Housing and Social Support

Housing

More participants from Central Canada (six of 25, or 24 percent) than participants from Eastern Canada (three of 17, or 17 percent) shared experiences of their legal challenges with housing. Three of 25 (12 percent) Central Canada participants noted an issue with social support challenges. One participant explained that, due primarily to their sexual orientation, they had been denied services intended to help them find adequate housing:

When it comes to housing I was denied access. There are programs for every other group of people out there, if not true on some, but through the government. But there are so few, they expect middle-aged gay men to be successful. And so, educated and being able to, my perception anyway, is that there’s a sense of, oh you can make it on your own and they don’t provide the support systems. So I had trouble getting access to housing. When I tried to even get a rental, when I was applying for a two-bedroom, they wanted to know who was going to be in the 2nd bedroom. It was just – and that I think part of it was sexual orientation because they denied. I was refused access to even look at the apartment (EC#16).

A Central Canada participant was “encouraged” to break their lease by a landlord who frequently used discriminatory and homophobic language. The participant had moved to Central Ontario from Nova Scotia with their partner. Upon seeing the two together, the landlord urged them to leave the building, because other tenants had complained to the superintendent about their relationship. The participant revealed that the landlord used discriminatory language in front of them during a meeting, and was told that to continue living in the building, they and their partner could not show any affection to one another in public:

I was called down by the superintendent and he said, we don’t want you people in our building. He says it’s not appropriate, the life you’re living here. It’s best you get going and find something somewhere else to live. So that caused all the problems and then I was called by management office and told something similar. People were complaining to us that they don’t like your sexual orientation and if you can keep it aside and not do that in public and not hold hands in public and not do things in the elevator and if you think you can handle that then we’ll give that a go. If not, if you’re not comfortable with being quiet, is the term they used, then we’ll let you out of your lease and you find another place to live (CC#25).

When the participant spoke up for themselves during the meeting, the landlord said that they had assumed the term “partner” meant woman, not man, and suggested the participant break the lease, offering the deposit back.

Another participant believed that they faced a different form of discrimination from their landlord, who refused to acknowledge another tenant’s ongoing harassment. It is important to note that while this participant felt that their experience was vindicated by the court system, they still experienced extreme stress. They described the resolution to the case, stating that because they had documented the other tenant’s harassment, they were able to use that to support their claims with their landlord:

It looked like me making an agreement with the old landlord for a move out date of February 29th with $4000 paid from them. And that was it. That was all. And I had stopped paying rent in November because they weren’t addressing the issue, so all those months of rent, they took that. I didn’t have to pay that back. Because I walked into court with three years of paperwork, three years of police reports (CC#20).

In a different context, a Central Canada participant noted that their ex-partner attempted to sue them over ownership of a home. The participant felt the judge failed to recognize that their 2SLGBTQI+ relationship was the genesis of the lawsuit, and therefore sent the case to small claims court instead of family court. They felt their case would have been better suited to family court. “So barriers, in that case, yeah just the fact that it seemed like, people seem to be a long time catching on. On the face of it, the judge seemed to want to not look at some of the facts and the facts were that this was not a business relationship” (CC#7).

The following participant faced issues from the family of a roommate who abandoned their lease. Because the family had pushed the roommate to abandon the lease, the participant feels the family discriminated against them because of their sexual orientation. The family alleged, falsely, that the participant was selling drugs, statements instigated by the family to justify breaking the lease. The participant initiated legal action as a result. During the process the father of the roommate, “saying that he knew that I gay. I wasn’t out as trans at the time. Saying that he knew that I was gay and that he would out me to my parents if I didn’t drop the legal case” (CC#23). They describe the cumulative effects of their legal dispute:

I burned through all of my savings. I ended up having to get more student loans. Yeah I was constantly worried about money. I stopped going to like physiotherapy and stuff, I stopped going to psychological therapy because I could no longer afford it. My depression got severely worse in a combination of both the stress and the lack of access to therapy. I have chronic pain problems, which is why I go to physiotherapy and I ended up having that worsen pretty severely (CC#23).

Social supports

One participant spoke about how they were misgendered when they were at a Service Ontario office to access social supports, and described some of the discriminatory language directed at them. The service worker refused to acknowledge the gender-neutral X marker on the participant’s birth certificate, stating, “that’s just on the outside, on the inside we really need to know what you are. And that’s a quote” (CC#2). The participant went on to explain the bias the worker showed about the need for a binary gender identity:

And I’m like, I’m really non-binary. And she’s like, we’re going to list you as female. And I’m like, no I’m not going to sign that because it’s illegal to lie on a legal document and I’m not going to get caught for that. So no. We have provincial and federal protection, get up with it. But she was insistent. She actually openly mocked me. And I said well, if I have to choose. She said you have to sign it with a gender, male or female. And I said, okay, male. And she’s like do you have a legal document supporting that? And I was kind of like, I showed you my birth certificate which says X. I brought my other ID. Do you want a doctor’s note, because I have my doctor’s note that says I’m non-binary? She was like, no, but I’d like to change it to male. The way that non-binary – it’s as if non-binary is a farce (CC#2).

Another participant faced discrimination when they attempted to receive disability benefits. They were told they did not have enough proof of their disability and were denied. Welfare had a similar response and denied the participant because they were living with their parents, even though they qualified under several criteria to receive welfare benefits. The participant describes their concerns over these fine details:

They said that because I live with my parents, you demonstrate everything else you need to check off to give you payments, but because you live with them and are not paying rent – but if I did start to receive money from them I would start paying rent, through my mother, but she said to me that because technically right now I don’t have to pay my own rent and don’t have my own residence I don’t qualify for their system. I mean, it felt kind of like they were trying to – sorry for my language but screw me over (CC#12).

The final participant faced multiple barriers because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Notably, they felt that some experiences were due not to their 2SLGBTQI+ identity, but perhaps to the structure of the social support system itself. This example showcases the discrimination that 2SLGBTQI+ people face because of their intersecting identities. This participant had issues with several social services – including receiving childcare benefits, legal aid, and adequate medical support. They noted several income-related barriers during the process of accessing legal aid and felt that the system requires a person to fall below the poverty line before being offered legal aid assistance. Finally, the participant noted that finding service and support for transgender people is difficult and that they experience similar barriers and experiences in finding adequate support:

The other challenge I’m having, kind of related to that, is that there’s not many social services around in general for transgender people. And the ones I did find, like a social group, and everyone there is suffering from the same issues, going through divorce, high conflict, having all their possessions taken away, having difficulty finding work (CC#6).