Fear, frustration at Firgrove
Great-grandmother worries for future as ouster deadline looms
Edna Rose knows she’ll have to leave behind the nectarine tree in her yard, the fruit just now starting to turn a soft red, when she is forced from her home.
But some things she can’t leave behind — most importantly a big enough space for her two greatgrandchildren and a place she’ll feel safe.
The 76-year-old crossing guard, who has helped shepherd other peoples’ children across the road for the last seven years, is among 108 families who are being displaced this fall from the Firgrove community, a Toronto Community Housing complex in North York.
Rose has applied several times for a three-bedroom unit, which is what she has now, during a relocation process that has frustrated and confused tenants. She needs enough space for her great-grandchildren, a 9-year-old girl and 5-year-old boy who live with her part time.
But just recently, Rose was told she now only qual- ifies for a one-bedroom unit because she doesn’t have court documents to prove custody over the children she cares for.
“Even if I have to borrow money to go get a lawyer, I am going to fight housing. Believe me, I am going to fight them for my rights,” Rose told the Star.
Toronto Community Housing said that while threebedroom units are still available for Firgrove residents, Rose is only eligible for a one-bedroom unless she provides custody documents for her great-grandchildren, according to requirements under city rules.
The relocation means 134 townhomes will be demolished in a city where the wait-list for subsidized homes has topped 181,000 people.
Most of the families have found new homes and housing staff are optimistic they can find solutions, a spokesperson told the Star.
Anyone remaining has been told they have to be out by Sept. 30 and many of the units near Rose’s home are vacant, the windows boarded up and the fencedin lawns overgrown.
The closures confirmed earlier this year are the direct result of poor construction made worse by a lack of repairs due to inadequate funding.
For years, the brick faces of the units have been crumbling to the ground and concrete slurry was scraped over the walls just to hold them together.
City council approved a 10-year, $2.6 billion repair plan for their inneed buildings in 2013. Though the city has contributed more than a third, neither the provincial nor federal governments have committed to the remaining costs, despite repeated calls from city officials.
Thousands more units across the city are at risk of being shuttered.
Those leaving Firgrove can’t know if they’ll ever come back. There is no money to rebuild what will be demolished.
Malyan Salad, 57, was preparing to move to her new home next Friday because she was told she was approved for a two-bedroom apartment for her and her two grandchildren.
But earlier this week, right before she was to sign the lease, housing staff told her she did not qualify because she didn’t have custody. Now she must wait for a one-bedroom.
“They sleep on the floor, I guess,” said Salad, of her small grandchildren. “Two days I can’t sleep, because I am worrying.”
The community has tried to make their voices heard. Rose came to executive committee in April in her Sunday best, a creamy yellow shawl draped over her shoulders under a brimmed hat.
“I have much to miss if I should have to move,” she told Mayor John Tory and his executive. “I don’t understand why you all are playing politics with my living.”
This week, as moving trucks come and go, kids gather on the basketball court, on a playground and around a community pool deck on a muggy summer morning.
At her two-storey townhome, filled with framed photos of her family, Rose is overwhelmed with worry. She pulls out a red folder where she keeps every scrap of paperwork related to the relocation.
It includes a doctor’s note penned in late June and provided to TCH. It says she suffers from “severe anxiety and fear of heights,” and “is advised to live in a single house, not an apartment” building.
Rose moved to Canada in1979, leaving behind a bad marriage and seeking a better life. She’s been in her Firgrove townhouse since 1986. She loves being a crossing guard, working out of the nearby 31 Division police station, and her church, which she has been attending for close to two decades.
Her claustrophobia traces back to her childhood in Jamaica. Her mother would discipline her by tying her overnight to a tree, or in a cave, she said. “I’m not ashamed of it, because God knows it is the gospel truth.”
But she’s also concerned about having room for her great-grandchildren. Rose doesn’t have formal custody, but she said housing has always known they sometimes live with her.
“I took the baby in my arm and went over there,” she said, explaining how she reported their names and their relationship to her.
Firgrove tenants were invited to a draw this spring to learn what order they’d be picking their new homes — names on pieces of paper pulled from the kind of spinning drum used for bingo games. Rose was drawn near last, as number 98.
On her first application, it states her eligible bedroom size is three. But the desirable buildings went quickly and Rose, because of her anxiety and concerns about neighbourhood safety, has rejected several buildings, including a one bedroom she was to see on Friday. The process, she said, is incredibly confusing.
She’ll now move on to the fifth round. “I didn’t know I was in a boxing ring,” said Rose.
She said she could make do with a two-bedroom. The children are small and she has a bunk-bed.
It was only in July, Rose said, that she was told she could only have a one-bedroom space.
TCH, in an email from spokesperson Bruce Malloch, said Rose was listed as eligible for a three-bedroom based on her tenancy records “which incorrectly included her two greatgrandchildren as members of the household.”
Malloch said Rose was told in May she would need to provide custody records and at one point said she would consider a one-bedroom unit.
He said Salad self-disclosed she did not have legal custody of her grandchildren and the offer for a two-bedroom unit was conditional on the rules of occupancy being met.
A TCH tenant qualifies for additional bedrooms if they are the legal guardian of a child, with proof of custody, as set out in the city’s rentgeared-to-income administration manual.
Rose isn’t alone in her struggle to find a new home. There are still 34 households who have yet to select a unit, Malloch said, but they are dedicated to helping them find a suitable home by the deadline.
“However, if we are unable to place a household in a new unit before the end of October, we would need to begin eviction proceedings at the Landlord and Tenant Board,” he wrote in an email, calling eviction a “last resort.”
With just over two months until the moving deadline, Rose said she is having trouble sleeping and eating. She hangs her head, wiping tears out from under her wire-frame glasses.
“It’s taking my life out of me,” she said. “Aren’t you trying to kill me before God ready for me?”