“A lot of our girls love arts and crafts,” Danielle Stang explains as she points to the bright peach and purple walls, each adorned with artwork that depict a variety of subjects, from cartoon characters, to desert sunsets, to calming blue waves. The paintings are memories of the past and present inhabitants of Talitha House, an Ottawa-area open youth custody facility for young female offenders aged 12 to 17, where Danielle is the director. “They find it to be a great way of relaxing and expressing themselves.”

Since 2011, custody rates for youth aged 12 to 17 in Ontario have dropped by 51 percent, according to an analysis of Statistics Canada data related to youth custody rates. For girls, such as the ones that Danielle works with, the numbers have dropped by 52 per cent. In boys, the custody rates have dropped by 51.5 per cent.

Danielle credits this drop to the 2003 Youth Criminal Justice Act. The YCJA focused on reducing the number of youth who went to court or and were jailed for less serious offences, focusing instead on community programs and reintegration. It replaced the Young Offenders Act, which had previously been in place since 1984.

“Before the Youth Criminal Justice Act came along, you’d have an unfair mix in youth jails,” Danielle laments. “You’d have kids who made fake phone calls in there with ones who had committed more serious offences.”

Under the YCJA, young offenders are commonly given open custody sentences, in smaller custody facilities under staff supervision, like Talitha House. Typically, young offenders spend two thirds of their open custody term in an open custody facility, and undertake community service for the final third of their term. The stay in these types of facilities can vary from a few days, to several months.

Dan O’Rourke has worked with young offenders for over 20 years. He currently works at Laurencrest Youth Services, a custody facility for young male offenders in Cornwall, Ontario. Dan explains that the YCJA has had both negative and positive impacts. On one hand, Dan says, “We’ve found that early, up front services have more of a long-term impact on the youth than just  putting them in a custody facility.” But the youth custody decreases have led to the provincial government to close down youth custody facilities and decrease the number of beds at these facilities. Dan says that these changes lead to increased pressure on the remaining facilities to apply their programs.

Jim MacDonald is the Executive Director at Phoenix House, one of the few Ottawa-area youth detention facilities that remains. He identifies another kind of frustrationdue to the YCJA. Lower conviction rates for youth and the conditions of the Phoenix House contract mean that the Navan-area facility, about 30 minutes from Ottawa, is frequently empty.

Under Phoenix House’s contract with the Catholic School Board, only offenders who have been sentenced to custody can attend the facility.
“There’s a real reluctance to dole out a sentence,” Jim explains. “Youth have to have gone through the justice system a lot before they are given custody.”
For Jim, it’s an annoying situation to be in. “We have funding, and we want to fill our desks, we want to fill our beds and we’ve budgeted for five to seven youth a week.” Jim clarifies. “We want to work.”

Jim is hoping to temporarily work with at-risk youth in his community, even if they haven’t received a custodial sentence. For Danielle, her purpose remains the same: to help the remaining girls who come through the doors of Talitha House. “At the end of the day, they’re our girls,” Danielle adds thoughtfully. “All we want is to help them to improve their self-image and find strength in themselves.”

This map is based on the percentages of median shelter cost increases in Ottawa. The darker colours represent higher rent increases, while the lighter colours represent lower rent increases. You can click on the different areas to see graphs that better represent the rent increases, and use the search function to search for certain neighbourhoods in the Ottawa area.

Some areas are blank, which is either because there is no data for them, or they are areas without inhabitants.

Median shelter cost rose more than 15 per cent in Ottawa between 2011 and 2016, according to an analysis of the latest Canada census data. According to the same data, the number of Canadians spending more than 30 per cent of their income on shelter cost has also increased.

For renter households, shelter costs include, where applicable, the rent and the costs of electricity, heat, water and other municipal services.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation considers housing affordable if the shelter costs are less than 30 per cent of household income.

The median differs from the average, and is just the middle value in a set of numbers. In this case, the median is the middle percentage between the highest and lowest numbers in rent increases in Ottawa.

These trends were most common in two types of areas in Ottawa: areas closest to the downtown area, and growing suburbs on the outskirts of the city. Suburban areas like Barrhaven and Orleans as well as more urban areas like the Capital region and Westboro reported the highest per cent increases, with most of the downtown areas reporting slight increases as well.

