Slum Landlord SHC (S. G.)

I'm a psychiatric survivor who lives in subsidized housing for survivors, owned and operated by the Supportive Housing Coalition of Metropolitan Toronto (SHC). My so-called living space is a ten-foot by thirteen-foot room and a bathroom. I call my place "the closet" as its size is so small.

I'm not the only dissatisfied tenant of the SHC. In a building housing moms and their children there is a tremendous moisture problem. Other SHC buildings have no garbage disposal, similar moisture problems, bad experiences with staff including abuse, and the whole gamut of other difficulties.

For these reasons, we dissatisfied consumer/survivor tenants have started a Tenant Association in SHC buildings. We have meetings regularly and have made some inroads into the SHC by having one of our members sit on the SHC board.
Basically, though, our landlord is somewhat of a slumlord and has a poor history of dealing with its tenants and an even worse record of dealing with maintenance problems at its buildings.

We at the Association are hopeful that our dealings with the SHC will improve now that the Residents Rights Act is in effect. We have become affiliated with the Federation of Metro Tenants Associations to help us get more access to information and assistance.

You can reach Mike Higgs of our Tenants Association at 766 6567.

My House (C.)

I have been housed in some of the worst psychiatric institutions in the province. I have even lived in seclusion rooms no bigger than broom closets. And when I was in the Mental Health Centre in Penetanguishene I lived in a "masking tape" house (they actually put masking tape on the floor and told me the masking tape was where the walls of my "house" were).
In my early teens I was sent to live in a group home in southwestern Ontario as a condition to being allowed to leave a Behaviour Modification Unit. The woman who ran the group home was harsh and mean-spirited (to say the least).
The conditions in the house were deplorable. There were six women living in the unfinished basement of a run-down old house. We were forced to go to the local hospital day program where we received 40 cents an hour to work in the hospital's factory. We weren't allowed in the house except from 6 to 7 p.m. to eat dinner and do the dishes, and from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. to sleep. We slept on bunk beds in one small room and shared a space where the mold actually grew on the walls. If we broke any of the house rules we were shipped back to the Behaviour Modification Unit (not for being "psychotic," just for being a discipline problem).

After being warehoused for most of my early teenage years, I found myself on the streets and homeless. I stayed in hostels and begged and/or "worked" for money, cigarettes and of course drugs and alcohol. Over the years there seemed to be two choices: the institutions or the streets.

Then about 12 years ago rent-geared-to-income housing. That meant a lot to me in those early years when I was living on my own trying to make ends meet. But it seemed like a really painful blow when I started working part-time last year and my rent increased by $ 215 (I was bringing home about $ 280 more than when I was on family benefits).

My only real complaint is that this housing company continues to build apartments with electric heat. My heating bills are astronomical and at times almost as much as my rent. This seems like a slap in the face of most tenants who are on fixed incomes.

Anyway, I am grateful that I have a home and even have a dog and two cats who live with me. But if I had to say one thing about spending so much of my life living in institutions it would be that the hardest thing for me has been to get the institutions out of my head.

Staff in the Building (Heinz Klein)

As a resident, I am quite concerned about the changes in staffing in my building. Houselink, as an organization, calls itself member-driven or has the membership participating in decisions which are congruent with its mission. At least this is how I understand the goal and objectives of this organization. It's supposed to lend itself towards the new Mental Health Reform which talks about self-determination and participation in the decision-making process by users of services.

Therefore, I do not understand why a change of staff is dictated instead of discussed by the members of a dwelling unit. Very often these kind of changes have a very negative influence in the lives of people served by this organization. There have been trust bases established and, because of these staff changes, members will have to go through the process of establishing trust relationships again. This happened to me more than once in Houselink.

To follow its goals and objectives, Houselink has to be responsible to be responsive. That means to respect and if possible realize the wishes, dreams, and hopes of its members, to truly be a membership-driven organization.
As an organization, Houselink will not have any negative effects through the restructuring and the occuring changes in staffing, but some members like myself will feel that these changes will not improve, but negatively affect, their quality of life.
I don't know what kind of steps could be taken to facilitate a proper kind of responsibility to the membership or residents in a dwelling unit where staff changes are proposed, but I am not satisfied since nobody asked for my wishes or input in the decision which has an effect on my quality of life and my living circumstances.

I hope that the Board as well as the management of this organization will find ways to make sure that changes in staffing may have less harmful effects for the members of this organization. So far these changes have left me with the loss of several trust-based and beneficial working relationships.

A Lonely's Place (from PARC's Foolproof Newsletter)

"Most men live a life of quiet desperation," is a gentle admonishment form Henry Thoreau. Though he was speaking to a different generation, his observation also applies to us. It's easy for someone living in our city to hang out in a lonely room/apartment all the time. And as another wise one once said, "A life of solitude turns a person into either a saint or a madman."

