Ottawa’s Self-Centred City Hall: COMEAU

Just shut up.

Sigh. That’s the message I still carry from last week’s discussions at planning and housing committee about the need to expedite building emergency homelessness shelters and supportive housing in every urban neighbourhood, and being told that things are so dire that there is no time to waste on public consultations before any site decisions are made.

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Pauline Comeau is an Ottawa journalist.

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This urgent action, going to council Wednesday and expected to pass, is needed now say councillors and the one public delegation at the meeting because: “People are dying” in this homelessness crisis (which could worsen with an influx of immigrants from the U.S., said one councillor), and also because some residents raising concerns at past consultations about shelter proposals were “increasingly aggressive,” “extremely toxic,” at times “racist,” and are simply self-serving “affluent” homeowners who don’t reflect the diverse demographic makeup of those living in their neighbourhoods with a range of needs that need to be met.

Don’t get me wrong.

No one I’ve heard from, denies disturbing behaviours by some residents at city meetings (and elsewhere), or that there is a housing crisis. And no one (friends or anyone in a community group of 100-plus I am a part of who discuss city Hall issues) suggests nothing needs to change.

Instead, what I repeatedly hear is what I have also come to conclude: elected officials and city staff who are supposed to represent all of us have drawn a narrow picture of who engaged residents are on this file based on assumptions supporting their preferred narrative. And that narrative is being used to defend the decision to exclude any genuine future consultations before a zoning site application is approved to allow a shelter, group or transitional home across the city.

Instead, the city is seeking to only open up public “conversations” after site decisions are made where they will educate local residents about what has been approved.

Let’s start with assumptions.

A lesson taught at the start of my journalism career was this: Be very aware of your assumptions. A failure to reflect and recognize those, and to draw conclusions before opening up to genuine engagement with a wide range of people and opinions, is not how to uncover what is actually occurring, or to know what is needed to help guide the best way forward.

And life lesson No. 2, something learned while working as a educational assistant with young people: When trying to understand why a child lashes out, whether with anger, or nasty comments about others, there are two choices: Send the child to a time out or some other punishment, or pause and take a serious look at your own actions. Is it possible that something you have done is responsible for the lashing out? Is there something you can do to change the direction of things?

On assumptions: what I am hearing from many councillors and city staff are conclusions that most urban residents who appear at consultation sessions on this issue know little (if anything) about what the homeless are struggling with, and few (if any) have anything significant to add because others (City staff and private and public organizations working on these issues in the community) already know best.

OK, so, let’s talk assumptions about the “affluent” homeowners appearing at city hall, including the many who raise issues without lashing out.

I am a white, retired woman living in the Applewood Acres bungalow belt (as Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper, who moved the shelter motion, likes to call our Alta Vista neighbourhood).

And these past years I have struggled with the repeated city messaging about priorities that might negatively impact my, and my children’s future, including the value of my home due to: housing-on-steroids density goals; less space (green and otherwise) around our small homes; a still-not-explained-possible “supportive housing” site a three-minute walk away; and now potentially adding emergency shelters or transitional housing etc., elsewhere in our neighbourhood, with those tenants needing access to multiple supports.

So, yes, I fit into that assumed affluent pool, the ones with time on their hands to engage in city hall issues, who are worried about sharing what we have with others in need of serious support.

And for just a few minutes, I pause. Wow. How did I actually come this far?

I grew up in Toronto, in social housing, the middle of three children raised by a single mother who struggled with a serious alcohol addiction and who got by on welfare, as we called it back then. We got a bit lucky when my parents split. We were moved into a newly built social-housing townhouse with no support services. For the first years, the new ‘hood was relatively normal, but did go downhill with crime, and more, increasingly plaguing the neighbourhood. Other members of our extended family were in similar situations, living in Regent Park, a long established supportive-housing hub notorious for dangerous crime rates etc. And some in that family and my own would be overcome by drug and alcohol addictions. And, sadly, my mother died alone, with no one knowing for days. Why? Because she had no support services and I was working out of province.

I managed to escape that troubled world. I was the first in my family to graduate high school, attend university and college. I became a journalist and book author, and bought my first tiny home in Aylmer, Quebec in my 30s, on my own. Today, I am a single mother with two now grown daughters who are still at home. And we are a mixed family: I’m white. My daughters are not (Hispanic by birth; adopted). And I can promise, as I prep my tax returns, I’m not affluent.

I credit all of what I have accomplished to the support and encouragement I got in my early years from outside my family, and think I might have some ideas about what to do and what not to do when it comes to social housing.

Oh, no, wait. No one at city hall wants to know what worked for me, or what I might suggest others consider when trying to help others realize a normal, “affluent” life.

And there is no hint of any interest in self-reflection at city hall, no time to examine their own actions to see just how responsible they might be for the “increasingly aggressive” responses this issue is facing.

No one is interested in a story like mine, or any other tales or lessons from the complex backgrounds other Ottawa residents have lived and that could be garnered to help find ways forward that might result in plans that truly respond to a range of residents’ needs and goals.

The message is clear to me now:  Just shut up.

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