She lost her job. His building sold. These are some of thousands of people who became homeless in Toronto this year

He relied on the cheap rent of a Toronto rooming house, and when it was sold, had nowhere else to go.

Her work in the city’s film industry evaporated during the pandemic, and she wound up living in a tent.

A dispute with his landlord turned into long nights on TTC streetcars.

These stories are among the tales of more than 7,400 people who’ve turned up at Toronto shelters for the very first time this year.

It’s a wave of new homelessness that as of November is on track to exceed the numbers seen in 2020. And in an unusual year, the second of a global pandemic, sector workers say the very profile of homelessness in the city has been changing.

There’s the continued effects of the pandemic itself, with more people living on the edge. “We’re seeing people who were barely able to get by, or were struggling in poverty, only seeing more hardship through the pandemic,” said Dr. Andrew Boozary, who works with Toronto’s homeless population as executive director of social medicine at the University Health Network.

With migration largely stunted over the last 20 months, family shelters haven’t faced the same strain as in the past from surges of refugees. But people have still flocked to Toronto from elsewhere — the most likely place of origin this spring was another Ontario city such as Mississauga or Brampton. Meanwhile, lifelong Torontonians have made up more than twice as much of the city’s homeless population as they did three years ago.

Laural Raine, a director in the city’s shelter division, pointed to the increasing toll of complex mental health and addiction challenges — 42 per cent of the homeless population in a street-needs assessment reported addictions and half reported mental health challenges. When the same survey was done three years ago, those figures were 27 and 32 per cent, respectively.

But for all the unique circumstances of this past year-plus, Raine said the chief reason people needed shelter was the same as ever: housing, for many, was just too expensive.

The Star spoke with three people who this year found themselves for the first time relying on shelters as well as other makeshift living situations such as park encampments or sleeping on transit lines. These are their stories.

‘I paid rent for 21 years in downtown Toronto’

For months before she fell into homelessness, Joanna Corbett was teetering on the edge.

Where the 37-year-old says she previously made her income working in production roles for Toronto film and television projects, her work dried up during COVID-19. Without regular income, she was unable to keep up the costs for her rented apartment.

She went out east for a while for work, and when she returned she resorted to short-term rentals as a stopgap — some of which left her worrying about safety and each one further draining her bank account.

The last straw was this April, when she told the Star she was robbed. By months’ end, Corbett said she was living in an encampment in the west-end Trinity Bellwoods Park. She didn’t reach out to her family, feeling ashamed about the way things had spiralled.

“I paid rent for 21 years in downtown Toronto,” she said. “That tells you I made good money.”

While living outside, Corbett was struck by the number of women staying around her, many who had faced domestic violence. Some used the camps as a place to hide from abusive partners, she recalled. “If you already had personal issues and COVID came, it was a double whammy,” Corbett said.

She tried to appear tougher while staying outside by swearing more, or yelling out, hoping it would keep anyone who might take advantage of her away. Outreach volunteers kept her and others afloat, she said — their drop-offs were often the easiest way to procure warm socks, a snack or other supplies.

She offered to help with the outreach, co-ordinating what supplies and supports were needed in the camp. The effort lifted her spirits. “My homeless family has made it a lot easier for me to love myself while I’ve been homeless,” Corbett said.

As this year draws to a close, she’s hoping to find her footing again, but stressed the pathway there hadn’t been a straight shot. Twice, she’d accepted a spot in a shelter hotel, and in one case, says she secured an apartment. But each time, due to varying negative experiences, she says she left those living arrangements for life outside.

After months of bouncing between parks, even sleeping in rougher spaces such as on church steps, Corbett is hoping to get back to a “structured life.”

She recently moved into another shelter hotel, and admitted she’d struggled to accept the help she was offered.

“It’s hard to be hungry for the first time. It’s hard to take handout food,” Corbett said. Still, she’s trying to keep her spirits high as she searches for a home. “There’s hope for me here.”

Reflecting on the last year, she said: “No matter what your background is, with COVID, homelessness has been something anyone could fall into.”

