My first home was a cabin in the woods. It was small, but my parents had big plans for it. With the financial support from my dad’s parents, and the manpower of friends and family, they started bringing their dream house to life. I was still waddling around in diapers at the time, so my contribution to the build was fuelling the crew with cookies and cakes I made in my easy bake oven.
When my parents divorced a couple years later, my mom, my sister and I moved a couple towns over where we rented a little blue house, a stone’s throw away from the only stop light in town. My mom was a hairdresser at the time and I distinctly remember her shaving a man’s head with a pink single-bladed razor. I also remember seeing my dad without a beard for the first time at that house. He came to pick me up but I didn’t recognize him without his beard; I was dangling upside down by the ankles before I realized he wasn’t a stranger.
After the little blue house came the little pond house but aside from the snapping turtles, I don’t remember much about living there.
By the time I started school, we had already moved to the big city - or at least it felt that way to me. We lived in the townhomes across the street from Aurora High School where my sister went. I remember disposing evidence of house parties in the school’s dumpsters - a secret my older sister blackmailed me into keeping. We raised a few litters of Rottweiler puppies in that house and I made a Polish friend named Kinga who also lived in the complex. One day, while grocery shopping, my mom overheard someone calling our neighbourhood “the ghetto”, so we moved to another rental in Newmarket.
Every other weekend I’d go back to my dad’s house on those beautiful 40 acres of Ontarian land with a swamp Shrek would be proud of. I went ice skating there, learned to drive a four wheeler there, picked flowers and climbed trees there… I gained three new siblings at that house, and a step mom too. She let me paint roses on my bedroom wall in the loft that I shared with my step-sister. I watched my new baby brother learn how to climb the stairs up to that loft; which was dangerous because - to my recollection - there was no railing. My step-brother pulled a chair out from under me while I was doing the dishes once and I landed face first into the linoleum floors. I also have a scar on the edge of my right foot from the time I jumped off the pool table and landed on a plastic bag of broken beer bottles.
I can’t honestly say it felt like a safe place, because it wasn’t; but it was home, and I could always come back to it, until I couldn’t.
The house burned down when I was 11 years old, taking my father’s life with it.
We moved a few more times within Newmarket over the following 6 years until I finally packed up my little blue SAAB convertible* and left for Wilfrid Laurier University. I lived in Conrad House - the all-girls residence on campus first year, then moved across the street for the summer, to an apartment in Kitchener for 2nd year and spent my third and final year living in a room in a house behind a bar that was then called Chainsaw.
Three floors, three baths, one communal basement kitchen, and 10 single rooms. Looking back, I cannot believe my family let me live there. But, it was walking distance from work at the Heuther Hotel, and a short bus ride from school. I realized I was bisexual in that house, met some people I’ll consider dear friends until I die in that house, and may have had my first panic attack in that house.
I noticed smoke coming in under my door and all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I panicked grabbing some essentials and frantically knocking on my neighbours door across the hall. He brought me outside and helped regulate my breathing; I thought the house was on fire, but no, someone was just fucking around withe the fire extinguisher.
I graduated in 2012 with enough credits to get me a General Bachelor of Arts. When I turned 21 that summer, I received my inheritance; half of which I was advised to spend that day by paying off my student debt in it’s entirety. In retrospect, if I had any financial literacy at all, I would have paid the loan off over time and used that opportunity to build my credit and kept the rest invested until I was ready to buy a home. But no one prepared me for receiving that inheritance, so I was flying by the seat of my pants.
I tried shopping around downtown Toronto for studio apartments hoping that the remaining cash would be enough for a downpayment but I couldn’t get approved for a mortgage because, despite working two full time jobs, I didn’t make enough money, have enough credit, or have anyone in my life who would act as a guarantor.
I used the last of the money to pay for fashion school at George Brown College a few years later; surely dad would be proud of me for using the money for school. I just wish my investment in education was paying off as well as a real estate investment would be over that same period of time.
My granny and granda had this tiny cottage on Trent River that they bought when my dad and his brother were young boys growing up in Scarborough. It was such a point of pride to have their grandkids making memories there, learning how to ski, listening to my grandad play the accordion, celebrating birthdays in the sun by the water, it was a home away from home.