Though the PARC Drop-in Centre is mainly for consumer/survivors of the mental health system, it is also a place where a person who isn't necessarily a consumer/survivor can go to rub shoulders with fellow humans. This is very important since fellowship, even in highly populated Toronto, can be difficult to find. At PARC, there's always a crowd, and many have the same kind of troubles. It can be, if someone wants it to, a place to make contact with sympathetic souls who also experience harsh loneliness in all its relentlessness. Of even greater importance, PARC can be a place for someone to learn how to be sociable; there's a zero tolerance policy towards violence, which swims largely and silently just below the surface of so many lives. Loneliness is an utterly frustrating thing, soul-destroying, even maddening, if only because its victims blame themselves for it... which isn't right. Everybody born on Earth suffers loneliness at some time, but people brought up with a fundamental trust of life know how to banish loneliness, just by exerting themselves.

Friendship (Geoff Reaume)

"Leave me alone! I don't want anything to do with you!" Paul's angry voice called out across the hospital cafeteria, his resentment stabbing out from his piercing eyes.

Joseph stood there stunned. Only a moment before he had greeted this white haired man , whom he thought was a friend, with: "Hi, Paul, how are you doing?" Trying to recover something that seemed lost, Joseph persisted: "I'd be glad to visit with you at any time."

Paul, filled with revulsion for this interfering outsider, responded with months of pent-up anger: "Why don't you get lost, you hypocrite! Where were you when I needed you? I haven't seen you in six weeks! Since then I've been kicked out of my home and forcibly locked up in this damn mental institution! And just where the hell were you? Gallivanting out west, I hear. Must have been nice!"

Confronted with his own unreliability as a friend and supporter, Joseph was unable to respond with anything more than self pity: "I'm sorry, but..."

Paul was in no mood for to listen to such plaintive cries from a privileged psychiatric survivor. Joseph's status as a university student guaranteed him a far more "respectable " position in society than that accorded an elderly psychiatric patient who had been living in a boarding house.

"Your apologies disgust me, and so does your condescending manner," declared Paul. "For months you would visit me and dole out money like some Santa Claus, expecting my eternal gratitude. When I tried to pay for food and drinks a couple of times you prevented me from doing so, insisting on your ability to cover the cost. How do you think I felt? What about my self-esteem? I'm not your personal welfare case who you can feel good about by emptying your wallet whenever we get together. Friendship means more than that!"

Several patients, sitting nearby, listened attentively, saying nothing, but understanding full well the anger Paul was expressing.

No books, meetings, rallies or speeches could have prepared Joseph for such searing criticism from another psychiatric survivor, whose suffering brought into sharp focus the wide gap between many current and former patients, and how each experiences particular relationships.

In a quiet, weary voice the certified inmate said to the would-be visitor, who could come and go as he pleased" "Just leave me alone, Joseph, at least until you've shown some realization of what it means to be a friend."
With that, Paul departed, leaving his one-time acquaintance standing like an awkward statue, wondering to himself if either of these two people had ever really been friends. Friendship. As fragile and in need of nurturing as a spring flower. Friendship. As elusive as the stars above.

Poem (Don Weitz)

I say Kaddish but don't feel like it
While you shuffle stoned
Corpselike a musselman
Along the tombstoned halls
Of Psychoprison Queen Street
Which smells of instant despair -- waste -- death
Of lost souls, the wounded, drugged and demented
Who once spread the word about our movement
In Toronto, Winnipeg, Cleveland

The Nazis in the white coats are here again
They killed you in the eighties
They're killing you in the nineties
With 2-point and 4-point restraints
In seclusion cages on ward 4:5
Where Haldol - Modecate - Prozac - Poisons
Are served for breakfast - Lunch - Dinner
For Weeks - Months - Years

Special treatment, cruel and unusual torture
Like good Germans in the thirties and forties
We stand saluting, "Heil Dr. Cameron! Heil Dr. Du--!"
Silent like good Canadians
Concerned about "Mental Health Reform" which deforms
A shameful sham like deinstitutionalization
Saluting SS doctors in plainclothes who
Lobotomize dissident sons - daughters - cousins
Saluting sadistic quacks who stigmatize
Brothers - sisters - partners - friends
With numbers, swearwords, labels
"Schizophrenic" like "Jew" tattooed on their skins and souls
For life for their own benefit

The Holocaust is not dead
Its codenames today are ECT, DSM-IV, Medication, Treatment
Remember Nuremburg?
The right to refuse?
To resist?
To live?
Mel, are you listening?
Mel?!

Warehousing (Anonymous)

In this city, where the "opportunities" are, the expense of owning or renting a space to eat and sleep is probably higher than anywhere else in the country. Sure there's rent-geared-to-income but what if you don't have an income! Maybe I should just move to a cheaper city, but I wouldn't know anybody there and they probably have worse conditions for psychiatric survivors. Toronto is the place to be if you're looking for variety in a poorhouse. There's a poorhouse with mildew, cockroaches and mice, and there's a poorhouse with noise and no privacy. There's a poorhouse with no heat and a bad stove. There's a poorhouse with crime and cops next door. There's a poorhouse with suicides and fear. Take your pick. As for me, I'm choosing the poorhouse with as many problems as I can find to get the most out of Toronto that I can.

1994, April, Introductory Isssue
1994, August, "Restraints and Isolation"

1995, May, "Victory in Court"
1995, September, "Housing"

1996, January, "Alternatives to Psychiatry"
1996, May, "Does Mental Illness Exist"
1996, September, "Friends and Family"

1997, January, "Beliefs"
1997, November, "Speaking Out"

2001, March, "Those Who Have Died"

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