‘Very scary:’ Regina woman evicted from subsidized housing

First, Evelyn Harper lost her home care. Then, she couldn’t prepare for her subsidized housing unit to be treated for its cockroach infestation.

So the 71-year-old was evicted and rolled out into the cold.

“I’ve been in such shock and disbelief, not knowing what I’m going to do and where I’m going to go. It’s been very scary,” Harper said Wednesday. “I just take it day by day. That’s all I can do right now.”

Harper had been living at the Regina Housing Authority complex Cedar Wood Manor in Regina for four years. She has rheumatoid arthritis and mobility issues, so she’d been getting help from home care.

But about six months ago, home care changed what it will do for clients, and eliminated the services Harper needs help with – getting into bed and doing laundry.

Then recently, Harper’s unit was supposed to be treated for a bad cockroach infestation; the decision from the rentalsman for the eviction talked about cockroaches falling from the ceiling. However, Harper couldn’t prepare the unit because of her mobility issues.

So, citing health and safety and her apparent inability to care for herself, Harper was evicted.

Meara Conway, the Saskatchewan NDP’s social services and housing critic, said Harper had to call mobile crisis because she didn’t have anywhere else to turn and she’s been living in a motel ever since.

“There’s no question that there’s a legal basis for Regina Housing Authority to evict someone on the basis of health and safety if they can’t care for themselves on their own, or address an infestation. That doesn’t mean that this is how this should have been handled,” said Conway.

Harper was invited to the legislature by the NDP to see if anything could be done to help her.

“I’m very disappointed to hear that no action was taken so that we didn’t come to this point,” said Conway.

Social Services Minister Gene Makowsky. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

Harper was expected to meet with Social Services Minister Gene Makowsky after proceedings wrapped on Wednesday. Makowsky said he wanted to look into the situation and find out how to help her.

“Certainly in this case we want to do better, for sure,” said the minister.

“We’ll look at this case and try and learn from it and work on things so we can have some flexibility. I understand there’s rules and impacts on other tenants and that sort of thing but, again, we want to look after vulnerable people in our province.”

Makowsky said that fact needs to be made clear to housing authorities in the province. He said the province does want to look after seniors and there are several programs across the ministries to help with that.

He said he hopes the situation isn’t widespread but couldn’t say that for certain.

“We’ll look at this case, review it, see what we could have (and) should have done better and whether it’s reviewing evictions in Sask. Housing one by one. Maybe that’s what we have to do in terms of we want to have a similar standard right across the province in all our housing authorities,” said Makowsky.

The minister explained it could be a matter of changing things to be more flexible and more compassionate and to look at things on a case-by-case basis.