Homelessness

'It never came to feel normal for me': Researcher Kaitlin Schwan is on a mission to end homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 18:20:27 +0000

'It never came to feel normal for me': Researcher Kaitlin Schwan is on a mission to end homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/13/2023 - 13:20

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Kaitlin Schwan, who graduated with a PhD in social work in 2016, is executive director at the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network and a senior researcher at the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (photo courtesy of Kaitlin Schwan)

Megan Easton

Topic

Our Community

Alumni

Cities

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Homelessness

When Kaitlin Schwan was about six years old, she secretly gave her mother’s credit cards to people she encountered living on the streets in Toronto.

“After I saw the realities of homelessness for the first time, I’d lie in bed and think about how painful it must be to have cold, wet feet all day and night,” says Schwan, who grew up in Owen Sound, Ont. and earned a PhD in 2016 from the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “I didn’t understand credit cards, but I had a sense that they would help somehow.”

Decades after that act of innocent generosity, Schwan is continuing to help those experiencing homelessness and is now a leading researcher on the topic in Canada. She is the executive director of the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network (WNHHN) and a senior researcher at the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness.

“Most children are confused and distressed when they witness homelessness, because kids are deeply empathetic,” says Schwan, who was also recently appointed an assistant professor, status only, at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “As they get older, they go through a process of socialization where they are taught to understand it as a normal feature of Canadian society. But that normalization didn’t happen for me. It never came to feel normal for me that, in a wealthy nation, people had nowhere safe and warm to live.”

Schwan’s path to her current roles began during her undergraduate degree in women’s studies, when she ran arts-based programs in homeless shelters for youth. “I’d discovered through volunteering that some form of art practice is often central to these young people’s emotional and psychological survival,” she says.

After a master’s degree, where she explored the importance of the arts for unhoused youth, she decided to investigate the broader problem of homelessness from a social work and policy perspective. Her doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor David Hulchanski, traced the history of homelessness in Canada. She credits Hulchanski, the Dr. Chow Yei Ching Chair in Housing, for giving her crucial insight into the political landscape around the subject. “He showed me how policy failures have created and perpetuated homelessness in ways that are deeply unjust and entirely unnecessary,” she says.

The Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network attended the national conference of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness in Toronto, where they led a symposium (photo courtesy of Kaitlin Schwan)

Schwan also points to her mentor, Professor Faye Mishna, for shaping the way she conducts research. “Because of her, I centre the voices and experiences of people with lived experience,” she says. “The depth of her integrity and ethics were foundational to how I developed as a researcher.”

During her PhD, Schwan became interested in the largely untold stories of women and gender-diverse individuals without adequate housing. “Their experiences are unique in that they often live in situations that we call ‘hidden homelessness,’ such as couch surfing, trading sex for shelter and remaining in abusive relationships because they can’t access housing,” she says.

While Schwan was examining these issues as a scholar, her personal life highlighted their critical necessity. “My sister was dealing with significant violence in her life, and the buffer to that was safe housing. Yet so many women have no door to lock against their abusers,” she says. “This first-hand knowledge collided with my research to reinforce my sense that national change was needed in this area.”

Yet the doctoral program soon inspired Schwan to look beyond Canada to the impact she could make in the international arena. A few years after graduation, she contacted Leilani Farha, then the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to housing, after seeing a documentary on her work. Schwan offered to build a research team for her and Farha agreed. When Farha’s UN term ended, the whole team formed The Shift, an international movement to secure the right to housing, where Schwan was director of research until 2022.

Since taking the helm at the WNHHN earlier this year, Schwan has continued this rights-based approach. She says urgent action on homelessness among women and gender-diverse people is essential, given the current context. “The combination of a public health crisis, a decrease in service provision, an increase in violence against women and the pandemic’s disproportionate negative economic impact on women has produced a very difficult housing situation.”

This summer, the WNHHN submitted two human rights claims in partnership with the National Indigenous Feminist Housing Working Group to the Federal Housing Advocate, who is charged with promoting and protecting the right to housing as a human right (as outlined in the 2019 National Housing Strategy Act).

“We developed the claims in collaboration with a group of about 25 women who have lived, or are living, in situations of homelessness,” says Schwan, noting that people with direct personal experience guide all of the network’s initiatives. In November, the group presented at the national conference of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness in Toronto and led a symposium where the Federal Housing Advocate heard deputations from 40 women with lived or living experiences of homelessness.

Schwan said that the participants reported feeling empowered to translate their experiences into policy action. In the next year, Schwan expects that the human rights claims will prompt policy recommendations for the federal minister of housing and diversity and inclusion.

“The depth of my commitment flows from the depth of my care for the women I struggle alongside,” she says. “We know that the solution to homelessness – access to safe, affordable housing – is imminently financially possible in a country with the ninth-largest GDP in the world. This gives me the hope to keep going.”

