Life inside a lodging home
‘These aren’t the easiest places to live in,’ says one former resident, likening his experience to the days he spent behind bars
PEOPLE DESERVE to know the facts about lodging homes before they move in.
Richard Prosser says this, knowing from personal experience that choosing a city-regulated lodging home in Hamilton is a crap shoot.
“These places aren’t the easiest places to live in,” he says.
For 15 years, Richard lived in Sampaguita Lodge and Rest Home on Bay Street South before moving to Laburnum Lodge in Dundas for three years. Both were owned by Amelia Acierto, although she recently sold Laburnum.
Acierto has the dubious distinction of being the only owner of a lodging home in Hamilton — there are 93 homes — to be convicted of bylaw offences in the past three years. A year ago, she was charged with seven violations at Laburnum Lodge and eventually pleaded guilty to three of them having to do with inadequate supplies of food, poor record keeping of residents’ medication and medication not being locked up. The other four charges were dropped. Richard says he is not surprised. Richard, 54, has schizophrenia. He grew up in east Hamilton, finished Grade 11, then spent most of his time on the street. He also did stints in jail soon after his diagnosis in his early 20s. Once it was for stealing his boss’s truck. Other times, for break-ins.
A social worker helped him into his first lodging home, hoping assistance with cooking, housekeeping, money management and medication would make life easier.
“I needed support,” he says. Richard is polite, friendly and unafraid of work.
He believes he deserved better than he got under Acierto’s care.
Every month his Ontario Disability Support Program cheque went straight to Acierto, who declined to be interviewed for this story. From that, she paid his room and board and gave him the rest, around $150, for spending money.
To earn extra cash, Richard took on odd jobs. While at Laburnum, he mowed the lawn nearby St. Paul’s United Church and set out chairs in its hall for events.
Most of his work, though, was for Acierto. He mowed the grass at Laburnum, painted and cleaned, moved furniture, put out the trash and ran errands. For that, she paid him $50 a month.
“I wanted to be helpful to her, but she totally took advantage of me,” he says. “I felt really bad. I felt I was degraded. I wasn’t a man. I kind of got discouraged about that.”
A good chunk of Richard’s spending money went to buy food, because he says he was fed poorly at the home.
“Some of the food looked like puke on a plate,” he says. There was a lot of canned pasta, he says, and some meals came from The Dollar Store. How does he know that? “Because I was the one sent out to buy it,” he says.
Richard likens his life at Laburnum to his days in jail.
“I was treated like a criminal because of my mental illness.”
A few months ago, Richard moved out of Laburnum and into a downtown apartment with a friend.
Now he cooks chicken for dinner, doesn’t need permission to go outside and hopes to find handyman work in his new neighbourhood.
Living independently is a big step for Richard.
“I just want my freedom,” he says. “It might work out, it might not. But I needed to take that chance.”