By Zenab Bagha
Skyrocketing rents in Ottawa are forcing more elderly women into the Women’s Shelter on
O’Connor Street.
“In the past, we would see a senior come in only now and then. But a few months ago there were as many as eight seniors living here at the same time,” says Martine Dore, the shelter’s housing development worker.
“The elderly women who come here are in dire straits. Many have issues with poverty, addiction or abuse. But we are seeing more come in because they can’t find housing or pay the rent.”
The shelter normally restricts its intake to women under the age of 60, but recently it accepted a 79-year-old, who had just moved to Ottawa and couldn’t find a place to live.
“I think it’s a problem when a senior has to be in a shelter,” says Dore. “We don’t have the resources to care for a senior who isn’t able to do her own laundry or bathe herself.”
At the shelter, seniors often have to share a room with someone younger who may have mental or emotional problems. This can be very stressful for them, says Dore. “Remember, most of the women here have been abused or have addictions, and this can create conflict that can impact the health of the senior.”
But Stanley Wilder, the city’s senior housing policy planner, says he suspects there will be “a tendency for more seniors to move into shelters” because Ottawa has the lowest vacancy rate in years and landlords are charging as much as the market can bear.
Ottawa has the lowest rental vacancy rate in the country. Last year, on average, there were only two vacant apartments for every 1,000 units. During the same period, rent rose across the city by an average of 12 per cent.
“Often, what happens when a senior dies or moves away is that the landlord will raise the rent. This puts it out of the reach of other senior citizens who would like to move into the same building,” says Wilder.
But poverty tends to affect older women more than any other age-group, says Dore. “These women come from a different era, when most of them didn’t work, so they don’t have pensions to support them.”
The need for affordable housing in Ottawa is so great that nearly 15,000 individuals and families are on the waiting list for public housing.
There are over 1,400 applicants for seniors’ housing. The wait for housing can range from six months to eight years.
Seniors who end up in the shelter get priority status on the waiting list. This means their waiting period is reduced to around six months.
“The reason we get them housed quickly is because it isn’t the norm for them to be in the shelter,” says Dore. “The reality is with the growing housing crisis, it will become harder to house them quickly.”
In the last few months, the Ottawa Housing Corporation, the city’s largest provider of public housing, has noticed a “slight increase” in the number of applications for seniors’ housing.
“In the past, the number on our waiting list used to be under a thousand, but now it’s over a thousand,” says Elizabeth Chin, a policy and program manager at the corporation.
According to Wilder, the city hasn’t built any housing for seniors since 1995, when the provincial government pulled its funding. If funding is restored, it might be 2002 before any new units are built.
But Wilder adds that the demand for housing for seniors is much lower than that for younger singles or families and the mentally ill. “With seniors it’s still a lot easier to get housing than for people under 60. They have the shortest waiting period of all the other groups.”