Blankets for T.O.: Student-founded group works to support those in need

lanthierj — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 12:08:06 +0000

Blankets for T.O.: Student-founded group works to support those in need

lanthierj Fri, 12/16/2022 - 07:08

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(From left) Students Nimit Vediya, Rushil Dave and Naman Sharma created Blankets for T.O., an advocacy organization dedicated to addressing homelessness (photo by Sean Liliani)

Alexa Battler

Topic

City & Culture

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Alumni

Homelessness

U of T Scarborough

Undergraduate Students

In 2015, on one of the coldest days of the year, three teenagers walking through downtown Toronto passed a man experiencing homelessness hunched in a bus shelter. Two weeks later, they read in the news that a man in a bus shelter had died of exposure.

“We don't know if it was the same person or someone in a similar situation, but we felt really guilty because we saw him and we didn't do anything about it,” says Nimit Vediya, now a medical student at the University of Toronto. “That's why we started thinking about how we could make a difference.”

In 2019, when the same trio of friends – Veidya, Naman Sharma and Rushil Dave – were studying neuroscience at U of T Scarborough, they created Blankets for T.O. Today, the organization has donated more than 6,000 items to people experiencing homelessness and expanded to five chapters at other universities – but it began with the students simply handing out thermal blankets to people in need on Valentine’s Day, 2020.

“Our priority was to protect them from the cold,” says Sharma. “We researched intensively and came up with an innovative solution; we decided to hand out thermal blankets. They look like aluminum foil, the snow slides off them and they can easily fold down into a small package so they’re very mobile.”

The foil mylar rescue blankets first donated by the Blankets for T.O. team (photo courtesy of Blankets for T.O.)

Months later, COVID-19 ripped through the city’s overcrowded shelters. Ontarians experiencing homelessness were more likely to contract COVID-19, be hospitalized and die of the virus, yet weren’t considered high priority in Ontario’s initial vaccine rollout. Blankets for T.O. started a petition, gathered signatures and lobbied local and provincial politicians until those without homes were among the first to get their shots.

“We’ve built relationships with four MPs in the area,” says Dave. “In the beginning, we were giving out a lot of donations, but we know that just donating items won't solve this problem.”

Tackling the root causes of homelessness requires advocacy, awareness and engagement, Dave says. The organization uses its blog, podcast, Instagram, annual general meetings and fundraising events to educate the public on the realities of homelessness and ways to get involved.

(From left) Nimit Vediya, Naman Sharma, Shaun Chen – MP for Scarborough North – and Rushil Dave hold donation bags made at a 2021 event (photo courtesy of Blankets for T.O.)

“There's a lot you can do by yourself. Don't think you can't tackle these big problems because you’re one person,” Vediya says. “You have a voice and you have power, no matter what your resources. Everyone has power these days, especially with social media.”

The group uses Instagram to advertise events, address misconceptions about homelessness and share stories of the people they’ve met while distributing care packages. Some have been willing to speak on video, and one man’s story reached more than 20,000 viewers. A war veteran from South Korea, he moved to Canada to open a restaurant. The pandemic bankrupted his business and he became homeless, all while hiding his reality from his friends and family.

“We received a lot of messages asking how to help him,” Dave says. “We want people to use us as a way to take on this challenge of ending homelessness. We hope when someone sees a person on the street, they think about ways to help them versus blaming them for ending up in that situation.”

Blankets for T.O. routinely holds fundraisers and uses proceeds to create care packages (photo courtesy of Blankets for T.O.)

The team says there are three key ways to help: donate, learn and act. Blankets for T.O. accepts money and brand-new items from those eager to contribute. Donations fund care packages with blankets, warm clothes, non-perishable food and personal protective equipment such as masks and hand sanitizer.

Blankets for T.O.’s chapter at U of T Scarborough has grown to more than 200 members, many of whom are artists. Chances to be creative are woven into many Blankets for T.O. events, such as its paint nights and last winter’s tote bag competition, when participants were challenged to design the most helpful care packages. More than 50 clubs from universities across Canada took part.

“If through this organization we were able to let one person know every single day that this is an important issue, I think we made a significant change in our world,” Sharma says.

U of T psychology course sparks advocacy around homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 03 May 2022 16:04:01 +0000

U of T psychology course sparks advocacy around homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 05/03/2022 - 12:04

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Students taking a work-integrated learning course at U of T Scarborough created public awareness campaigns that challenged common myths about homelessness in Toronto (photo by Marco Photo Garcia/Shutterstock)

Topic

Undergraduate Students

Students taking a unique psychology course at the University of Toronto Scarborough are working to change perceptions of homelessness in the community.

