I live in social housing. I live in a unique experiment in social housing. My building, Candela Place, is owned by B C Housing but managed by a Christian missionary society: More Than a Room Housing Society, a department of the Mennonite Central Committee. This has been a mixed blessing. First the pros: I live in stable affordable housing. This is the longest I have ever lived in one place: eleven years, four months, and twenty-two days (might be twenty-three). I live in Vancouver, where you have to be earning at least 100 K a year if you want to buy a home, and at least $45,000 annually if you want to rent a decent apartment. Almost everything else that falls under the radar is either substandard housing, subsidized housing, or both. As I have already written, this city is becoming so expensive that families on low and medium incomes are moving out of here and schools are being closed now because they are below capacity. As things are going now, Vancouver may become one day a city of the obscenely wealthy living cheek by jowl with the very poor since everyone else will have to live out in the boondocks and commute here daily to work at the low paying jobs that keep the infrastructure going. I sincerely hope it doesn't get this bad though it is already moving in this direction.
I can pay my rent on time every month and still save enough money so that I can travel down to Mexico or Costa Rica every year. I budget like crazy, have no costly vices and do without many of the things that most people swear they couldn't live without. In a future article I will write more about this. Because I am working poor (twelve whopping bucks an hour!) my rent is calculated at less than thirty per cent of my monthly income. Here is how it is done: every June our rent is reviewed. We submit to management pay and cheque stubs for the last three months. If a tenant, and this is the case I think for many who live in my building, is on social assistance or government disability, they pay a flat rate of $375 a month. Otherwise they will take $200 off the combined income for three months, then calculate thirty percent of the difference ant that is going to be your rent from September to the following September. I have paid as little as $125 a month and never more than $339. A bit unfair I think to tenants on government assistance, since they often receive far less income than I do and at $375 still have to pay more, but our government is very adept at stigmatizing and despising those who are dependent on their slimly provided largess, and are always trying to encourage even their most unfortunate citizens, regardless of their ability, to earn their own living.
My apartment is a small, quiet bachelor unit on the backside of our building. Being on Granville Street I am very fortunate to live on the other side of the building and things are rather quiet and tranquil here. I have a view from the fifth floor of a nice chunk of sky between the skyscrapers. I sometimes see awesome sunsets and I have a view of a beautiful garden across the lane. In the spring it is full of flowers, especially red rhododendrons and magnolia blossoms. In the early summer the two plane trees (or American sycamores) are in full leaf and in the evening before the sun sets the intense sunlight filters through the leaves illuminating them until they resemble green flames of fire. In June and July I always try to make time to be at home to enjoy this lovely spectacle of nature.
The downtown location is very convenient and central. Even though I do not care for the neighbourhood which to me represents the worst sort of gentrification it is still easy to walk over the bridge or on the seawall or to Stanley Park. I could do a lot worse. I know most of the other tenants by name and many of us are friendly with each other. I have no close friendships here but it still works okay. More Than a Roof, as a Christian organization is very focussed on being supportive and caring towards the tenants here and I have generally been very impressed by the staff here, their patience and kindness.
For me subsidized housing became a necessity after being homeless (but not street homeless) for a while in the late nineties. Changes in my life and mental health status, changes in our economy and social and employment structures, my age and the increasing difficulty of surviving in an increasingly expensive city as well as in an increasingly competitive job market left me with little option but substandard housing, shared often with difficult and sometimes dangerous individuals. Judy Graves, recently retired from her position as tenant assistance coordinator for the City of Vancouver, did much to help get me on housing lists and soon I found myself here at Candela Place. Having stable affordable housing enabled me to get on with my mental health recovery, thanks to a very competent psychiatrist who I saw for four years of talk therapy without medications. I got on with job training and finding work, first in a homeless shelter for a year, then as a mental health peer support worker, which I am doing now. I have been able to grow and develop more as an artist and as a writer. I have also been able to develop a more or less stable social network. I can't say I've formed particularly deep friendships. I am still always alone for Christmas but being able to work with clients and have dinner with some of them every Christmas Day makes this bearable. I will be treating this theme more in a future post.
There are also things that I think could use improving here. Some of the Christians who work here, I have noticed, have fundamentalist tendencies but they are discreet about it. They provide often a weekly Bible study for tenants, which to me is a bit of a conflict of interest. I could see them endorsing and supporting this activity if it was done by some of the tenants but there is something a little bit creepy about management leading and coordinating this. To me it suggests a subtle lack of respect for the diversity represented by tenants here who represent many different cultures, religious faiths or no religious faith at all. I am a very strong and devoted Christian by the way, and yes I have a personal relationship with Jesus, or the way I like to say it, I have an invisible friend named Jesus. They also have a rather feudalistic system for organizing and coordinating things here and there is not much tenant input or participation. I also see that this is slowly beginning to change and I think we will be taking a positive direction with more tenant meetings and surveys and other tenant input. I can also understand why they have to do it this way. Forty per cent of our tenants here are clients of the Vancouver Coast Foundation and have diagnosed mental illness. They are in different stages of recovery. Some are working full time with rich personal lives and social networks. At the other extreme, we have some whom I think really should be in a mental health boarding home or a tertiary care facility. Sometimes someone will have a mental health crisis and occasionally this can impact on other tenants. The fellow across the hall from me, a usually quiet, shy nebbish of Asian descent recently became very ill and left a bag of his garbage in front of my door and became threatening to me and other tenants. My neighbour next door has been very aggressive and difficult in the past but also under the patient and kind support and tutelage of the staff here she has calmed down and seems much happier and calmer. Her loud voice can be a bit much but otherwise I am really impressed by how well she is doing. I have also worked with her as well as four other tenants here as a client in a small psychiatric facility where I am employed.
The need to maintain safe and healthy professional boundaries because has made it necessary to withdraw myself from the social activities at Candela Place. There are regular social and dinner events but I usually avoid them. It's too much like being at work for me and too close to home. Also, I seem to have very little in common with any of the other tenants here so it seems better to keep relations cordial and superficial. One former manager here, whom I used refer to as "Dull Ass" told me I was isolating. I find that word insulting because it implies that I am avoiding people because of mental illness and no I am not, though it could be said that I am avoiding them because of their mental illness, which I sometimes feel a bit conflicted about but on the whole, I really need my down time and I think management finally understands and accepts this.
I don't know how many more years I will live here. It has worked well so far and I am hoping eventually to move to a seniors' building in the West End next door to my church as I really don't want to end up a little old man living on Granville Street. On the other hand I could do much worse than Candela Place and I feel tremendous gratitude to God and to the kind people who work and live here that I live in this building.
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