In 2015, my granny passed away from colon cancer; granda followed exactly 5 months later and the stress of it all manifested as multiple strokes for my uncle and a brain tumor for my aunt, which left the cottage in limbo. My uncle kept it closed for 2 summers until eventually mother nature’s critters began calling it home. I believe the pest control guy identified droppings from mink, mice, and raccoons.
As the eldest cousin, I volunteered to get the cottage back into shape. I cleaned, painted, replaced the furniture, raked the leaves, planted flowers, hauled junk to the dump… My nana and popa lived nearby and loved coming by to help tinker with things. Nana would help me clean while popa would be repairing something or other. I was creating new memories while breathing life back into the property, and it started to feel like my own little oasis. Reviving that very special place gave me a substantial sense of pride.
Eventually my younger cousins started coming around, using the canoe and not putting it away, having a party and leaving dishes in the sink, using the firewood I’d bought, forgetting to turn off the stove… Their lack of respect for all the work I’d put in was crushing, but they were practically still kids so I went to my uncle to ask about his plan for the cottage should something happen to he and my aunt.
It would go to the boys, he said, because they’re his sons.
I took it as a personal betrayal. I was the one taking care of the property; I was the oldest grandchild, I was the responsible one, and he wouldn’t even consider splitting it three ways.
I know I probably sound entitled, but this, on top of stealing from my inheritance and refusing to let me see my grandparents wills - because it was “none of my business” - was the last straw for me.
I packed up everything of mine from the cottage, and said goodbye, yet again, to a place I called home. As much as I loved that property, I couldn’t continue spending my time and energy caring for someone else’s investment.
But that’s what you do when you rent! You care for someone else’s investment. You paint it, you clean it, and if you’re like me, you’ll probably also plant some flowers in the garden.
After getting engaged, Daniel and I spent a year trying to figure out if we could afford to buy; we ended up renting the main level of a house with a walkout to a backyard that we turned into our own little oasis. I weeded the garden and planted perennials, seeded the grass and trimmed the vines that spread across the hydro lines; the more we settled in, the more it started to feel like home.
We were having serious problems with the downstairs tenant, but we stayed because the landlord assured us that once she was finally evicted, he’d let us have the whole house for the same price we were paying.
We continued living there and paying our rent on time - despite feeling unsafe in our own home - until her negligence almost set the house on fire.
This woman had been using a wicker basket full of dried yard waste as an ashtray and - to no one’s surprise - it caught on fire, under the canopy at the side door. If it wasn’t for the woman who knocked on my door to tell me about it at 7am, we could have very well died in that house that day, but the landlord did nothing about it. Daniel was the one who cleaned up the mess left behind by the fire; he even contacted the fire department and the police for paperwork to give to the paralegal in hopes of expediting the eviction process, which the paralegal never even filed!
We moved back in with the in-laws until she finally moved out about a month later, and on that night, the landlord told us he was going to rent out the basement after all. We felt used, scammed, taken advantage of, lied to, bamboozled, shocked, disappointed, angry, and now we needed to find somewhere else to live - because there was absolutely no way we were going to live above someone else in that house.
So there I was again, saying goodbye to a place that I called home; to a garden I wanted to watch grow, to neighbours I’d gotten to know…
That’s the other thing about renting; you’re not in control of your own stability.
My husband and I reached out to a paralegal to see what recourse we might have, and in that process, I realized that where we were living wasn’t even a legal rental unit. The lease didn’t specify “upstairs” or a unit number because it’s not supposed to be rented out as two separate units.
As someone who has quite literally spent a lifetime moving from rental unit to rental unit, I suddenly realized that I have no idea what my rights are as a tenant. When you’re fighting just to survive another day, struggling to make your next rent payment, you don’t want to make trouble with your landlord by asking for your needs to be met. To a certain extent, you might even consider yourself lucky to have found a place to live, even if it does rain inside when it rains outside.
