‘Completely lost’: Hamilton mother and daughter search for housing

Cindy Kenner is couch-surfing after she was forced to leave her CityHousing Hamilton apartment.

At 62, she's staying with her daughter and her two young children in a small house about 40 kilometres outside the city.

But like her mom, Peyton Putman-Fraser is also a guest in the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation home after she lost her place in Hamilton.

Including her daughters, 3 and 5, there are five people but only two bedrooms, the 28-year-old says.

I have to get my mom somewhere to live first because she can't live like this. It's not ideal for her."

But how to do that feels overwhelming.

I'm lost, completely lost," she said this week. I don't even know where to start."

That sense of desperation is shared by others struggling to find affordable places in Hamilton's increasingly out-of-reach rental market.

Some who can't afford market rents, amid a lengthy wait list for social housing, have few options.

But homelessness among women is a phenomenon that experts say flies under the radar due to its hidden nature."

The result is the number of women, girls and gender-diverse people without housing is dramatically underestimated," found a 2020 report by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness.

Women are less likely to appear in mainstream shelters, drop-in spaces, public spaces, or access other homeless-specific services and are more likely to rely on relational, precarious, and dangerous supports to survive."

So many are not captured in point-in-time counts" at these settings, leaving governments to design and implement policies and programming in the absence of key knowledge and data."

Medora Uppal, director of operations at YWCA Hamilton, agrees the degree of homelessness among women has been lowballed for years.

There's always an undercounting, an under-reporting, and underrepresentation in the data that we have."

In most cases, women who lose their homes try to stay off the street by relying on relatives, friends, acquaintances and even strangers, Uppal said. They can fall prey to a spectrum of abuse, including physical violence, survival sex and coerced labour, she noted.

And so when we do see women on the street homeless, it's the most desperate of situations."

Putman-Fraser says the issue with her family's temporary accommodation is the space crunch.

It's tight, and my mom's on the couch," she said. We're both very on edge, and you add in two toddlers."

Putman-Fraser's life bottomed out when her partner, Charles, died suddenly of a stroke in April 2020. She wasn't able to cover the rent of their Burlington Street East home.

It was impossible," said Putman-Fraser, noting she scrapes by on child tax credit benefits. The home where she, her daughters and mother are staying belongs to a cousin of her late partner.

How Kenner lost her apartment earlier this month is also rooted in the death of a longtime spouse.

Owen Putman, 78, died of a massive heart attack in the washroom of their CityHousing apartment at 30 Sanford Ave. S. in March.

But she wasn't on the lease, a scenario that culminated in her abrupt removal nearly three weeks ago.

Kenner says she took her two dogs for a morning walk but returned to a trespass notice that labelled her of no fixed address." She wasn't allowed back in.

I have nothing. Not a change of underwear, not a pair of socks, not a pair of shoes, nothing."

A city spokesperson said the municipal housing provider wouldn't provide details of what happened.

While we cannot speak to individual tenants or specific situations, we can confirm that as part of the tenancy contract, damage to property and neglect of personal safety and the safety of others are grounds to trespass someone from a property," Antonella Giancarlo wrote in an email.

Kenner said she doesn't know what caused the situation to turn so sour with CityHousing, noting police were involved.

Everything was fine. I don't know what happened. All of a sudden they wanted me out."

Putman-Fraser said her mother was able to retrieve her belongings from outside the building last week. It's now in a sister's storage locker.

With the dust barely settled, her mother, who's in frail health and has no source of income, is barely holding on. She can't take it."

Kenner, meanwhile, tries to find solace in a photo of her late partner.

I just try to talk to him," she said between sobs. If he was here, this wouldn't be happening."

The YWCA hopes a new 50-unit building on Ottawa Street North for women and children will help tackle the local homelessness problem. Construction is expected to wrap up at the end of June.

Teviah Moro is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: tmoro@thespec.com