According to Anne-Marie Shaker, a senior market analyst at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, when choosing a place to rent, there are a variety of factors to consider: “people choose different accommodations depending on their preferences for things such as area, prices, commute to work, family size etc. and their preferences for rental versus homeownership.”

For Cassandra Maier, a French student at Carleton University, she made the decision to move downtown because it meant a shorter commute time from her job as a tour guide at the Canadian Mint, from her parents’ house in Orleans. She moved to Lees Avenue, close to Nicholas Street in downtown Ottawa. In this area, about 49 per cent of renters spent more than 30 per cent of their income on shelter costs.

The median rent in the Lees area is about $1200. Cassandra says that she paid $800 per month in her shared apartment. Although Maier made more than minimum wage in her job as a guide for the Canadian Mint, she was still spending the majority of her paycheques on shelter costs. “I was spending about 40 per cent of my income just on rent,” Maier confessed. “It was a little crazy.”

According to a document distributed by the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, Ontario renters have a much lower median income level, $36,000 annually, less than half that of homeowner households, who have a median income level of $81,000 annually. In the same document, renter households are also more likely to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing costs. In Ottawa, renter households make up about 34 per cent of all homes, according to Statistics Canada data.

High rent costs can be due to location and demand. As Shaker explains that “prices could be rising in some areas because demand is outpacing supply in that particular area.”

So what does the future climate look like for Ottawa renters?

In 2016, Ontario landlords were allowed to raise their rents by 2 per cent, while in 2017, there is a slight decrease, with them being allowed to raise their rent by 1.5 per cent. The average rent increase between 2011 and 2017 was 1.7 per cent, making the 2017 number slightly below the average price raise. The amount to increase the rent by each year is calculated using the Ontario Consumer price index, which measures costs of food, energy, clothing, transportation and other items to determine how much of an increase is appropriate.

Despite the average increase in rent raises, would Cassandra still recommend her apartment to a friend? Yes, but with one condition. “I would recommend it for someone who had or was making enough money!” Cassandra declared. “It just got too expensive after a while.”

To get a good night’s sleep, there are some factors that you can control: drinking a warm glass of milk, tightly pulling your curtains closed or sipping on some chamomile tea. Then there are some things that you just can’t control, namely the boisterous barking of your next-door-neighbour’s dogs in the middle of the night.

According to a data analysis of Ottawa 3-1-1, the City of Ottawa’s telephone and online complaint system, dog barking noise complaints increase by 60 per cent between April and May. Calls remain high for the rest of the summer months, peaking in September, then falling steadily by the time October rolls around.

The number of complaints varied from ward to ward, but some trends were easier to spot between primarily urban versus primarily rural wards. Eastern urban wards, like Rideau-Vanier, Orleans, Somerset and Alta Vista, had the highest numbers of dog barking complaints, with calls in these wards being up to nearly 85 per cent higher than those rural wards, such as Rideau-Goulbourn and Osgoode.

“I live in the middle of nowhere, way far out in country, and when my dogs bark, they sure aren’t quiet about it!” says Ashley Ladouceur, a dog lover with three furry friends of her own. “But the reason that none of my neighbours would ever complain is because I don’t have any close neighbours in the first place.”

Ladouceur, who also volunteers at Ottawa rescue shelter Sit With Me, explains that the biggest misconception that people have about barking, is that dogs just bark to annoy or disrupt. She says that although this may be true in some cases, a dog’s real reason for barking is important. “Dogs bark to tell you how they feel or what they need, which is important for any dog owner,” she declares. “Always expecting your dog not to bark is basically saying that you don’t want them to communicate with you, which is totally unreasonable.”

There are several reasons why dogs in urban areas tend to garner more complaints. Kim Cooper is the owner of Best Friends, an Ottawa-based dog training organization. She has over 30 years of dog-training experience and explains that urban dogs have unique issues that their owners must address. “Dogs can get cramped up in smaller houses or apartments, which would cause them to bark more than dogs with more space to run around in,” she adds that “a lot of dogs, especially in apartments, aren’t getting the exercise they need.” She says that walking your dog daily can help cut down on excessive barking. She points out that “a tired dog is a more well-behaved dog.”

