Deachman: ‘You can’t be here. You need to leave’ too often what homeless man hears

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“You can’t be here. You need to leave.”

That’s the comment that Thomas Cavasos, 38 and homeless, hears most often. He’s been told it in words. He’s been told in in actions. He’s been told it day and night.

And, truth be told, he doesn’t especially want to be where he’s not welcome, like at Elgin and Lisgar, the corner where he and his therapy cat, Phoenix, most often call home. There’s an overhang at the building on the northwest corner, and Cavasos uses it to keep himself and Phoenix, as well as his wheelchair and other belongings, dry in inclement weather.

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There’s also an RBC bank branch there, and Cavasos says security there has called police to have him removed.

In other words, you can’t be here, you need to leave.

The bittersweet irony, Cavasos notes, is that he does his banking at RBC.

Cavasos has been homeless for about two years. For the first eight months or so, he laid his head down at night at various shelters and physical distancing centres — at the Jim Durrell Recreation Centre, Heron Road Community Centre, Shepherds of Good Hope, Bernard Grandmaitre Arena and, briefly, a Travelodge hotel.

Even in those places he felt unwelcome and often belittled. At one, he says, he had to get a doctor’s note so he could use the microwave oven. At another, he was told to leave because he smoked medical marijuana, which he’s licensed to grow and use for the pain caused by his degenerative disc condition, in the outdoor smoking area.

So, for the past 16 months or so, he’s been living rough on the streets, where he’s frequently been robbed — usually while he sleeps — and occasionally beaten. His aluminum cane is bent from defending himself. Last weekend, his cellphone was stolen. Another time, someone made off with Phoenix’s cat food.

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“But I can’t stay awake forever,” he says.

He shows me the sores on his legs resulting from continually sleeping in a sitting position. This is not how he wants to live.

So, while he greatly appreciates the efforts of the various case workers, organizations and political staffers, including those of Somerset ward Coun. Ariel Troster and Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden, who are trying to help him find permanent housing, he’d understandably rather be in his own place and not having to meet with them.

Recently, after plugging in his wheelchair to charge it while waiting in the reception area of the councillors’ offices at city hall, one of Troster’s staffers gave him a friendly heads-up that someone had complained, suggesting it wasn’t appropriate to charge a wheelchair there when there were more suitable drop-in centres elsewhere.

In other words, you can’t be here, you need to leave.

On another occasion, when he went to use the pool at the Jack Purcell Community Centre and presented his application for the Ottawa Hand In Hand program, which allows low-income residents access to recreation and other municipal facilities at a reduced rate, he was told he didn’t qualify because he didn’t have an address and thus couldn’t prove he was an Ottawa resident.

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What message does that send, if not you can’t be here, you need to leave?

And on Wednesday this week, while charging his wheelchair at a lamp post outside city hall, a security guard told him he couldn’t be there, that he needed to leave.

His worsening degenerative disc condition, which was diagnosed when he was 29, is one of the reasons that Cavasos is on an emergency priority list for housing. But two years on he doesn’t feel much closer to having his own place. In some ways, he says, his reduced mobility is simply another roadblock keeping him from living independently. There are fewer apartments available that can accommodate a wheelchair, cutting him out of much of whatever market might exist. Meanwhile, many landlords, he believes, seeing a homeless person who is in a wheelchair and receiving Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) benefits, will simply move on to the next applicant.

“It’s kind of ironic that the things that are supposed to be helping me are the things I’m being turned down for. I’m on disability, and people don’t want to rent to someone on disability. I have the homeless benefit, and people don’t want to work with the homeless benefit. My last housing worker was getting very frustrated calling places because, as soon as she mentioned disability or homelessness, they’d say ‘no.’”

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Cavasos describes a moment when he had a small epiphany into his situation: It was Christmas Day last year, when he was at Elgin and Lisgar, watching The Muppet Christmas Carol movie on his mini-tablet (since stolen).

“I realized it isn’t a Christmas movie,” he recalls. “It’s a warning to landlords. The whole point of the interactions with the ghosts wasn’t to get Scrooge to like Christmas. It was to get him to be lenient. The reason Tiny Tim was going to die was because all the money was going to Scrooge. There wasn’t enough money for food and medicine, right? And, if we look around, that’s kind of the situation we’re in now. They say that 40-plus per cent of Canadians can barely make ends meet each month, right?”

(A poll conducted by Maru Public Opinion in February indicated that 41 per cent of Canadians were struggling to make ends meet.)

“I feel like there needs to be something done on the landlord and property management end of things,” he adds. “I’ve done everything I can do. I’ve made all my appointments. I’ve paid all my bills, like my storage unit, paid in advance. I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t have a drug addiction. I can pay rent, no problem. I just need somewhere to rent.”

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It’s been almost a year and a half that Cavasos has been living on Ottawa’s streets, the last year or so in a wheelchair. Over and over he’s been told “You can’t be here. You need to leave,” when what he really needs to hear is “You can’t be here. We found you a home.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

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