NewsWe are all just one stroke of bad luck away from being homeless
By Lisa Machado
Lisa Machado is a Toronto-based communications strategist focused on healthcare advocacy.
My friend Frank* was one of the almost 12,000 people who spent December 25 in a Toronto shelter.
I met him in May after he commandeered a bench in a park near my house, where he would sit quietly during the day, people-watching, with one arm on a little black suitcase. He was clean-shaven, and good-looking, about 40 years old — not the kind of person you would imagine to be living in a park. During the night, he would stretch out — it was one of the only benches not designed “defensively” (without a bar in the middle) — with a hand gripping his suitcase. If you got up close, you could see that the zipper had come apart halfway around it, barely securing the clothes packed tightly inside: eight t-shirts, four pairs of pants, five pairs of underwear, two favourite books and a ziploc bag of cigarettes is how he described “all he had left in the world.”
The neighbourhood around the park was lovely and idyllic, with a tennis court and a soccer pitch and place to host parties around a bonfire. It is the kind of place that has its own Facebook page where the people who live there can post helpful messages about coyote sightings and amazon package thefts, where to find lost keys and stuffed bunnies and connect with a reliable plumber. Conversations get spicy too — like the guy who didn’t like the way his neighbour pruned his shrubs, the woman who railed about the “disrespectful dog people” who dropped poop bags into her compost bin (she saw them on her ring cam), and the self-proclaimed “insect supporter” video-shaming those using pretend webs to decorate their gardens for Halloween.
Frank* showed up about a year after homeless encampments in Toronto became something to rage about and the city’s parks were becoming places for people who couldn’t find space in a shelter or simply a safe place to live. There had been tents in this park before Frank, bright-coloured domes secured to the ground with rocks, or city garbage bins, the inhabitants often seen urinating on trees or not seen at all, the only proof of life being shadows inside lit up at night with flashlights or cigarettes. While most people didn’t seem to mind the tents, the Facebook posts said otherwise, with long ruminations about the potential dangers posed by people who live in tents, and how parks aren’t campsites, while the poo-bag lady whined about the people pee.
The first time I spoke to Frank*, it was a gloriously sunny day. The weekly farmer’s market was in full swing, with happy people milling about, buying $10 blueberries and families sitting on fluffy blankets listening to a local jazz ensemble while their kids sucked on organic fruit popsicles. That Frank, gripping his half-open suitcase, sat in the middle of all of this affluence and comfort made for an uncomfortable juxtaposition — one that prompted my friend to buy him an egg and cheese sandwich, made with almond flour and cage-free eggs. When we got to the bench he was sleeping, his chin on his chest. The hospital band on his wrist was from Toronto’s Michael Garron hospital dated just the day before. A small bottle of Jack Daniels was in his lap. He woke, startled by the sound of the sandwich bag rustling, and as we introduced ourselves and showed him what was in the bag, he began to sob. We chatted for a long time, learning that he was an ex-soldier from Iraq, that he had been wounded and came to Canada, becoming a manager at a popular coffee chain. He once had a condo in Mississauga, and drove a black Audi, the kind with black leather. He said that he had started having nightmares about his time in Iraq and that his family doctor had prescribed various anti-depressants but that the side effects made him tired and forgetful. He began to drink wine — just one bottle a night, he said — while the nightmares intensified, and he stopped showing up for work. He talked about his dad who ran a lucrative clothing business, and his two brothers, successful executives in the tech sector according to LinkedIn — he was too ashamed to reach out. Frank said the park wasn’t the worst place, other than the teenagers who would try to steal his suitcase during the night, and the passersby who would spit on him and tell him to leave. As he cried and told his story, he kept asking for help — specifically to go to 985.
It turned out that 985 was a Withdrawal Management Centre, a place that supports alcohol and drug detoxification and is affiliated with Michael Garron Hospital. But there were no beds, Frank said, and so he decided to wait on a bench. After a few calls that confirmed this, I was passed on to Central Intake, a city-operated, 24/7 telephone service that offers referrals to emergency shelter accommodation, and other resources like street outreach and drop-in programs: there were no beds anywhere in the city. But according to the person on the line, there was hope at Michael Garron’s emergency department which was, with doctor’s approval, a gateway to 985 once there was a bed available.