Finding housing is ‘not hard — it’s expensive’

Until this year, 40-year-old Faid Fhojae lived in a rooming house in west-end Toronto. But after the property sold this year, he was asked to find somewhere else to live, and came up empty.

After immigrating to Canada nearly a decade ago, Fhojae, originally from Iran, worked minimum wage jobs — kitchen work, sometimes factory work — and the rooming house offered coveted affordability. For around $600 a month, he was grateful for a decent-sized room of his own, with a shared balcony and kitchen on the same floor, plus a backyard to get some fresh air.

But earlier this year, his living situation was upended by Toronto’s real estate churn.

The rooming house he lived in was sold, he said. Property records indicate the sale went through in May. An online listing for the site pledged it would be vacant upon possession, and Fhojae said he was offered roughly $500 to find another place. He looked for a unit within the same price range. But finding nothing, he wound up at the city’s shelter intake office.

Like thousands of others facing homelessness in Toronto this year, Fhojae also battles with addiction — specifically, opioids. Drug poisoning has taken an increasingly grim toll in the shelter system. While in 2019, there were 10 overdose deaths documented in shelters, last year there were 46 — and more than 800 cases of overdoses in shelters being reversed.

Fhojae started using substances out of a deep sense of loneliness, he said. He started using between long work hours, when he was on the clock six days a week after coming to Canada. “I was sometimes using for fun, sometimes for self-medicating,” Fhojae said, before adding: “This is an excuse. I have an addiction.” He’d started attending therapy at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health before he lost his housing.

For his first two nights of homelessness, Fhojae stayed in one shelter, but struggled to adjust. He then managed to secure a spot in a smaller dormitory-style site downtown, where he’s been staying ever since.

He speaks warmly about the facility, saying it felt cleaner than the other shelter, and he wasn’t seeing violent clashes playing out around him. The staff on-site made him feel listened to, helped him out with resources, and kept him from loneliness.

Still, he says his priority is getting out.

“It’s not hard — it’s expensive,” he said, noting he now relies on social assistance. “If you have money, in the next half an hour, you can find a place.”

‘I just felt like giving up, but she put the will to live in me’

As dusk fell in early May, 55-year-old Gordon Jones would board a streetcar for the night ahead.

As it rumbled down its tracks, Jones would try to close his eyes. Sometimes, he’d be roused from sleep by the fare inspectors, who he says gave him “a pass” a few times. He’d agree to pay the $3.25 fare in those cases, to get a few more hours without having to disembark. Other times, he’d wake up to find that his belongings had been taken.

Jones says a dispute with his landlord over his furnace in the spring was the catalyst to him becoming homeless. When things got tense, he left, crashing with a family member while figuring out his next steps. But in a home with high-energy children, he says the living arrangement started to wear him down.

So Jones, a lifelong Torontonian, turned in May to the TTC.

By the month’s end, a friend had helped Jones into the shelter system. He had a room at a temporary hotel site. That’s when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. A pain in his chest had been nagging him, which he assumed was a pulled muscle. Given the pandemic, he ventured to a nearby hospital to have it checked just in case, and was given a stage three diagnosis.

The world seemed darker, and Jones says he felt like giving up, facing cancer alone in the shelter. For a while, he didn’t talk to anyone else in the facility aside from staff. But after a while, he started to strike up conversations. That’s when he met Sonia, another shelter resident.

The two started a relationship, which Jones presents as a saving grace. “If it wasn’t for her, I think honestly I would be dead. I just felt like giving up, but she put the will to live in me,” he said.

The agency running the shelter, Dixon Hall, has since helped the two find and furnish a rental. The couple’s monthly bills are brought down each month by an $800 subsidy.

Jones speaks glowingly about their new home, telling the Star about a squirrel they dubbed Charlie who they regularly feed peanuts at their door.

For him, it’s made a mental difference to know his bed is his own, and that he lives in a home where he can come and go as he likes.

“We all go through stages in our life that we’re not proud of,” he said. But he said he is happy with where he landed, and proud of what he’s gotten through.

“I have no regrets.”