Dog barking noise violations fall under the City’s Animal Care and Control bylaw, which explains that the owner must control any of their dog’s “needless” barking, which they suggest owners do by meeting a dog’s daily food water, shelter and companionship needs. They do not give the definition or criteria by which they assess the term “needless.”

There are some important limits to this data to keep in mind. This is the first year that dog barking category has been included in the City’s data, so it is impossible to go through the 3-1-1 records from previous years to see if Ottawa’s dogs are getting noisier or quieter.

The City of Ottawa website urges neighbours to communicate with each other before calling the 3-1-1 number or complaining online. Kim agrees, saying that she believe that the best thing to do is talk to your neighbour directly, which gives them a chance to seek help. “If you talk to your neighbour, then maybe they’ll be more willing to give you a few days or weeks before complaining to higher authorities, like the City of Ottawa.”

Canadian women are twice as likely than men to end up in the hospital for self-inflicted poisoning, burning, suffocation and cutting, based on an analysis of the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s (CIHI) 2015-2016 self-injury hospitalization data.

Women make up 62 per cent of self-injury hospitalizations, although self-injury rates in women have decreased by 4 per cent since 2010. But, women continue to outnumber men for self-injury hospitalizations in every province and territory.

Self-inflicted harm or injury means deliberately harming yourself, which may or may not result in death, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Many actions, such as poisoning, drug overdoses, cutting with sharp objects, and suffocation fall under this self-injury classification. Self-injury can also be called self-harm, self-inflicting injury or even by the method of self-harm used, such as cutting.

Because self-injury is a specific personal response to an emotional, environmental, physical or cognitive problem, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what the factors are that are causing more Canadian women to self harm, because they differ from person to person.

Stephen P. Lewis is a researcher at the University of Guelph, who studies non-suicidal self-injury, or self-injury without the intent to commit suicide. He has been open about his past struggles with self-harm, both as a teenager and young adult, and later founded SiOS, a non-profit self-injury and outreach support group.

“At its core, self-injury is a coping strategy, used by people who want or need to confront their strong emotions related to a particular problem or incident,” Lewis says.

Part of his research includes studying the connection between self-harm and social media blogging sites like Tumblr or Instagram. He believes that the biggest obstacle in self-harm recovery is that there is no “one size fits all” cause or solution, either for women or men. “Factors like the Internet or mental health, are a double-edged sword. What may aid in one person’s recovery, can end up triggering the next.”

Social attitudes towards self-harm may also contribute to self-injury rates. “Self-harm is heavily stigmatized, which means that those who need to seek help often don’t,” Lewis explains. “which could account for higher unreported injury numbers, when people are afraid or unable to reach out.”

Gundel Lake, an Ottawa-based psychotherapist that specializes in trauma and addiction, agrees that social attitudes contribute to self-injury, but believes that the imposed social attitudes create harder situations for girls than boys. She explains that the enforced gender and societal roles on women could play a role in higher self-injury numbers.

“Our society doesn’t value or support the expression of emotion, and girls and women are more often taught or encouraged to internalize emotional experience, whereas boys are taught or encouraged to externalize it,” she explains. “Emotions need to go somewhere.”

Another factor in the misrepresentation or the confusion around understanding self-harm may also be because of the data that’s used in studies. The Canadian Institute for Health Information does not specifically determine suicidal intent in self-injury hospitalizations, making it difficult to differentiate between non-suicidal self-injury versus suicide attempts. Additionally, this data is not broken down by age group, making targeted anti-self-injury groups difficult to coordinate.

Both Lake and Lewis remain hopeful that education and communication can help break the stigmatization and misconceptions shrouding self-harm and lead to higher recovery rates and lower hospitalization rates.

“It’s important to destroy misconceptions related to self-injury in order to break the stigma,” Lake says. “One thing that people can do to break the stigma is to remember that self-injury is a symptom of coping with a problem, not “the problem.”

Despite the misconceptions and double-edged swords that arise when trying to treat and understand self-injury, Lewis remains hopeful.

“Recovery is always possible. Always.” Lewis says. “A big part of it is teaching people to understand that self-injury is not manipulative or attention-seeking behaviour, but a coping strategy.”

This is a test from Arianna Paquette.