It took about two days for Frank to be transferred to 985. He spent that time lying on a bed in the hallway of Michael Garron’s emergency room, with social workers who spoke too loudly and too impatiently as they fed him medication to stem the effects of withdrawal. When I visited to drop off coffee and snacks, the nurse behind the counter saw the coffee and smiled sympathetically — she had seen it all before.
He made it, though. To 985, and then to a shelter near Exhibition Place, where months later he continues to make plans to get out. But it’s a two-steps-forward, one-step-back situation: social workers meet with residents to help strategize what needs to be done to get them back on their feet and then aren’t able to follow up due to workload and turnover; fights routinely break out among residents making it hard to feel safe and mentally healthy; and there are easily attainable drugs and alcohol even though it’s not allowed. Shelter life is hard: people who are unhoused are more likely to die 17 years earlier than the overall population — mostly due to risks that increase when you don’t have a roof over your head, such as exposure to the elements and vulnerability to violence.
The thing is, Frank’s story is not unusual. He says some of his shelter mates used to be doctors, restaurant owners, and corporate executives. Some are still working, but unable to afford a place to live. All of them have suffered a major setback in their lives, whether it be job loss, illness, mental health challenges, made bad decisions, had terrible luck, or a devastating combination of these. And yet, we don’t often hear this side of the story of homelessness — the one in which we study the underlying reasons for homelessness and acknowledge that the main character doesn’t have a “type” — that it could easily be you or I.
Consider December’s Toronto Star story about how lawyer and former MPP Lorenzo Berardinetti ended up living in an Ajax, Ontario shelter. The short version is that Berardinetti spent decades in government — first municipally in Toronto (1988 to 2003), and then provincially until 2018 when he lost his seat. He attempted a comeback four years later, running for a seat on Toronto council, lost, and a short time later suffered a seizure which required him to be put into a coma for a month. Due to the impact on his brain, he was unable to work, and eventually his savings ran out. He was 60 years old. When he could no longer pay rent, his landlord kicked him out, leaving him with no option but to find a bed in a shelter, where he lived until early this year, using his Canada pension monthly payment of $830 to survive as he attempted to rebuild his law practice.
Like Frank, it took a health crisis to push Berardinetti into homelessness. Like Frank, Berardinetti had a home, assets and happy vacation memories, but illness doesn’t discriminate — and let’s be clear: there’s no reason other than luck and fortunate circumstance that Berardinetti or Frank isn’t you or I. And yet, rather than tackling harmful stigma by pointing out that being successful and educated doesn’t preclude you from losing your home, raising awareness of the impact of a health crisis on financial health or perhaps highlighting a lack of a proper safety net for when Canadians hit rough times, much of the commentary is focused on Berardinetti’s apparently mealy salary as an Ontario MPP: a base pay of 116K, $12K less than city councillors, with no pension. (Just leaving this here: the average Torontonian makes about $60K each year, and just 44% have a pension.)
But it wasn’t only his salary that contributed to Berardinetti losing his home. Sure, a steady pension might have provided the cushion that he needed to get back on his feet, but the real focus should be on the role that mental health plays in maintaining a roof of one’s own. While Frank struggled with unrelenting PTSD, Berardinetti quite likely also faced his own demons that came with working in politics and losing that life. In fact, his cousin Mike Colle, also a politician, called the pressures of being a politician and the impact of losing your seat a “depressive black hole,” and a time when “no one wants anything to do with you.”
This year, Berardinetti would have marked almost two years of living in a shelter, however, he recently moved into his own place with the help from his friends — a fundraising campaign by fellow politicians which had raised almost $50K as of January 25. Unfortunately, Frank doesn’t have those kind of friends and this May will be his twelfth month of shelter-living — time that he calls an eternity. And while there are countless reasons it is hard to break out of the shelter system, opening up the dialogue around why and how people land there is an important step toward not only identifying how to provide better support to people before they lose their homes and more effective ways of moving people through the system, and but also, tearing down the harmful stigma that surrounding those who are unhoused.
Because it’s not who you think.
