Mother, son overjoyed to have found new home
It was the early birthday present Mary-Ann McLeod dreamed about, but never quite imagined she would receive. Five days after she and her son, Jonathan, were forced to start sleeping on the street after being evicted from a wretched apartment on Saskatoon’s west side, a local affordable housing organization and a Calgary-based real estate company teamed up to provide them with a warm, clean apartment and one month’s free rent.
“I’m very happy. I can live peacefully and not have to worry about anything else,” Mary-Ann said moments after she and Jonathan first saw the Avenue X South apartment, which representatives from the Lighthouse Supported Living — funded by the Saskatchewan Housing Initiative Partnership (SHIP) — and Mainstreet Equity Corp. plan to fill with basic furniture, bedding, linens and clothing.
“It’s nice to finally have a home now … I don’t have to worry about if my mother’s going to be in danger outside,” said Jonathan, who, like Mary-Ann, relies on the government-run Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability program for support. He has cerebral palsy and severe arthritis; she has spent the last four years using a wheelchair.
The McLeods were evicted from their apartment on Avenue F South, where they slept on the floor wrapped in blankets to ward off the chill and the cockroaches, after health inspectors deemed it unfit for human habitation. It was a desperate situation until an encounter with Lighthouse employees Touni Vardeh-Esakian and Sheila Poorman changed everything.
“It really hits the soft part of your heart and we really wanted to step in and help them out,” said Vardeh-Esakian, who encountered the McLeods downtown late Tuesday night, adding that his belief in the value and importance of housing stems in part from his own experience as a refugee in Greece after fleeing the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Formed in 1999, SHIP is a nonprofit that forges connections between people in need, affordable housing groups and the private sector.
The partnership funds Vardeh-Esakian’s position at the Lighthouse. He said the organization has an “incredible relationship” with Mainstreet, which goes “way beyond” when it comes to accommodating people desperate for shelter.
The publicly traded real estate investment company has a long history of providing people in need with apartments in what its chief executive, Bob Dhillon, has described it as not an act of charity but a “responsibility, one that every single person at Mainstreet is glad to accept and offer help in any way we can.”
Mainstreet first exercised that responsibility in 2011, when it offered 50 suites in Edmonton to people fleeing the fire that devastated Slave Lake, Alta.
The company — which owns property in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan — has since given 200 apartments to newly arrived Syrian refugees and furnished people fleeing the Fort McMurray fires with 100 units and up to three months’ free rent.
“We just want to give back to our community. We want to have a safe community. We want people in our community to have shelter and food on their table and have a good life,” Mainstreet regional manager for Saskatchewan Mehran Saadat said after making the necessary arrangements for the McLeods, adding that he hopes the company’s gesture will be “the start of a new life” for them.
Jeff Redekop, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Social Services’ executive director of income assistance, said he could not comment on the McLeods’ case for privacy reasons. Speaking generally, he said its primary obligation is to provide people with information about housing options and allow them to make their own decisions, but that it will “step up” involvement when people are struggling.
“We’re always looking to improve our performance in how we support people,” Redekop said.
“We regularly engage with our third-party partners to make sure that we have effective relationships and that we’re working together, as a sector, to support people well. So there’s always an opportunity to learn and improve.”
The government also connects people in need with emergency housing options, including shelters and, occasionally, hotel rooms, Redekop said previously.
The McLeods said they opted not to stay at the Lighthouse shelter because it separates men and women at night and they wanted to remain together.
Also, they said, there was a potential conflict with another person using the shelter.
Vardeh-Esakian said Ministry of Social Services representatives confirmed to him that the government will pitch in to help the McLeods furnish their new apartment.
Watching the mother and son marvel at their new two-bedroom, wheelchair-accessible apartment, he said having a safe place to live means “everything ” to his clients.
After leaving the apartment with Vardeh-Esakian and Saadat, MaryAnn stopped in the hallway and announced that it is her birthday next week. The Lighthouse housing locator and Mainstreet manager who gave her a gift worth remembering smiled as a grin spread across her face.
“They have been (chronically) homeless for so long that they don’t even know the meaning of ‘home,’ ” Vardeh-Esakian said. “And it means so much. It’s hard to explain it but when you see the look in their face when they walked in, the smile — it just means so much. I totally believe that everybody deserves a roof over their head.”