Once-wary residents warm to a new lease on life
That progress has been felt well beyond the building’s front doors.
Toronto Police Sgt. Sin Chiu, who cuts a commanding figure in her dark blue uniform despite her small stature, is in charge of a team of neighbourhood officers that work in Regent Park.
In the east-end 51 Division police offices, Chiu holds a printed-out tally that shows there were 786 calls to 220 Oak last year alone, which works out to more than two per day: shootings, stabbings, calls from residents in distress.
Now, she says, “I bet you it’s half.” Police have been working with Cota to reduce the number of non-emergency calls, connecting residents to the neighbourhood officers or the workers. The end result is less stress on the emergency system and less expense to taxpayers.
Housing officials also believe that evictions and court appearances are down.
“Are there still problems in the building? Absolutely,” Chiu said ear- lier this summer. She tears up when she talks about working to provide a real chance for communities like 220 Oak to succeed. “I think the fact that having a presence in there . . . you know that you have people that are the eyes and ears.”
There are still setbacks and dangers that threaten to undo the hard-won progress. Despite TCHC spending $30,000 on repairs since 2013 — replacing safety railings, repairing the underground garage and replacing a boiler burner — like many in its portfolio, the decades-old building needs increasingly more attention.
But with a lack of investment from the provincial and federal governments, the necessary funds are quickly evaporating. The elevators are in a constant state of disrepair. Tenants have demanded more security cameras to improve safety inside the building, to no avail.
But recent moments have shown the resiliency of residents in the face of these disappointments.
After an earlier trip to the island was unceremoniously rained out this summer, eager travellers were promised it would be rescheduled. But staff members worried about one resident in particular. Joakina Fernandes, 69, had gone ahead with her walker using a pre-booked WheelTrans ride, and it was unclear how she’d get back in the rain.
Fernandes, who emigrated from India, suffered her fourth heart attack this winter. In the aftermath, she rarely ventured beyond the lobby, distressed and in pain. But with Cota’s help, she had been finding her feet again.
When worker Olga Vaks finally reached Fernandes by phone at the ferry docks, the older woman said the rain wasn’t going to ruin her plans. She was ready to board the ferry anyway, alone.
She’d be all right, she told Vaks. “It’s beautiful in the rain.”
Vaks’s eyes welled with tears as she hung up the phone. Fernandes would be just fine, she told her colleagues in the office.
When Cota workers Pat Melnick and Jennifer Rosser decided to start a music café for residents, some of those who had been especially wary of Cota’s presence at the building showed up in the office.
“They were very clear in saying, both of them, ‘This is the best thing that has ever happened here,’ ” Melnick said. “That was a moment when I kind of felt, OK, our best critics are walking in our door and saying, ‘You did something good.’ ”
Even new tenant Debra Hickman, whose apartment has been overcome with pests in recent months, started making a list of things to be thankful for at 220 Oak. It’s grown to more than a page: “Tenants checking on other tenants who isolate themselves,” she wrote. “Many various acts of kindness.”
Workers here know these are not small victories. With early proof their experiment is working, the team is hopeful it will continue, and even spread to other buildings.
“If people read about 220 Oak St. and some of the more negative factors are highlighted, you would have to come and meet the folks here,” says Cota’s team manager, Norine Thompson. “All the folks here have the right to a community and safety and dignity, and it shouldn’t be coloured by these stereotypes.”
On good days, more and more frequent, many residents here are doing more than just surviving. They’re living. And sometimes, even just for a day, they are feeling the breeze whip across their faces as they leave the shore behind.