By Marvin Ross
This blog is going to get me into more trouble than usual I suspect. My concern is that we have become so liberal bending over to accommodate some members of society that we do tremendous harm to the majority. From recent efforts in at least two provinces – Ontario and BC – this may be coming to an end and it is about time. The problem will be how we deal with the outliers and help them.
As I’ve pointed out in my blogs about Supportive Affordable Housing (with a focus on Indwell but they are not alone), people with severe mental illness, the elderly and the physically disabled are being housed along with those with substance abuse. Those who use drugs are not usually required to be abstinent or required, from what I gather, to be in a rehabilitation program.
As Dr. David Laing Dawson pointed out in one his blogs here:
“As the Indwell experience highlights, people suffering from severe mental illness, whether treated or not, are vulnerable. They are easily victimized by unscrupulous addicts and dealers.
The old mental hospitals had the means, usually, to keep the drug dealers away from the mentally ill. A place like Indwell does not.”
Dr Richard O’Reilly, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Western University pointed out that combining the mentally ill with those with substance abuse in the same setting is not a good approach. The needs of those with substance abuse are different from the needs of the mentally ill.
In this space, we have chronicled the havoc that takes place where the non addicts are housed together with the addicted and there is no treatment or rehabilitation – murders, shootings, assaults, fights, robberies and more. Indwell does not agree with my position and, in a letter they sent to various people they tried to refute me by saying that “Marvin Ross is a medical writer whose approach to abstinence-based housing programs does not conform to current best practice.”
They failed to provide evidence of how abstinence is not the correct strategy.
By allowing the addicted to continue, they are impinging on the needs of other tenants and of the neighbourhoods where their buildings are or are being proposed. In most cases, this is not a case of “not in my backyard” but a concern for the consequences to prospective neighbours for the enjoyment of their living space.
As an illustrative anecdote, I lived in the historical district of Dundas, Ontario for close to 25 years. Our neighbours were teachers, professors, artists, doctors, judges and others. There was a group home around the corner and not once did I hear anyone complain about it. We lived there for years before I even know it was a group home (not even a good one according to the local paper). Residents sat on their front porch and waved to me and my dog as we walked by but that was it. They could sometime be seen panhandling downtown but no one complained.
The house beside it sold very quickly and the new owners poured hundreds of thousands in renovations and additions seemingly unconcerned about their neighbours. Recently, the town facebook page mentioned a group of young males who hung around near a hiking trail most of the day and it was pointed out that most were people with schizophrenia. Not only was there no outcry but there were offers to drop snacks and drinks off to them.
To deal with this problem of drug use in residential buildings, Ontario has introduced new legislation that is upsetting supportive housing providers. A subsection of Bill 10 designed to make people safe has already received Royal Assent but has not yet been proclaimed. It makes landlords liable for drug activity in their buildings with fines up to $250,000 for a first offence. Landlords can protect themselves if they are seen taking action against illicit drug use. The supportive housing agencies, however, want to be exempt as they claim their purpose is to reduce drug activity.
From what I’ve seen and been told, many do not seem to be making that effort and the police are regular visitors responding to calls at these buildings. Besides, this act does not show how the landlords can prevent illegal drug activity. The Landlord and Tenant Act in Ontario already allows landlords to evict tenants who disturb others and/or engage in illegal activity. Most if not all supportive housing projects are governed by this legislation. Unfortunately, the Tribunal that hears cases has become a mess thanks to changes made when Doug Ford and the Conservative Party took office in 2018.
According to Tribunal Watch, a tenant had to wait an average of 40 days for a hearing in 2018 but in 2024, it was up to 277 days. A Landlord seeking eviction had to wait 90 days but by 2024 it was up to 167 days. Ontario also ended in person hearings and replaced them with electronic hearings. As a result, according to Tribunal Watch these have proven to be less efficient in achieving mediated settlements on “the hearing day. Since Tribunals Ontario removed the right to an in-person hearing, the annual number of cases resolved through mediation has fallen to just over 5,000, compared to an average of 10,799 in the five previous years.“
The mechanism to deal with problematic tenants already exists but has been gutted by Doug Ford and his government. Do we really need another piece of legislation much as I agree with the reasons for implementing it.
The other aspect to this problem is second hand smoke. My son lived in the infamous Parkdale Landing building in Hamilton run by Indwell which a number of Hamilton Spectator articles headlines read “” Hamilton’s Parkdale Landing was to provide safer supportive housing — but then a murder happened and ‘They checked for bed bugs but not for wellness’: Mother raises concerns about the response to another death at Parkdale Landing and More than a week decomposing.’ A mother wants answers about her son’s death at Parkdale Landing
Visiting one day to this supposed smoke free building I commented to the director that I was worried about getting high as I walked down the corridor. The smell of pot was overpowering. She just shrugged.
That brings us to British Columbia where “The presence of second-hand fentanyl smoke is so severe at some British Columbia supportive housing facilities that workers cannot escape “substantial exposure,” even if they stay in their offices and don’t venture into hallways or tenants rooms.”
As a result “the B.C. Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs said it takes the concerns about possible worker exposure to airborne fentanyl seriously” BC “announced the formation of a working group to tackle safety in supportive housing, including second-hand exposure to fentanyl.”
For me, the issue is that we have a group of people engaging in illegal activity and being allowed to do so even though what they are doing endangers others. It isn’t just the second hand smoke but the behaviour that goes along with addiction, namely their focus on getting their next high, theft and prostitution to pay for drugs, trafficking, violence and all else.
These are illustrations of what the non addicted face in supportive housing buildings from a new report put out on Indwell:
“I live in Indwell (at Lakeshore Lofts in Mississauga). I do not feel safe. I have been pushed, threatened. I ran away from a 46 years of marriage of an alcoholic abuse to be in a place where I want to be at rest, but I am not because in front of my apartment all I see is drug dealers, drug addicts, alcoholics. I cannot open my window. I’m not allowed to open my window because I can hear every single thing that is going on. “
I am an Indwell tenant. I live down the street (Lakeshore Lofts). I think what everybody wants to know, are you going to house addicts because I personally have been affected by it. I’ve been assaulted verbally, physically from Compass users, from tenants in the building and honestly the biggest issue is the people who come in with addiction problems.
I lived in Indwell in London from 2019 untill 2021. It was a nightmare ….. there was so much drugs. There was so much trauma. It’s a complete s##t show” ‘
And, we we ignore these problematic behaviours and the people who are impacted by it without dealing with the addicted perpetrators or providing treatments for them.
There do appear to be three solutions:
One Maintain the status quo of warehousing treated and untreated mentally ill with the physically disabled, the elderly and those with active substance abuse. The result is that the substance abusers likely continue abusing others and impinge on neighborhoods.
Two. Only house the mentally ill, disabled and elderly and not allow those with active addictions into these buildings. Where then do the addicts go but to homelessness and encampments.
Three and the most expensive and logical. That is providing accessible rehab for substance abuse and should be combined by restoring the levels of help that those with metal illnesses had before they were all cut drastically. That is adequate psychiatric beds, treatment and professionals.
I fear, however that if the government does anything it will be to increase the number of homeless who keep moving from one encampment to another.
Our streets and cities will get even worse.
