Deachman: Is there Christmas if you're homeless in Ottawa?

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There’s a rustic little wooden fence around Lee and Tammy’s home that might be cute if it weren’t for a couple of things: their “home” is a tent they’ve purposely hidden in a thicket in Gloucester, and the stick fence that Lee built is there to provide a barrier between the couple and the coyotes they hear at night.

The pair have been living in the tent for the last six or seven months: a month-and-a-half in their current location and, before that, off Jasmine Crescent in Beacon Hill South, where, according to Lee, residents made clear, both verbally and physically, that they weren’t welcome.

Before that, they lived for about a year-and-a-half in Lee’s truck, which Tammy described as “a little bit better than how we’re living now.”

I met them last week when I accompanied a Salvation Army Outreach and Housing Services team as it drove around Ottawa, checking in with and providing supplies and services for many of the city’s homeless. The lead-up to Christmas, it seemed to me, was a particularly bleak time to be out on the street.

Lee and Tammy are among the 293 people in Ottawa who are living rough or in circumstances not fit for human habitation and who are also clients of the Salvation Army program. According to program manager Mikyla Tacilauskas, there are many others who aren’t on their radar, including some who simply ride public transit to stay out of the elements, getting kicked off one bus only to find another to ride, as well as some homeless being served by other agencies, and those who purposefully stay out of sight. (The city has estimated there are more than 1,300 homeless people in Ottawa in total.)

Lee, 54, is a mechanic who, because of an injury he suffered on the job two years ago, can no longer work. “Money wasn’t coming in, so I couldn’t afford my apartment, and I got my truck taken away.”

He’s on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). Tammy, 48, is on Ontario Works. Between them, they get about $900 a month for food and basic needs. They augment that by going to a food bank twice a month, and were supplied winter coats and boots by the Salvation Army.

They’d been searching for housing on their own, without any luck, until they approached the Salvation Army program for help in September. They were recently approved for the Social Housing Registry of Ottawa, meaning they qualify for subsidized housing. According to Tacilauskas, they will soon be matched with a housing case worker, after which an apartment could come fairly quickly. Lee and Tammy have agreed to a one-bedroom or even a bachelor, if necessary, simply to get out of the cold as soon as possible.

In the meantime, it’s tea lights and candles to keep warm, a Coleman stove for cooking, and a string of dollar-store Christmas lights for some modicum of festiveness. They’ll likely spend Christmas Day in the tent, they say, playing cards, cribbage or 10,000 Dice Game, drinking lots of coffee and otherwise entertaining one another.

“We have each other,” says Tammy. “That’s the main thing.”

***

Of those 293 clients in the Salvation Army program, 75 are, like Lee and Tammy, living in tents or other encampments. Eighteen live in their vehicles. Ten are in shelters or couch surfing. Seven are incarcerated and one is in the hospital. Most, however — slightly more than 60 per cent — are “lone sleepers,” spending their nights on park benches, in stairways and doorways, in bus shelters, wherever they can.

Tacilauskas estimates that about 40 per cent of the program’s clients live in Somerset Ward, 30 per cent in Rideau-Vanier, and 15 per cent in Rideau-Rockcliffe. The remainder are scattered throughout the rest of the city.

And they could be anybody. Tacilauskas tells the story of one man who, until he was housed this year, was living in a trailer in Manotick. When a representative from Ottawa Community Housing met with him to sign a lease for his new apartment, she recognized him from the photo she had of her two children sitting on the lap of the mall Santa.

“So even Santa can be homeless,” Tacilauskas says.

Tacilauskas’s teams are out on the streets 21 hours a day, 365 days a year, checking in on every individual once a week. They’ll bring sleeping bags, clothing, food and water and, in cases of emergencies, will transport the homeless to a shelter or hospital if required, administer naloxone for overdoses, and otherwise care for them.

Significantly, though, they also help the homeless get housed, which may start with something as basic as getting them a birth certificate or doing other required paperwork.

We did our rounds in one of the smaller vans, the rear cargo area filled with water, meals, sleeping bags and coats. A slight wet rain fell as we headed out from the Booth Centre at 7 p.m. for what turned out to be a five-hour shift that took us to Gloucester, Crystal Beach, Hunt Club and Vanier. The clients I met were all comfortable telling me their stories. But for reasons of either pride or security, each asked that their surnames not be used.

Just before we departed, Tacilauskas handed me a naloxone kit; thankfully, I didn’t need to administer it to anyone.

***

Hadi, 65, is among the homeless who live in their vehicles, in his case his 2011 Dodge Caravan. He’s been doing it for nine months, parking in shopping mall lots, typically alternating between Hunt Club and Overbrook. He knows a lot of people in these areas — Hunt Club is where he last had permanent housing — so he can knock on a friend’s door for a quick bathroom break or visit.

His extensive network of contacts also allows him to find work via word-of-mouth; he’s a self-employed handyman and driving instructor. There just isn’t enough of it, he says, for him to afford his own place.

“Someone called me today, so I had work. But maybe no one will call me tomorrow.

“If I had another option, I wouldn’t live in my van,” he adds, “but I can’t afford it. Even for a studio (bachelor) I would have to have $1,200.”

