broke my heart. She said, ‘Nobody loves me. Nobody wants me,’” Keefe said.
Jenny, 36, has Williams syndrome, a developmental disorder, as well as borderline personality disorder. She lived in group home in Barry’s Bay for about a decade, but she was fighting with staff and was placed in her own apartment, where she could live semi-independently with help from visiting workers.
“She couldn’t be on her own. She needed 24-hour care,” Keefe said.
Jenny acted out and ended up in hospital in Pembroke for four months to be treated for depression. When she was discharged, she did not return to the apartment, Keefe said.
Things got worse from there. Jenny has been assigned to a series of crisis beds in Cornwall and Ottawa and intermittently staying at home.
“Jenny’s behaviours got so extreme, she could put through you through a wall,” Keefe said. On one occasion, Jenny became distraught and broke her mother’s shoulder and arm.
About a month ago, Keefer decided to try allowing Jennifer to live with her again. But Keefe, 59, is blind in one eye and has her own health problems. “I couldn’t do it anymore. I was getting worn out and depressed.”
Jenny is back in a crisis bed. Aside from occasional trips to Tim Hortons, she has nothing to do except sit on her bed and cry, her mother said.
“Last Friday, I broke down. I had to do something about this,” Keefe said. “There are a lot of people with no homes.”
Keefe is no stranger to camping out in the cold. She has done so in December to raise money for a local food bank. Renfrew town council gave Keefe permission to set up the tent on the town hall’s lawn. George Thompson, who owns a portable toilet company, volunteered to set up a unit next to the tent.
“Renfrew is a small community. When one person hurts, everybody hurts,” Thompson said.
Supportive housing is a provincial matter, Renfrew Mayor Don Eady said, but none of the town councillors hesitated to allow Keefe to hold the hunger strike on the grounds of the town hall. Eady has urged firefighters, paramedics and police to make sure Keefe remains safe.
“I think it’s a good thing that she’s standing up for something that close to her heart … not just her own situation, but for people across Ontario,” Eady said.
Keefe said she was grateful for the support. By her count, she has had about 100 visitors, including an 83-year-old Brockville woman who shared her frustrations about finding supportive housing for an adult son.
The hunger strike has received attention at Queen’s Park. On Thursday, community and social services critic Lisa Gretzky, the NDP MPP for Windsor West, raised questions about long wait times for supportive housing. Some parents have created their own supportive housing for adult children in need, she said.
Todd Smith, the minister of children, community and social services, blamed the inaction of the previous Liberal government and encouraged parents to call their MPPs if they were having difficulties.
In an interview on Friday, Gretzky said a provincial housing task force found there were 16,000 adults on a waiting list for supportive housing in 2017. There’s a need for at least 30,000 new supportive housing units and more money for support agencies, which have not had an increase in base funding for a dozen years, she said.
In a statement, the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services said a network of developmental and community service partners works with families to identify interim and long-term solutions within available resources in complex cases.
“The ministry also has a consistent provincewide process to help people and families who require urgent supports. There is no first come, first served system for developmental services and supports,” the statement said. “Those persons who are determined to be most at risk are prioritized for available resources.”
A spokeswoman said it was also important to note ministry-funded agencies did not declare residential spaces vacant while an individual was temporarily absent, for example, due to hospitalization.
“While we cannot speak to individual circumstances, ministry officials and agencies are in contact and working with this family.”
In a perfect world, Keefe would like her daughter to find supportive housing in a group home in Ottawa. Jenny wants to learn life skills, such as cooking.
“I want her to call me up every night and tell me what she’s learned.”