[homeles_ot-l] Column: "Making Ottawa a little less hard than it used to be" features ATEH

[Linda O'Neil]

*         22 Apr 2013  Ottawa Citizen  PHIL JENKINS Phil Jenkins is an Ottawa writer. Email: phil at philjenkins.ca<mailto:phil at philjenkins.ca> (c) Copyright Ottawa Citizen
*
Making Ottawa a little less hard than it used to be

It is invigorating to know that concern for those between homes and those yet to find one remains and, indeed, is growing.

Jack London, the American adventure author, spent a day in Ottawa in the fall of 1894. He was a temporary tramp, riding the rail out to California after passing a little jail time in New York state. Jack decided to use Canadian Pacific to cross the continent, and wound up among us, and he passed a day here as a streetwalker, begging for food and clothing.

This was six years before London became a famous author, and when he wrote about his begging day he had this to say: "Let me put it on record right here that Ottawa, with one exception, is the hardest town in the United States and Canada to beg clothes in. The exception is Washington, D.C."

He also reported that at day's end, "in a vacant lot in Canada's capital, I sat down and wept."

Almost a hundred years later, I was living near a halfway house and shelter in Sandy Hill just down the road from my bijou apartment at the top of an old home. A steady flow of guys staying there would pass in the morning heading for the By Ward Market and they would return in the evening, after a hard day's existing, much as Jack London had done.

Some of them and I passed a few words now and then as to how it was going and one time a passerby, who turned out to be ex-mayor Lorry Greenberg, joined us and expressed his sorrow at seeing that the man with us was still in low circumstances. I keep a contemporary eye out for any of those bygone gentlemen of the sidewalks when I'm walking about town, but they seem to have all dissolved away, to be replaced by the new generation that has taken over.

And still, in 2013 Ottawa, 20 years on, the homeless are with us, and of us, but more than ever the will and energy among some of our more fortunate, homeful citizens to end homelessness in this city is still vibrant and being deployed. Compassion for the homeless is deployed in such groups as the constantly active Alliance to End Homelessness, which is the organization I'd like to feature this week on that compassion map of Ottawa I'm pursuing. In a city where a great many are singularly obsessed with real estate, and going up in the world, it is invigorating to know that concern for those between homes and those yet to find one remains and, indeed, is growing.

The Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa is, as its title says, a city-wide collection of allies who have come together, starting in 1994, to make everyone at home. There are dozens of organizations in the alliance that, among them, provide "a variety of services and supports to people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless."

In the mix are "emergency shelters, community health centres, agencies that provide mental health and addiction services and organizations that provide affordable housing or seek to create it." When the sky falls, and particularly in wobbly economic times such these, and an individual or a family first becomes homeless, the alliance radar picks up on them and first finds them emergency shelter, then assists them in finding appropriate housing. There is also pre-emptive assistance, for those who have a home but are in imminent danger of losing it.

Since 2004, the Alliance has issued an annual Report Card on Ending Homelessness in Ottawa, and that report takes place in the spring. Three years ago, the Alliance did the math and worked out the hypothetical, annual improvement in numbers and percentages in four aspects of ending homelessness that could literally get it off the street. They then improved the impact and media attractiveness of their report card by handing out grades to demonstrate if we as a city had succeeded or failed in those four areas.

Those four aspects are: How are we doing at getting down the number of people using emergency shelters?; Are we getting better at reducing the length of stay in those shelters?; Given an annual target of reducing the homeless population by 500, how close did we come to that this year?; and How close have we come in the last year to the twin goals of adding a thousand, newly built affordable housing units? And by affordable it is meant that - as a baseline - no single person on low income should spend more than a third of their income on rent for a bachelor apartment. Four chances for the city to score passing grades, or fall short and get an F.

The Alliance released their report card last week, and so it was that I found myself of a morning in the back row of a press conference at the Salvation Army, with the media pointing cameras and working smart phones, some no doubt trying to keep up with the Boston tragedy. There were professors from local universities and Alliance representatives on hand, and a Power Point presentation loaded with graphs.

Also present was Cassie and her baby; Cassie, whose family had recently been through a homeless phase, had bravely made herself available for media interrogation, on the grounds that a real life is always more forceful than a swath of statistics.
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Next week, a few words on what the report card had to say, and Cassie's story. A report, in other words, on the Alliance to End Homelessness's annual Report Card.

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Linda O'Neil
Chair, Public Affairs Working Group
The Alliance to End Homelessness

Public Education Consultant
Canadian Mental Health Association, Ottawa Branch
301-1355 Bank St., Ottawa ON, K1H 8K7
loneil at cmhaottawa.ca<mailto:loneil at cmhaottawa.ca>
Tel: (613) 737-7791 Ext 135

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