Working in groups of four, 1,800 students enrolled in “Introduction to Biological and Cognitive Psychology” were presented with a few common myths about homelessness – such as the belief that it is a choice or the exclusive result of substance abuse – and were told to create a public awareness campaign that would resonate with people their own age. Each group then provided feedback on other projects.

The top campaign, which consisted of an Instagram account and a series of posts, was sent to Houselink & Mainstay, one of Toronto’s largest community housing organizations.

“We knew that homeless people were getting particularly hit by COVID and that there were a lot of additional issues they’ve been facing,” says the course’s instructor Steve Joordens, a professor in the department of psychology.

“I think students also saw that there could be a real impact if younger people understood homelessness better.”

Joordens says the course project encouraged advocacy because it is effective way to develop critical thinking and communication skills.

“We need these skills because we can change the world in certain ways if we can learn to think well, organize our thoughts and communicate well with others,” he says. “And it's so much more enjoyable for students to do hard work when that work could actually make a difference.”

For some students, the course served as a springboard to more community-oriented work.

“At first it was just a project to me, but as soon as my friends and I started researching we actually realized how important this topic is,” says Zaynab Azeem, a first-year neuroscience student. “I also realized that while you're at university, it’s what you do outside of academics that really matters in the end.”

First-year neuroscience student Zaynab Azeem sought avenues for advocacy while her group created a narrated video for Steve Joordens' psychology course (photo courtesy of Zaynab Azeem)

Azeem joined Blankets for T.O., a non-profit founded at U of T Scarborough that addresses homelessness through advocacy, education and donations. Established in 2019, the organization has expanded to five chapters at universities across Ontario. Azeem says she joined partly because it was created by three first-year students.

“That definitely inspired me because if people just like me could start something like this, why couldn't I?”

The Blankets for T.O. team regularly hosts fundraising and educational events that bring students from different universities together (photo courtesy of Blankets for T.O.)

As the organization’s first-year representative, Azeem started a podcast called Beyond the Blankets and recently interviewed Joordens on myths around homelessness. She has also written for the group’s blog and helped with fundraising events, including a blanket drive in January that raised more than $2,000 to fund 100 care packages for Toronto shelters.

The podcast was a full-circle moment for Azeem since it was a podcast that inspired her to pursue neuroscience in the first place.

“If my passion stemmed from a podcast, maybe someone else's passion towards homelessness, and helping any marginalized community for that matter, can come from one too,” she says.

She’s now working on her next podcast episodes, which will explore how Canadian laws work against people experiencing homeless and other ways to get involved with Blankets for T.O.

Pen-pal Project connects U of T medical students with people experiencing homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:26:36 +0000

Pen-pal Project connects U of T medical students with people experiencing homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/25/2021 - 13:26

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Jackie Tsang, a third-year medical student whose family faced discrimination because of their socio-economic status, says the Pen-pal Project dispels myths about homelessness and teaches students empathy (photo by Kristian McCarthy)

Erin Howe

Topic

Our Community

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Homelessness

A new initiative at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine is giving a voice to people from marginalized backgrounds and helping students deepen their understanding of future patients.

The Pen-pal Project matches medical students with community members who’ve experienced homelessness. The pairs exchange a series of letters that bolster compassion among the learners while helping to empower their pen-pals.

Jackie Tsang, a third-year medical student who is vice-president, education in the Social Justice for Medical Education club, spoke with writer Erin Howe about her involvement with the Pen-pal Project and how it’s being adapted to include more participants and a broader curriculum.

How does the Pen-pal Project work?

My third-year colleague Ivona Berger and I partnered with HouseLink, which provides supportive housing and other programs to people with mental health and addiction issues. In the first letter last fall, 11 students asked their pen-pals about their life circumstances and past experiences with medical professionals. Over the course of the month-long pilot, participants developed meaningful relationships with one another.

What inspired the Pen-pal Project?

I have lived experience with financial and housing insecurity. My parents are immigrants and throughout their lives they’ve faced discrimination because of their low socio-economic status. I’ve always recognized this as part of my identity, but didn't realize the gravity of it until I reached post-secondary education.

While I was in university in London, Ont., I noticed a glaring financial disparity between myself and most other students. I was also shocked by the degree of apathy towards the homeless population. I started a local branch of the non-profit organization #HashtagLunchbag, which brings together volunteers to assemble lunch bags for people experiencing housing insecurity. There are a lot of misconceptions about people in these circumstances and I thought #HashtagLunchbag would help address and dispel them. The program also became the impetus for me to apply my interest in inner-city health in my role as a medical student.

Ivona and I inherited this project from fourth-year medical students Abirami Kirubarajan and Seiwon Park, who came up with the idea of using a pen-pal program to teach our peers about empathy for homelessness.

How has this experience changed the way participants think about homelessness?

