A place to heal and grow | The Star - Toronto Star

Amid a concrete jungle, a tiny patch of earth has brought a new sense of beginning and community to residents of the downtown core.

“I call it a healing garden,” said Cat, the primary caretaker of a raised bed planted with salvia, lavender, sage, lilies, roses, a pair of donated goosenecks and white gaura or ‘whirling butterflies.’ “It feels healing for me, and I was thinking it helps people as well...we miss the trees and the plants and the nature aspect,” she said. “It's something we crave.”

Cat is a graphic designer and multimedia artist and has lived in her two-bedroom subsidized apartment for about 10 years. Her identity and views are guided by her mixed race, she said, which she defines as non-status Indigenous and Black, tied to the Caribbean Diaspora, and Scottish. “I acknowledge that I’m living on traditional lands of Turtle Island, which is the long-time home to many Indigenous Peoples,” said Cat. (At her request, the Star is not using her full name.)

Her current home is thanks to the support of Madison Community Services, an agency funded by United Way Greater Toronto Area (UWGT). Investments in organizations like Madison Community Services, which provides a range of housing and support services, are what Ruth Crammond with UWGT believes can result in the most significant and lasting change.

“United Way's big focus is trying to address poverty. That's our real mandate,” said Crammond, vice-president of community investment and development. Eliminating poverty cannot be accomplished, she says, without improving access to affordable and supportive housing. “It’s fundamentally connected.”

Crammond came to her current position with a better understanding than most when it comes to how a lack of affordable housing impacts the most marginalized people across the Greater Toronto Area.

Early lessons came through a job at The Meeting Place, a non-profit multi-service provider at Queen Street West and Bathurst Street. Crammond provided outreach services to people renting in rooming houses or trying to seek shelter in local parks.

In her current role, Crammond is charged with making targeted investments with an eye to working with and supporting community partnerships that can result in long-term change. It also means working with the private sector and government, she said, to try and find ways to move the “conversation forward on short- and longer-term solutions to homelessness” and affordable housing.

For the 2020/2021 fiscal year, that meant investing close to $5 million in 48 programs, including Madison Community Services, through the UWGT Community Services Sector Strategy.

Crammond said her work has also afforded her a birds-eye view of the challenges facing those providing services on the ground, whose job has only become more complex during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You're trying to respond to the distress, and the level of need that is in front of you, whether you're running shelters or helping families, community violence or dealing with harm reduction and addiction,” said Crammond.

That is where UWGT, working with local governments, can play a role, she said, by creating connections between different service providers to try and figure out how to best work as a system.

Toronto’s housing needs are unquestionably dire. Early this year, the Toronto Star’s Victoria Gibson reported that the waitlist for affordable housing (Toronto Community Housing and a range of subsidized units) had reached some 81,000 names. The city hopes to improve the process for all involved through a new digitized system, Gibson reported.

The City’s Shelter Support and Housing Administration Division, which oversees the waitlist and emergency shelter system, has also updated the online portal where occupancy rates for shelter beds, with the motel and hotel rooms used to manage the overflow and typically provided to families, can be downloaded in an excel spreadsheet. The most current figures have occupancy at 95 per cent system wide. Overall numbers factor in unused beds in motel rooms so the numbers do not mean that five per cent of all emergency beds are available.

Throughout the pandemic, the most visible strain on the emergency system was the creation of encampments across public parks, most cleared out through police action as protestors and supporters looked on.

For Cat, who has been without housing three times in her life and waited a year and a half between signing up for housing at Madison Community Services and moving into her current home, the shortage of affordable units for people in need is unacceptable.

“We are a country that has resources and yet we still have people who are homeless,” she said. “This shouldn't be the fate of somebody who has a disability or struggles with their mental health. Nobody should start at zero, I believe, everybody should have shelter.”

Madison Community Services has helped Cat with far more than finding a home. The connection has meant help with employment options and being a part of the United Way Speakers Bureau, where she speaks about mental health and social justice.

Cat’s hope is that any future discussions on housing focus on the protection of green space at both the municipal global level.

“If I had one dream for the future,” she said, “if we are building housing, it can’t just be development on top of development. The green spaces served a purpose.”

With files from Jennifer Pagliaro

STAT BOX OR NUMBER TREATMENT

8,760

The number of people actively experiencing homelessness in Toronto in September 2021

Source: City of Toronto

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Disclaimer This content was produced as part of a partnership and therefore it may not meet the standards of impartial or independent journalism.

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