Having a roof over your head and clean water to drink are basic human rights, and if you can’t count on those in charge - the government - to ensure everyone in Canada has at least their basic human needs met, what are they good for?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN’! (War, Edwin Starr)
It got me to thinking… being a landlord in this economy is a privilege; a privilege that comes with a lot of responsibility. You’re quite literally taking a home off the market, away from first time home buyers, and using it to run a business: to sell the product back to the consumer at an increased price so that the consumer covers the cost of the investment and then some, so that you make a little bit of profit. It sounds illegal when you say it like that, especially when you add that the product a lot of people are selling is majorly defected, unsafe, and in need of a deep clean.
From an efficiency standpoint, it’s baffling that the approach to ‘safe housing’ is reactionary; dependent on the tenant knowing their rights well enough to advocate for themselves by reaching out to the landlord and tenant board to file a complaint. To me, it seems like a no brainer to approach the situation preventatively.
If I, as the tenant, have to take a hit on my credit score just to prove to my potential landlord that I’m reliable enough to pay rent on time, then it’s only fair that the landlord take some kind of financial hit to prove that the product they’re selling me is clean and safe - at the very least.
ENTER: INSPECTOR GAUGE IT
Imagine if landlords had to get their rental units inspected and approved before even being allowed to post it online for rent? That would be so sick!
I asked ChatGPT about what existing legislation regulated the residential rental industry and found programs in Oshawa, Hamilton, Mississauga, London, & Waterloo among others across the country.
In 2008 Oshawa launched the first pilot program in Ontario for licensing residential rental units surrounding Durham College and Ontario Tech University, but they haven’t been permitted to take the project city-wide like London, Mississauga and Waterloo have.
I’m still in the thick of researching all the different programs, their pros and cons, how the actual inspection process works, who does the inspections and what criteria is on their checklists… Needless to say, I still have a lot of work to do if I want to see this pre-rental inspection process take effect nationally - but I truly believe that it’s an important consideration when addressing the current housing crisis.
The focus federally seems to be on building more affordable housing, and that’s great - we’ve certainly got enough luxury townhomes and condos - but that’s not the only thing we can do, and we need to approach this from all angles, if you ask me.
There was an encampment I would drive by everyday on my way to work, at Leslie and Lake Shore Blvd. E., but on January 31st when I drove by, there was a bulldozer scooping up tents and dumping them into the back of a city garbage truck. Instinctively, I pulled over and got out to ask the surveilling police officers what was going on. They assured me that those who dwelled there had been given plenty of notice about the bulldozing and that they were given the option to stay in hotels.
Hmm… Hotels, eh? When you say “hotel” it immediately evokes this image of someone in a terry cloth robe watching TV and eating room service, but if I hadn’t also talked with those that were rushing around packing up their stuff, I wouldn’t have understood what those “hotels” are really like.
They’re often located far away from other services the unhoused need to access on a daily basis including safe consumption sites, counselling, and community; the run down building conditions might mean no access to hot water; wellness checks infringe on any sense of privacy; these conditions only compound the struggles that lead to death by overdose.
Tent cities might not be nice to look at but when there aren’t any viable alternatives, it might be someone’s best chance at survival, and their life is more important to me than an eyesore.
It’s important that when we think about solutions for the unhoused - solutions for the housing crisis - we think about those who are most affected by it and take their needs into consideration, to include them in the conversation. We need to take a trauma-informed approach, to meet people where there are first, and then work backwards to find the things that are causing this crisis in the first place and fix those things. We need to be planning ahead, and looking to the future.
This is why I’ve decided to turn my focus to documentary journalism, so that I can use my unique set of skills - my background in filmmaking, my passion for storytelling, my insatiable curiosity, and my love of people - to make the world a better place by telling stories that inform, educate, and inspire people to get involved in their communities.
Now that the snow has melted, I went by the site where the encampment was to get a closer look at all the litter left behind by the city and their bulldozers. I wonder if they’ll bother coming back to clean up the mess they made…
Music kindly provided by Craig Wrobleski
convertible* a gift from my dad’s brother, the executor of his will. He later confessed to paying himself for it through my inheritance. (yes, I’m still salty about it)