Through the letters, students got to read about the varied nature of their pen-pals’ personal experiences and the impact of different life events that were beyond their control. Things like a financial crisis, mental health issues or traumatic childhood events can contribute to precarious housing – things no one would choose for themselves.

The students also developed new communication skills. For example, some students were paired with pen-pals whose first language isn’t English and had to tailor their writing to their pen-pal.

Participants said they developed stronger advocacy skills by learning about different resources and people who advocate for their pen-pals. Students said they gained better insight into how their actions and words as future medical professionals can have a profound impact on somebody's life and relationship with the health-care system.

What are the next steps for The Pen-pal Project?

We’re working with Associate Professor Fok-Han Leung, director of the health in the community curriculum for the MD Program, and experiential learning lead Roxanne Wright to integrate The Pen-pal Project into the community-based service learning curriculum. It's a social distancing-friendly way to engage with the community, so it's timely that we've just finished our pilot and are ready to hit the ground running with it.

We’re also looking to expand the program to include people from other disadvantaged or marginalized groups who may have intersecting factors that influence their health. In the future, we hope to pair groups of student participants with community members to exchange letters throughout their second year of medical education.

We’ll also share students’ experiences with the pilot through a qualitative study we wrote to highlight the project’s themes, and which we have submitted for publication. I'm also scheduled to give an oral presentation on the project at the Canadian Conference for Medical Education, as well as one at U of T’s Medical Student Research Day, which is a huge privilege.

How does it make you feel to see this project grow to include more students in a more formal way?

Honestly, this is beyond what I ever thought possible. My goal was to educate my peers about homelessness and health. And I'm glad it has this broader implication of learning about other marginalized populations as well.

When I was applying to medical school and preparing my “about me” statement for my interviews, I had crushing feelings like, “I shouldn't even apply.” Then, I remember reading about a medical student at U of T who is now a physician, Dr. Stephanie Zhou, whose opinion piece about growing up experiencing low socio-economic status gave me a new outlook on how to leverage my lived experiences.

I remember a conversation with my dad, who didn’t get to go to post-secondary school and invested every cent he could into making sure my sister and I had what we needed. When I wanted to apply for a medical school entrance bursary, I asked him to fill out the financial forms with me. He said no – why would anyone want to accept a student in financial need?

I was so frustrated in that moment. But reflecting on it, I totally understand where he was coming from – he had been discriminated against and faced inequities because of his socio-economic status and it seemed logical that applying to medical school would be no different.

I'm really glad that, as a medical student, I can dispel myths about people who might not have grown up in the best financial circumstances. And I'm glad to pave a road for future students like me. I hope they’re inspired and comforted to know they’re not alone.

'We’ve failed on housing': Addressing homelessness an urgent priority amid COVID-19, U of T experts say

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 15:59:59 +0000

'We’ve failed on housing': Addressing homelessness an urgent priority amid COVID-19, U of T experts say

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 08/25/2020 - 11:59

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(photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Heidi Singer

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Cities

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Medicine

Homelessness

University Health Network

The pandemic is a frightening time for those who are experiencing homelessness, advocates say – but it may also present a rare opportunity to address the issue.

While Canadians may have become numb to the sight of 35,000 people on the streets, COVID-19 has laid bare the public health implications of homelessness in cities across the country and provided an opening to secure emergency housing for people experiencing homelessness who have contracted the virus.

“COVID has impacted homeless populations and revealed a depth of crisis that has pushed all of us to develop a sustainable system,” says Angela Robertson, executive director of the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre. “The kind of system that has been talked about for a number of years is now happening.”

In March, Robertson began working with Andrew Boozary, of the University of Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and Andrew Bond, a lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine who is the medical director of Inner City Health Associates. Together, they are co-leads of the Toronto region’s COVID-19 homelessness response, which initially established spaces for the city’s homeless to isolate and recover if they or a close contact tested positive for the coronavirus.

Organizers were able to provide a hotel room for each person or family in Etobicoke and downtown Toronto. At the height of the outbreak, more than 1,000 people were receiving on-site access to an interdisciplinary model of health and social care in four buildings. Staff ensured that everyone had a primary care provider by the time they left the recovery centres.

“There were people in tears at having their own bed,” says Boozary, who is executive director of population health and social medicine at the University Health Network, where he works as a physician. “That’s how much we’ve failed on housing.”

“The most pressing anxiety for folks wasn’t COVID but housing,” agrees Robertson. “For many people, this was the first time in years they had a room of their own, washroom facilities and a bed that was yours today and would be yours tomorrow.”

So far, more than 5,000 people experiencing homelessness in Toronto have been tested for COVID-19 – over half the estimated homeless population – and 1,000 have qualified for a room in a recovery centre.

