‘We are failing,’ Doucet says in call for new approaches to housing, long-term care

Ottawa’s approach to affordable housing and homelessness has been a public-policy failure, the city’s former manager of people services told a news conference organized by mayoral candidate Clive Doucet on Monday.

Dick Stewart, who retired in 2002, said homelessness has grown in recent years and the city has never achieved its own affordable-housing objectives.

Between 2014 and 2017, Stewart said, homelessness grew by 16 per cent in Ottawa overall, and by 32 per cent for families. In addition, he said, 42 per cent of renters in Ottawa are spending 30 per cent or more of their budgets on shelter, while 20 per cent are spending 50 per cent or more.

Doucet said issues such as housing, care for the elderly and food security are the reasons he came out of retirement to run for mayor.

“We live in a beautiful, prosperous city, but for all the indices that we have, we are failing. We are failing at transit, we are failing on housing, we are failing on long-term care. We need to change and I think I am the person to bring that change.”

Doucet said he wants the city to adopt bylaws that would force developers to build affordable housing and to replace rental units when they are developed. He also wants increased funding for city inspectors and to redirect property-tax increases resulting from intensification toward affordable housing.

Doucet also wants the city to change its approach to long-term care by introducing programs used around the world that make longterm care homes more homelike and less like hospitals.

“We warehouse the frail elderly. We can do better,” he said.

Advocate Hilary Kemsley talked about the so-called butterfly model of long-term care, which is being used internationally. The program takes a different approach to everything from how long-term care homes look, to how meals are served and how residents interact with staff and others.

In areas in which it has been tried, residents are happier, are sick less often and take fewer antipsychotic drugs, Kelmsley said. Staff, who spend “less time filling out charts and more time looking after residents,” are also happier, she noted.

Such a change is not expensive, Doucet said. “We just need to have the political will to change.”

Ottawa runs four long-term care homes. In 2017, investigations and reviews were launched after a personal support worker at one home — Garry J. Armstrong — was caught on camera abusing an elderly resident.

Doucet said he wants the city to promote food centre models based on the Parkdale Food Centre to be run across the city. Parkdale, which offers school programs, cooking programs, meals and food to those in need, is the basis for a food policy for the entire city, he said.

“This is about more than feeding the homeless. This is about a different way of dealing with food across our city … understanding food is a community thing, not something you get off a shelf.”