Some rays of hope for 2012
We stand still at our peril.
Peter Provencher sent us a sharply moving note in December, outlining the chronic problems he has been having in his apartment. He lives in one of the newer Toronto Community Housing buildings.
His air conditioner/heating unit was not working; his sink was falling off the wall; repairs to his shower resulted in problems not just worse but stupider and more dangerous than the original problem.
Apparently, some people read this column with a critical eye; the day after the letter appeared, Peter said staff came and fixed his sink; his Ac/heating unit was taken for repair; and he has been promised that the slippery shower — a problem for him, because he has mobility issues — should soon be fixed.
Bravo, Peter! But we will have made real progress only when the reporting of repairs at TCHC achieves the same timely results across the entire system.
Now you will recall Kelly Mccleary, who spent the run-up to the holiday searching for his mother; she has schizophrenia and she lost her apartment as a result of the impact of her illness on other tenants; after she lost the apartment, Ms Mccleary disappeared.
Kelly had been patrolling Queen St., looking for her in all the places he knew she might go. Shortly after that column appeared, I got a note from Jeannie Lougherey, the priest at All Saints’ Church in Whitby.
Kelly’s mom showed up at the drop-in there.
Lougherey, who used to be a priest at All Saints’ on the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne, thinks Ms Mccleary came to Whitby on the assumption that both churches were affiliated.
The good news is that Kelly’s mother is now in hospital in Oshawa, and nurses there recognized her from the column, and are caring for her tenderly.
Kelly is hoping to get his mother transferred back to Toronto; hoping also that he can find a place for her here. Every mother should have such a son. Every church should have a shepherd as watchful as Jeannie Lougherey. Some sad news now: Tom Howat died over the holiday. Tom lived at the Birchmount residence. He talked to us about the importance of that shelter in his life, and then he made a deputation at council, telling the mayor and council the same things he told me.
Nice guy, Tom: tall and lean, with a cowboy hat and a long westernstyle duster, and when he talked he kept on talking, and there was nothing for it but to wait until he drew a breath. It was as if he knew what lay ahead, and he wanted to say everything he could before his time ran out.
Finally, a word about Anne, who is 86 and deaf, and who got one of those chilling letters from TCHC telling her that she would be evicted on Dec. 25. Merry damn Christmas. TCHC explained, shamefacedly, that the letter ending her tenancy was not a letter of eviction, even though the letter clearly said she had to be gone by Christmas Day.
TCHC policy: don’t believe what we say, believe what we say when we explain what we said.
Anne has not been evicted; not yet. Many kind people offered to help her clean up her apartment. The Canadian Hearing Society sent a couple of sharp letters to the city, and to the province, because they were concerned that Anne’s rights were being ignored. Best of all? Friends of Anne — they work on the outreach team of Sanctuary — have made contact with her at her home, and they are doing what they can to help.
We stand still at our peril.