Although lower income and racialized people are at far higher risk, the virus has demonstrated how everyone is interconnected – a reality Boozary says has been increasingly obscured amid growing income inequality. As an example, Boozary points to the high-rise Toronto neighborhood of St. James Town, where he grew up. It’s almost directly across the street from the leafy mansions of Rosedale, but the two areas remained worlds apart.

There is now, however, a growing awareness of COVID-19’s stubborn persistence in low-income neighborhoods, where people have fewer options.

“We’ve seen how anyone can get COVID if you don’t have the structural protection,” he says. “But we’ve made a choice as a society as to who’s afforded those protections. This is mired in a history of racist and discriminatory public policy. The latest COVID data show racialized people making up 83 per cent of all Toronto cases – it is a cruel exposer of long-standing inequalities.”

With a flattening of the curve, the city’s recovery centres have been reduced to one. But Boozary and Robertson fear even more families may be on the streets come the fall, where they will once again be at higher risk for COVID.

“We are staring at potentially one of the largest waves of homelessness given the unprecedented socio-economic fallout of COVID,” says Boozary. “We can continue to try for interim solutions. But to really get through this pandemic and to deliver on housing as a human right – as well as the most effective treatment through this pandemic – we need to convert these investments into lasting solutions.”

“Given the decades of life lost to homelessness, it’s amazing that a virus is exposing how important housing is. Housing is really the soundest economic choice and the option that protects human dignity. Anything else will fall short.”

U of T grad Emily Wright draws on experiences – and service dog – to teach students about empathy, homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 17:11:48 +0000

U of T grad Emily Wright draws on experiences – and service dog – to teach students about empathy, homelessness

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 06/05/2019 - 13:11

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"I wouldn't have been able to do this program without having her support and having her at my side," says OISE grad Emily Wright about her dog Kailey, which will receive a special certificate from the school (photo by Romi Levine)

Topic

Diversity and Inclusion

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

When Emily Wright crosses the stage at University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall on June 20, she’ll have her biggest supporter by her side – Kailey.

Covered in a mop of white and grey shaggy hair and standing about a foot off the ground, Kailey is Wright’s service dog. They’ve been together through every lecture, presentation and placement during her two years in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education’s master’s of teaching program.

During the ceremony, Kailey will also be receiving a special honour – a certificate acknowledging her time at OISE.

“She might not have written the essays and done the actual typing and work, but I wouldn't have been able to do this program without having her support and having her at my side,” says Wright.

Wright got Kailey as a puppy six years ago. About a year later, Wright began to notice that after meals, Kailey would act strange, pawing and bothering her. Perplexed, she consulted a trainer, and then proceeded to go to a doctor.

“I got diagnosed as diabetic. And that's when I realized that my dog was actually alerting me to changes in my blood sugar,” she says.

She decided to work with trainers in order to certify Kailey as a service dog, providing diabetes and mental health support.

“She will alert me to oncoming panic attacks before they actually happen so I'm able to situate myself in a position or a place that I'm safe,” Wright says. “She does something called pressure therapy where she gives a hug on my chest to help me regulate my breathing.”

Kailey has been instrumental both in Wright’s personal life and during her training to become a teacher. Wright says bringing Kailey into classrooms is a meaningful way to teach children about empathy.

“When I start to point out things like, ‘It's too loud in the classroom' and ‘Look at Kailey, her ears are up, what do you think that means?', the kids start to pay attention to that body of language and behaviour.

“Next time it's loud, one of the students will stop and say, 'Everyone look at Kailey, let's be a little bit quiet.’”

Kailey in the classroom (photo courtesy of Emily Wright)

Wright’s journey to this point has been far from linear, but the twists and turns, steps backward and forward, have shaped the way she sees the world – offering a unique perspective to her classmates, teachers and students.

“There was a time and place where I didn't know if I would be able to graduate college,” says Wright. “To think that I'm now having a master's degree with my certification to teach and did that with As and A-pluses – that feels like an amazing accomplishment and it makes me realize that I am in the right profession and not to give up on myself or my dreams.”

In 2014, Wright wrote a deeply personal account of her early life for Toronto Life. In it, she spoke about what she refers to as an “idyllic” life at home in an affluent Toronto neighbourhood. But at the private school she attended, she was the victim of vicious bullying. That led her to switch schools several times and gravitate to friends who introduced her to drugs.

When her addiction became out of control, her family enrolled her in rehabilitation programs. But following a series of relapses, and after being kicked out of a sober house, she found herself on the street.

After a violent encounter, Wright said she decided to turn her life around.

“It took being beaten and robbed for me to reach my breaking point. I never touched drugs again,” she wrote in Toronto Life.

Eva’s Phoenix, a Toronto-based facility for youth experiencing homelessness, helped her get back on her feet. Through a job placement, she found her calling: working with kids. She eventually completed high school, going on to study at George Brown College and Ryerson University before coming to U of T.