Only the two eldest of his six grown children know his predicament. He refuses to tell the others, out of pride. “I don’t want them to accept this idea. I want them to do their best not to be in my situation. And maybe the picture they have of me would be lessened.

“And this way,” he adds, “I’m not paying $1,200 for nothing, and can save my money until I can afford it.”

Meanwhile, he does his best to also support one of his sons who is living in a rooming house and, because of mental-health issues, can’t work. His son gets $700 monthly from Ontario Works, but his rent at the rooming house is $850. “I give him $300 or $350 every month.”

When he’s not working, Hadi whiles away his time in the van, working on his calligraphy, writing poetry or watching news or documentaries on his phone. He usually eats fast food.

Asked what he wants, he replies: “For sure I want a place of my own. Shelter. I want a spot, like two metres by two metres — bigger than my car.

“This is Canada. There’s something wrong. People have to do more about the issue of housing and homelessness.”

***

We also meet Chris, one of Ottawa’s lone sleepers. Thirty-eight years old, he did three years at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre for gun possession and another for some kind of conspiracy conviction. When we met outside the Tim Hortons at Montreal Road and the Vanier Parkway, he admitted he hadn’t taken his ADHD meds that day and was especially hyper.

He’s been homeless since March, but?was also on the street for about a year before going to jail. “But it’s been worse after jail,” he says. “I was messed up. I couldn’t find a place and nobody wanted to help.”

His wife, to whom he was married for 10 years and with whom he has two children, broke up with him two months before his release, after which he lived in a tent for a while in and around Stanley Park, along the Rideau River. He has family in the area, but between their living situations and his shaky relationships with them, he says staying with them wouldn’t work.

When the Outreach and Housing Services team came knocking on his tent flap last June, he was suspicious. The relationship has been slow to develop, but they helped get him his birth certificate, and only earlier this month got him into Ontario Works, an important step in getting housing.

Additionally, he says they’ve helped him with food and clothes.

He says he’s kicked meth, to which he was addicted, but is still selling drugs and stolen goods — he doesn’t steal them himself, he says — for an income. A qualified roofer, he says the roofing company he used to work for has promised to hire him again once he gets back on his feet.

“If I could get stable housing where I could go home every night, I would rather work than do this. I don’t want to sell drugs — I got knifed the other day on Somerset. As long as I mind my own business, I should be OK.”

Meanwhile, as he awaits the housing he hopes will help turn his fortunes around, he sleeps where he can: bus shelters, people’s front porches (with permission, he says), stairwells and even just under overhangs.

RELATED: Here’s how it feels to be homeless at Christmas

***

By the time you read this, Tania, whom we also met that night, will finally be in her own apartment, after spending three months living first in a friend’s chicken coop, then more recently in a truck and shed at her boyfriend’s home in the Crystal Beach area.

A long, complicated ordeal brought the 50-year-old hair colourist to this, fuelled by a long-term abusive relationship with her previous boyfriend (who was eventually jailed for assault) and the five dogs she refused to abandon when a bailiff evicted her from their Barrhaven home in September.

Tacilauskas says that pets are often a contributing factor to women staying in abusive relationships. For Tania, the pets also proved an obstacle in resettling after she left her ex.

“I reached out to every women’s shelter and dog rescue between here and Toronto,” she says. “Some day I want to open up a shelter for women who are abused and have dogs, because that is why we don’t leave our relationships. I stayed because of my dogs. I wasn’t going to leave them behind and I had nowhere to bring them.”

Tania doesn’t want the location of her new one-bedroom apartment disclosed because she’s worried her ex will find her.

After her eviction in September, she first went to a friend’s house, where she stayed in a disused chicken coop with two of the dogs. After a while, she moved to her current boyfriend’s house, but because the five dogs don’t get along well enough to remain together, she’s had to separate them. She spends nights going back and forth between the shed and truck, alternating sleeping in each for an hour or two at a time. Because of the commotion the dogs create, she doesn’t go in the house at night and risk disturbing her boyfriend and his 11-year-old son. If she has to relieve herself at night, she does it outside.

When I visited her with Tacilauskas and Outreach and Housing Services supervisor Brianna Irwin a week before Christmas, Tania’s face lit up as she was shown photos of her new apartment for the first time.

“All I wanted for Christmas was a roof over my head for my dogs,” she says. “It looks like St. Nick came early this year.

“I’m going to get back on my feet, see my clients again, and try to temporarily foster these guys out until I can get a house again.”

And the first thing she plans to do in her new home? “I’m going to sit in the middle of the living room and have a party with my babies. I’m going to go to the bathroom without boots on. I’m going to walk through the apartment without a jacket on.”

***

So the 293 homeless count has, for the moment at least, dropped by one, to 292. There’s a long way to go, but it’s better than the record high of 360 the outreach program had last summer. With luck, St. Nick, or others who share the season’s spirit of helping and giving, will visit Ottawa’s snow-covered idling vans, apartment stairwells, tents, benches and other places where the homeless are living, and offer them a hand.

Merry Christmas to the Salvation Army. Merry Christmas to the homeless. Merry Christmas to all.

bdeachman@postmedia.com