Category Archives: CarletonDataJournalism2018_2

Unsuitable Housing Areas Grouped Together in Ottawa According to 2016 Census – DRAFT

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By: Katie Jacobs

Jeanette Tossounian looks at her file filled with notices she collected since she moved into community housing. She sleeps on the massage table (right) instead of the mattress (left). Photo by Katie Jacobs.

According to an analysis of Canada’s 2016 census, Alta Vista is the worst area to find suitable housing in Ottawa.

Among the top five are Kitchissippi, Somerset, Bay, Gloucester – Southgate, and the Rideau areas. These wards are in close proximity to each other.

Jeanette Tossounian, an artist, author and activist, lives in community housing within the Rideau vicinity. Her apartment has a vinyl covered mattress with brown blankets in her living room.

She never sleeps on it.

Instead, Tossounian sleeps on a massage table, with the lights on, so bed bugs can’t reach her.

“It’s really uncomfortable,” says Tossounian.

Each of her walls are decorated with at least three pieces of artwork. She jokes that one painting is probably worth more than her apartment.

“It’s an old building, so there’s always things breaking down,” says Tossounian, who experienced her water being shut off, asbestos notifications, and fire alarm tests at least twice a month. “The elevators are always breaking down. I’ve heard of people being stuck … it missed my floor a couple times.”

Tossounian moved in last April with no possessions after being wrongfully accused and arrested for burning down her own art gallery. Before, she was living in an office space and sleeping on a futon.

Although Tossounian says the apartment itself is fine, she wants to leave.

“I don’t want to be permanently in housing, and there’s a lot of people who, like me, just see it as a temporary thing, but the only other thing that is more temporary is a shelter,” she says.

Larissa Silver, the director of community services at the Youth Services Bureau, says finding stable housing is difficult because of Ottawa’s high demand and competition.

“There are very few vacancies in the city … so landlords can be pickier on who they choose to rent their apartment to,” explains Silver, who works with youth who seek more accessible and reasonable housing. “In a tight market with very limited income, your options are pretty limited.”
Silver says she works with youth to understand their legal rights with landlords. She adds there is some discrimination based on age or stigma towards youth behaviour.

Silver works in two transitional housing shelters that help youth prepare for independent living and long – term housing. She says she works within the Vanier, Kitchissippi, and Bayward areas.

“Some of those areas … have a higher concentration of lower income housing,” explains Silver.

According to Canada Without Poverty, three million Canadian households are unaffordable, below standards, or overcrowded. ( )

Michele Biss is the legal education and outreach coordinator at Canada Without Poverty.

She explains access to services or housing crises is usually the reason why low-income populations are grouped together.

Biss adds people who are disabled, racialized, women, have mental health issues, are single mothers, indigenous, and LGBTQ often experience unsuitable housing. She says many of these individuals don’t have access to legal resources to assert their rights.

Biss mentions Herongate as an example, where an entire block of people was evicted, including a large Somali population, in order to build a higher income condo.

“They have driven people out of their homes. They have harassed people, they have bullied people, the conditions of the housing prior to this change were so horrifyingly terrible,” says Biss.

Herongate is within the Alta Vista district.

Tossounian is working on her second film documentary about her life, as well as others, in community housing.

“I’m happy to have a place of my own, and an address,” says Tossounian. “But the lack of a nice good sleep … I look forward to moving out and buying nice new furniture I know will have no bed bugs in it.”

She adds she is going to apply to the government’s $40 billion plan to see if she qualifies for an affordable housing complex.

“Nobody really wants problems just because they need a place to stay,” she concludes.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5025126-2017-Poverty-Progress-Profiles-318.html

Somerset ward a hotspot for dwellings in need of major repair

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Shannon Forrester, a Somerset ward resident, has struggled with major repair issues in her rental home since 2016, with no resolution as of yet. Photo: Matt Gergyek.

A census tract in Ottawa’s Somerset ward is home to the one of the largest number of dwellings in need of major repair in the city, according to an analysis of the 2016 census conducted by Statistics Canada.

The census tract, a roughly 134-acre piece of the ward between O’Connor Street, Gloucester Street, Cartier Street and Highway 417, holds about a staggering 3,500 dwellings in need of major repair. This means the area holds the second largest number of dwellings in need of major repair in all of Ottawa, behind a piece of the Barrhaven and Rideau-Goulbourn wards.

A map appears below showing which census tracts in Ottawa are home to the largest number of dwellings in need of major repair. The darker the colour, the more dwellings in need of major repair. Pinpointed is the census tract in Somerset ward examined in this story.


Source: Statistics Canada 2016 Census.

Statistics Canada defines a dwelling in need of major repair as having “problems that comprised the dwelling structure or the major systems of the dwelling,” such as plumbing and electricity.

Shannon Forrester, who has lived in this portion of the Somerset ward on Argyle Avenue since 2016, has dealt with the major repair issue firsthand.

“We have problems with the foundation of the house, there’s holes in it,” she said. “You can see that it’s crumbling on the outside and in the basement you can see that it’s crumbling from the inside.”

Forrester points to the foundation of her home in the identified census tract as being a sign of the major repair issue in the area. Photo: Matt Gergyek.

A contributor to the large number of dwellings in need of major repair could be the age of many of the buildings in the area.

David Hole is the community liaison with the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study (ONS), a research project that looks at how your neighbourhood in Ottawa could affect your health and well-being. Photo courtesy of ONS.

“As many as 70 or 75 per cent of the dwellings there are at least 40-years-old, if not older,” said David Hole, community liaison with the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study (ONS), a University of Ottawa-based project that analyzes data from 105 neighbourhoods in the city.

Another factor at play could be the large amount of high-rise apartments in the area, Hole said.

“If there are 400 households in one apartment building and they’re sick and tired of their elevator not working, then you’re going to have 400 reports of major repairs required with only one structure,” he explained.

About 60 per cent of dwellings in the Centretown neighbourhood which includes the census tract, are classified as high-rise apartments, over triple the Ottawa average, according to the ONS.

Shea Kiely, executive director of Housing Help, a provincially and federally funded organization that works to prevent housing loss, said the abundance of homes in need of major repair may be due to the cluster of rooming houses in the area. Rooming homes are buildings with four or more rooms that are rented out individually, where tenants share a common bathroom or kitchen space.



“A lot of landlords are not doing things by the books” and “that’s a huge issue,” Kiely said. Photo: Facebook.

“Pretty much everyone (living) in them is on financial assistance, so often landlords aren’t putting a lot of money into these buildings,” she said. “I don’t want to stereotype all landlords … but they take in people on financial assistance and figure … they’re vulnerable and easy prey.”

Going forward, Kiely said the city’s by-law department must play a stronger role in ensuring repair orders are issued and completed, a department she said is severely understaffed. When landlords are uncooperative when tenants request repairs, they can turn to by-law to issue work orders.

 

 

 




“Landlords need to be held accountable,” Forrester added, and “the city needs to take more initiative … in restoring these types of buildings that hold so much cultural and historic significance to Ottawa.”

The Canada-wide census is conducted every five years by Statistics Canada. The next census will take place in 2021.