“My passion is teaching, especially about social justice issues, and I wanted to become more skilled both academically and practically in my ability to teach young children,” says Wright. “So I came to OISE to find something new about myself and hopefully be able to use that in the classroom with the students that I teach.”

Teachers shouldn’t shy away from teaching children about difficult subjects like mental health and homelessness, says Wright.

“If we want to make well-rounded students and children who are going to be great adults, we need to provide them with the opportunity to be aware of these issues and form their own opinions about them.”

Wright and Kailey took special graduation photos to commemorate the milestone (photo courtesy of Emily Wright)

Her major research paper focused on homelessness in children’s picture books – looking at how people who experience homelessness are portrayed and the stereotypes that are being employed.

She found that people depicted as experiencing homelessness in picture books were mostly middle-aged white men who were dirty with rips in their clothing, pushing a shopping cart and carrying bags. Kids were also depicted helping homeless people primarily in the winter time.

She suggests providing students with a more nuanced view of homelessness.

“We can have a better idea of what it means to experience homelessness, whether that's living on the streets, sleeping in a shelter or the hidden homeless population, which are people who are couch surfing or staying at different friends’ places – so they get to understand that there's a broad variety of different ways of experiencing it.”

Wright says she’s thankful for the OISE faculty members who shaped her approach as an educator.

“I feel grateful to call them not only professors, but people who are part of my support team and people who care about me,” she says.

One of the faculty members who made a big impact was Shelley Murphy, a lecturer at OISE in the department of curriculum, teaching and learning.

“Shelley Murphy is an amazing professor whose focus on mental health and mindfulness has not only helped my personal practice, but has helped me in my professional practice in what mindfulness looks like and what vocabulary and words I need to provide to my students so they can experience empathy but also explain their emotions and feelings,” says Wright.

In turn, Murphy says she has learned a lot from Wright – and Kailey too.

“She's a deep and critical thinker, especially when it comes to issues of social justice and access and equity,” says Murphy. “She gave us all an opportunity to learn more about what she knows about homelessness, about mental health, about access.”

In September, Wright will begin teaching with the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

“I'm really excited to get into the classroom and start doing some supply work and make some new connections in different schools,” she says.

Beyond the classroom, Wright participates in public-speaking engagements and advocacy work around social justice issues, including mental health and homelessness. She’s worked with the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research on curriculum development, and is currently working on curriculum with Raising the Roof, a national charity that aims to end homelessness.

“I'm adding to my repertoire of what I can do and how I speak and about those experiences,” says Wright. “I don't just have to be the person who is speaking about homelessness all the time, but I can now be the person who speaks about accessibility, inclusion and education all in one.”

Backlash to magazine story exposes ugly side of Toronto's housing obsession: U of T experts

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 20:39:51 +0000

Backlash to magazine story exposes ugly side of Toronto's housing obsession: U of T experts

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/02/2017 - 16:39

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A semi-detached house in Toronto's gentrifying Parkdale neighbourhood (photo by Cory Doctorow via Flickr)

Topic

A story in this week’s Toronto Life magazine about a so-called “reno from hell” inadvertently launched a public conversation about the impact of gentrification on vulnerable neighbourhoods and the city’s homeless population.

The story triggered a swift social media backlash – with many taking umbrage at the author’s depiction of her efforts to remove squatters from the Parkdale property, including a drug user she initially feared might be dead.

Emily Paradis is a senior research associate at the Faculty of Social Work who focuses on homelessness. Deborah Cowen is an associate professor of geography and planning.

They spoke with U of T News about the significance of the Parkdale neighborhood, reaction to the article, and who is really being hurt by Toronto’s nosebleed home prices.

Deborah Cowen, an associate professor of geography and planning:

Toronto Life writes a lot of stories about people buying and renovating houses all over the city. Why do you think this one sparked such a visceral social media reaction?

Any time I want to make sense of something, I begin by asking where we are. Every story has a context, and this one really matters. This is a moment of acute housing crisis in Toronto with some of the fastest change and aggressive displacement taking place in this very neighbourhood. Parkdale is notorious as a centre of the city’s gentrification. It is known internationally in the scholarly literature as an area where so many people – Indigenous, poor, of colour, immigrant, working class, with physical and mental disabilities, on pensions, LGBTQ, students and artists – are being pushed out. Average prices for single family homes in Toronto have soared recently to well over a million dollars. Income polarization is deepening, as are its racialized contours. Toronto’s housing crisis has become so acute that we now have an average weekly death rate of two homeless people on city streets.

This is all reason enough for outrage at a story that dehumanizes the very people facing displacement and maybe homelessness, while valorizing the problems elites face in causing it.

I take it you believe there are other problems, too?

