A hard year in community housing

In a year when we have become accustomed to things going viral, only one thing has actually gone viral; the mumps. Oh, this is how my mind works: The mumps are rampant among hockey players; the mumps are spread, in part, by saliva; hockey players spit on the ice with frequency and then slide face-first where they have spit. I rest my case. And I do not wish to make light of things, but this has not been an easy year.

I refer to a couple of community housing stories.

First, Miss Moss; not her real name. Miss Moss gets around town in a wheelchair because she has many painful ailments, including painful deformities of both her feet. She also has what they call clutter issues. The Toronto Community Housing Corporation was about to evict her many months ago because her apartment is filled knee-high, and in some places hip-high, with plastic sacks full of I don’t know what.

Part of the problem is that there is simply never much storage space or shelving in a TCHC apartment. But most of the problem in this instance is that Miss Moss collects things, she says, to give to the thrift shops or to friends.

In the end, she had collected so much stuff that the only clear space in her apartment was a pathway from her living room to her bathroom, and the pathway was too narrow for her chair.

So she crawled.

TCHC could not persuade or cajole her to clean things up, and so was going to evict her — as if that were a solution — until a city councillor intervened; it was clear that the eviction of a troubled woman in a wheelchair would not serve anyone’s purpose.

Eventually, TCHC hired a clutter coach, and there was a long series of delicate negotiations aimed at clearing the apartment of stuff.

I sat in on some of those negotiations, which were all thrust and parry. Miss Moss had many reasons, some legitimate, for putting things off — she was too tired, she had meetings or appointments, she felt unwell. Her mind is swift. I was hoping that there would be progress, because I have seen this clutter coach in action before and it occurred to me that, if progress could be made, then there might be a way forward for Miss Moss; hoping also that such coaching would be the default course of action for all such situations.

No such luck. Miss Moss was too clever, or too troubled, to co-operate. She was evicted last month. TCHC helped her move. Miss Moss is apparently living with a relative, for the time being.

I do not know how long this can last, or what resources the relative has.

I called a couple of times to find out her side of the story, but Miss Moss has always found a reason not to talk whenever I’ve managed to reach her.

Perhaps there are some problems simply too tricky to solve. No, I don’t believe that. I believe this:

Eviction is not an answer; it is the shifting of a person with a problem from here to there, with no guarantees that a person will be able to get the help she needs, wherever there may be. Happy New Year? Humbug. I also refer to the case of a fellow, Chris, whose apartment is rotting from damp, and from neglect, and it is buggy and generally unfit to live in, and TCHC has done little to make things right. Yes, 10 Glen Everest. But there was a meeting in the fall with the tenant and TCHC staff, at which it was promised — I was there, I heard the promise — that Chris could move to a vacant apartment while his place was brought back to life. Guess what? Months later, it has not been brought back to life.

Oh, sure, Chris has moved, as promised, but there is apparently some ongoing disagreement about the moving of stuff from his old place. Oh, phooey. I don’t care what the reasons are; this has taken far too long to resolve. We wither without wit, and we languish without kindness.

I wish cleverness and kindness for all of us in the year ahead. Also, no mumps. Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. jfiorito@thestar.ca