Project targets ‘poverty of isolation’
Boyle Street aims to turn 62-unit building into community
Some of the seniors who live in Karen Bruno’s Abbottsfield-area apartment building should be in palliative care.
A 61-year-old man died three weeks ago. Boyle Street Community Services had moved him out of a bedbug-ridden unit four months earlier and this quiet rental on the east side was exactly where he wanted to be.
“We knew he was passing,” said Bruno, the resident property manager and a former social worker. “We didn’t see him for one whole day. We tried phoning him, so we knew.
“As tenants, we all honoured him. At least he had four good months of quiet relaxing where everyone said hi to him. At least he had that.”
This 62-unit apartment building is a pilot project by Boyle Street Community Services, an attempt to change a faceless building into a real community and “end the poverty of isolation,” as housing manager David Berger calls it.
Here, residents gather for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, for an annual barbecue and garage sale. They watch out for strangers entering the building, tend the flower beds, bake muffins for the rental office, and donate clothes and books to help those just moving in.
It’s improved the success rate of those trying to hold down an apartment after living on the street, and now Boyle Street staff wonder if there is a way to share what they’ve learned with others, even in the private sector.
“(Bruno) has really created community there. It sounds trite, but it’s really very meaningful when it’s done well,” said Berger.
“You put someone in a lousy rooming house that’s dirty, overly expensive and unsafe, in a neighbourhood that’s crime-ridden with too many temptations and it’s harder for people to survive. Put them in a safe environment that creates community, keep them busy, and you get an entirely different result.”
It’s working in Abbottsfield. When Bruno first started, it seemed like police and paramedics were called every day. Now, the beat officer for the area didn’t even recognize the building name and had no idea Boyle Street and its Housing First previously homeless clients were around.
“When most people hear Housing First and Boyle Street, they get a certain picture in mind. But I had no idea. We don’t get a lot of calls for service there,” said Const. Keith Pitzel, who has been on that beat for 18 months.
Edmonton has thousands of condo and rental buildings where few people know their neighbours. The Boyle Street building was a typical threestory rental property, with its share of residents who voiced fears and racism, when the organization bought it nearly four years ago.
Turning the building around took a lot of listening, said Bruno, an aboriginal person. She spent hours getting to know people, talking about homelessness, stigma and residential schools, and trying to understand where the gossip and negativity was coming from.
The organization spent $920,000 renovat i ng units one-by-one, offering temporary units to those Bruno wanted to stay. In the end, about 20 people left and most of the units are now rented at subsidized rates.
Creating a community in the building started by giving people opportunities to get involved. Within a month, Bruno cancelled all the maintenance contracts, turning the sidewalks, flower gardens, cleaning and lawns over to residents. They receive honoraria for the work they do.
Keeping the peace now means delicately but firmly letting everyone know where they stand.
“I need to make sure I word things very carefully,” said Bruno, relying on her background in social work.
She spent 17 years working at the downtown drop-in centre and was a guard at the Edmonton Institution (a federal maximum security correctional facility for males) before that. She’s also been a young girl addicted and living on the street, as well as a single mother struggling to hang on to her own apartment.
She looks for the middle ground and focuses on harm reduction. If someone is a chronic alcoholic, she helps them understand why it’s a good idea to tuck that bottle into a backpack and drink at home rather than stagger through the lobby. If someone smokes marijuana, she teaches them to use the air vents and to buy an air purification system.
As the building improved, other property managers starting asking how she did it, Bruno said. She would love to share. “Anyone with a social work background or anybody who just understands human nature and is very community minded can do it. They just don’t know how to begin.”
People might be more comfortable with increased density in their neighbourhoods if this type of planning was part of any new building, not just social housing, added Berger.
Great examples are all over the city, but “it’s like a thin forest,” he said. Someone needs to help spread these techniques to the private sector if Edmonton really wants to help the majority of those living in isolation.