For the last month, several hundred Parkdale residents have undertaken a courageous action – a collective rent strike. They are doing so to protest the actions of the landlord, MetCap, which is trying to raise rents above regulations for units that have egregious outstanding work orders. Today actually marks the beginning of their second month of the strike. I say this is courageous because renters are standing their ground despite facing harassment and risk of physical assault from landlords, not to mention the possibility of losing their housing.

In this context, the editorial decision to run this particular article could be interpreted as deliberately heartless. Or perhaps it is a declaration that Toronto Life locates itself on one side of a deepening divide. In fact, it is both. The article aims to elicit sympathy for one multiply propertied family with extended networks of wealth while sanctioning the eviction of so many others, not only from the house but from a common humanity.

What, if anything, can we learn from all of this?

I am heartened by the outrage. It suggests that there is widespread discontent with the status quo, and perhaps even widespread concern for the well-being of others. It suggests that there is a relationship between deepening inequality and this culture of dehumanization, and that folks are getting fed up. Attitude cannot will inequity into being, but it is a key ‘infrastructure’ of inequality.
Gentrification is not an accident – it is almost official policy. Gentrification lines the pockets of municipal government, as much as it does private ones. It is often framed as a natural process of ‘rejuvenation,’ like a garden in the springtime. But it is promoted and exploited by those who create the very regulations and policies that shape urban change. That the author’s attitudes elicited such disgust is a sign that maybe this city is ready to have some serious conversation about our collective future.

Emily Paradis, senior research associate at the Faculty of Social Work who focuses on homelessness:

What was your initial reaction to this story?

What struck me was the dehumanization of the low-income people in the story. Now, I expect to hear the triumphant pioneer narrative of gentrification – the story of brave people moving to a new neighbourhood and reclaiming it. That stuff I find irritating and offensive but not unexpected. But to hear a description of someone walking into a person’s bedroom, not initially noticing they’re there, slowly becoming aware of their presence, thinking they might be dead and then not doing anything to try and help – that was shocking to me.

You participated in a study on Parkdale rooming houses by the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust. What did the researchers find?

The researchers literally walked the streets of the neighbourhood to a get sense of what’s going on. The degree of loss of rooming house units was shocking. They found that 28 rooming houses had already been lost, and another 59 are at risk – that’s out of 198 rooming houses in the neighbourhood.

Some of these houses have been used as rooming houses since the Great Depression when many of these big mansions became unsustainable for families to own and heat. So rooming houses have always been part of the picture in Parkdale, and the need for them intensified in the 1970s and 1980s with deinstitutionalization. A lot of survivors of the [mental health] system moved into the neighbourhood because they were really close to services they needed. And, of course, we know the deinstitutionalization policy was enacted without enough community support to house people and provide services. One of the root causes of the level of homelessness we see today is that lack of funding for housing and services.

There are some who don’t see what the fuss is about – a family spent a lot of money and time fixing up a crumbing old house, improving the neighbourhood. What do you say to them?

The whole issue is much broader than this particular family or this particular writer. The issue is systemic. It doesn’t come down to whether one family buys a rooming house and renovates it into a single family home. That’s been happening in Parkdale since the 1980s. The issue is there’s nowhere for folks who rely on rooming houses to go. Public attitudes toward low income housing in general tend to be that it’s an eyesore that degrades the neighbourhood. But why is making a neighbourhood more exclusive and less able to accommodate all its residents seen as an improvement?

What can be done to improve the situation?

We need adequate funding for social housing and affordable housing. We need stronger regulation for the private housing market so that tenants living in a building that’s purchased aren’t displaced with nowhere to go. In the case of a neighbourhood like Parkdale and rooming houses, we need planning about how that very unique form of affordable housing will be maintained into the future so that the population it houses isn’t rendered homeless when all rooming houses disappear. That requires looking ahead. As neighbourhoods change, we have to think about how we can have development without displacement.

Researcher leads U of T centre for Indigenous mental health and homelessness

hjames — Mon, 15 May 2017 14:52:25 +0000

Researcher leads U of T centre for Indigenous mental health and homelessness

hjames Mon, 05/15/2017 - 10:52

Cutline

Rates of homelessness for First Nations, Metis and Inuit people are at disproportionate levels, but Suzanne Stewart says there has been little culturally relevant research (photo by Kat Northern Lights Man via Flickr)

Hannah James

Author legacy

Hannah James

Topic

Truth and Reconciliation

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

U of T’s Suzanne Stewart is transforming research in Indigenous mental health and homelessness in Canada.

The rate of homelessness for First Nations, Metis and Inuit people is higher than that of the general Canadian population, and Stewart says there has been a dearth of culturally relevant research to adequately address the needs of Indigenous people.

Stewart, who was recently named director of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, is hoping to change that.

