Needed Research on Supportive Housing – A Survey of What Currently Exists and Their Standards if Any
By Marvin Ross
The majority of people with serious mental illness live with their aging parents which often becomes a problem. We parents become ill, infirm, die or simply need to downsize. When that happens, what becomes of our kids. That was the case my wife and I had to deal with and we thought we found a solution. We were wrong and it became a horror for many reasons.
We were told about a Christian charity in our town called Indwell which ran supportive housing buildings and they were expanding. Indwell is based in Hamilton but has 27 buildings throughout Ontario with 9 more under development. They were originally recommended by a professional at the psychiatric hospital and with the help of my son’s case manager, our son applied. We got tours, sales pitches and my son spent 3 or 4 years on the wait list until he finally got a furnished bachelor apartment in a nice building. We were able to downsize knowing that he was to be cared for.
He was not cared for and our work and stress increased tenfold.
I don’t think we are unique.
Shortly after moving in, he opened his door one morning to find the hall swarming with police. His neighbour across the hall had been murdered in a horrific crime that resulted in two or three exposes in the local paper. The reporter who covered the murder trial summarized the testimony and the activities including drug deals and comings and goings at all hours of the night.
People sleep in the halls, prostitutes ply their trade and drugs are sold along with the usual thefts and robberies where our son was frequently victimized.. One police officer wondered why anyone would live there. It took time and a lawyer’s letter to get my son moved to another building which was only marginally better. The final straw was when my son was terrified by a fight that broke out in the lobby that attracted 10 police cars. My complaints to Ontario Health resulted in his being moved to an older and more stable building. Even after he moved, he and his case worker had to have the police “threaten” one of the residents of the previous building with charges if he did not stop.
Retirement became a nightmare as we dealt with all this.
In one Indwell residence in Hamilton, someone was beaten to death by another resident who had a previous criminal record of violent assault. Another resident fired a shotgun through his door and was in a 10 hour standoff with police. Two people in the first building my son was in died and their bodies were undiscovered for awhile. Both were my son’s friends. One was a man with schizophrenia who was clean after getting off heroin in prison where he was diagnosed with and treated for schizophrenia. He hated where he lived and, according to the local paper, he begged his mother to find him somewhere else to live because the dealers were tempting him. He OD ed.
A survey was done in one Hamilton Indwell building (See P 5) and 67% stated that they did not feel safe living there and 21 % had been physically or verbally assaulted. 57% were afraid to have their families visit them in their apartments. At a public meeting held in Mississauga to get support for another proposed Indwell building, some of their own residents showed up to complain about the violence they’ve experienced at Indwell and the failure of the organization to take any action.
Indwell management argues they are performing harm reduction and people need a place to live. When asked, they will not describe what they mean by wrap around supports. We’ve seen none.
I’ve written numerous blog posts about the problems and another person has, with my help, produced two very extensive reports on Indwell. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13ERArBT24-mIUiYtGheu6BZjQItX9t4j/view?usp=sharing And https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XnEOGrEEx9EFTb7ujW9nnk-sIRqHLJM2/view?usp=sharing.
The issue is this. Day nurseries, nursing homes, and long term care homes all have standards that operators must comply with. They are inspected for compliance and, if there are problems, they must rectify them. Not the case when it comes to supportive housing for vulnerable psychiatric patients. Psychiatric patients are lumped in with those recently released from prison, addicts and others with no targetted programming.
And governments continue to fund them.
Well over $100 million has been given to Indwell with no oversight. When asked about oversight, CMHC told me:
“CMHC offers financial support to projects that meet our program criteria during the most critical step in residential project development, which is during construction. To clarify, CMHC does not oversee the day-to-day management of the projects that we fund and the responsibility for effective management rests with the owner of the building, as well as with local authorities overseeing tenant rights.”
The Federal Minister of Housing made a similar comment and the City of Hamilton told me they do not provide funding to Indwell despite giving them $125,000 in 2023 and they approved $1.2 million for high-level support services from Indwell for the King William project. This is from the Hamilton Spectator.
What they told me in writing is:
“The City of Hamilton does not provide operating funding to most of the Indwell buildings listed below. Several, including the Oaks properties, do receive rent supplements. Our rent supplement agreements do not require that we be informed of overdoses or deaths of tenants. Deaths would be reported to the coroner and police.”
There are some good supportive housing programs and I’ve seen some but there are many bad ones. Why do we bother to treat people and attempt to improve their mental health when they have nowhere decent to go live and little to no supervision and activities in the community.
What we need is a survey of the various supportive housing for those with serious mental illnesses, the admission criteria, programming and support they provide. Until we have a picture of the current state, we cannot improve what is a valuable therapeutic service for these patients.