Her team is launching a project to update research protocols and guidelines through ethical, community-based research. The team will work in consultation with an Indigenous community steering committee to help guide the process. Stewart says her research is already being used to rewrite policies around Indigenous health care delivery at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. She is also helping to develop a new homeless shelter in Toronto for Indigenous women.

“The institute is really focused on creating space for excellence in partnerships between our university, other universities and Indigenous communities, and doing so based on the Indigenous paradigm of research, knowledge and wellness,” says Stewart who is a member of the Yellowknife Dene First Nation and holds the Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Homelessness and Life Transitions.

Suzanne Stewart is director of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health

The Indigeous shelter will be based on a teaching hospital model. U of T students will have the opportunity to do co-ops and practicums in the space, working with culturally relevant treatment models.

Stewart has been at U of T for nearly a decade as a registered psychologist and an associate professor of Indigenous healing in clinical counselling psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where she was Special Advisor to OISE's dean on Aboriginal education, and interim director of the Indigenous Education Initiative. She also leads numerous other externally-funded studies in Indigenous health and is considered one of the world’s leading scholars in Indigenous knowledge and mental health. Stewart says she's committed to advancing Indigenous healing issues through research and policy change.

She points to colonial policies including the Indian Act and residential schools as systemic factors that have negatively influenced the mental health of Indigenous communities.

But her research has also shown that other factors like the lack of access to appropriate services, racism and traumatic housing environments also negatively impact health for Indigenous people.

“Education and research have not been positive things for Indigenous people because of colonization, which has set up society, including universities, to divide people into two groups – those who were harmed by colonial policies that built our country and university, and those who benefited from those policies, laws and practices,” says Stewart.

She believes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report is helping to change the direction of Indigenous research. In January, a U of T TRC steering committee released its own final report with 32 calls to action.

“That’s been integral to allowing this momentum of shifting the paradigm of scholarship at U of T,” says Stewart.

U of T students create menu-planning tool for Toronto women’s drop-in centre

ullahnor — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 19:36:47 +0000

U of T students create menu-planning tool for Toronto women’s drop-in centre

ullahnor Mon, 01/23/2017 - 14:36

Cutline

The U of T students developed the tool to help chefs at Sistering drop-in centre, which serves up to 250 meals daily to women who are homeless, under-housed, low income or marginalized (photo by Geoffrey Dudgeon via Flickr)

Nicole Bodnar

Author legacy

Nicole Bodnar

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

urban

Cities

Nutrition

Subheadline

The tool helps identify new and existing recipes so chefs can use donated food items to create balanced meals

If a truckload of kale was delivered to an ordinary Toronto restaurant, it would be next to impossible for it to sell enough salads to exhaust the inventory, but that’s exactly what chefs at a local Toronto women’s drop-in centre do every week.

To help chefs at Sistering drop-in centre, which serves up to 250 meals daily to women who are homeless, under-housed, low income or marginalized, U of T students have created a menu-planning tool, which helps the centre not only meet the dietary needs of its clients but also make use of all donated food.

Read about the menu-planning tool at CBC News

Since creating the tool in November, the students have been asked to replicate similar menu-planning aids for 29 more drop-in centres in Toronto.

“One of the biggest constraints faced by charitable food programs and organizations is the limited nutrient-dense food that they are able to provide for their clients due to inadequate resources,” said Courtney McAskile, a second-year master's student at U of T's Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

She worked with fellow students Hazel Fernandez, Sarah Kassel, Etienne Nemanishen and Sistering to create the tool.

From left to right, Courtney McAskile, Sarah Kassel, Etienne Nemanishen and Hazel Fernandez helped develop the meal-planning tool

Homeless women experience low-energy intake and have diets that are low in fruits, vegetables and dairy products, but the team was surprised to learn that many people who consume meals at shelters and drop-in centres like Sistering experience chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension.

The team believes that one of the reasons why is that although such organizations may have the best intention, budgetary shortfalls and the inability to choose which foods are donated may result in centres providing foods that are high in cholesterol, total fat, saturated fat and added sugars.

The team worked in partnership with Sistering’s chefs, administrators, volunteers and clients in the fall of 2016 to create a menu-planning tool for chefs that identified how to use existing and new recipes in combination with other foods to create a balanced meal according to the Toronto Public Health plate model for drop-ins, a visual way to think about food group portions.

According to the healthy food model, half the plate should include vegetables or fruit, a quarter should be grains, and a quarter should consist of meat and alternatives. This plate model aims to include all essential nutrients in one meal, as drop-in clients may only eat one meal a day.

“We organized the tool by food group but also by commonly donated foods such as carrots, squash, or kale,” McAskile said. “This way, if chefs receive a large shipment of squash or kale but don’t know what recipe to prepare in order to use up the shipment, they could easily flip to that section and find a number of recipes making use of this ingredient.”