Jarvis: ‘There was a time when we thought he would really have a good life’


Article content

How long did Anatole Rybas lay freezing to death on the sidewalk on Ouellette Avenue downtown last week, with no coat and the temperature below zero?

advertisement

Article content

We don’t know.

How many people walked past him before someone checked him and realized he was dead?

We don’t know.

There are so many questions.

“All alone and just the thought of freezing to death is so horrible,” said his cousin, Annie Toman of Waterloo.

Mr. Rybas had recently stayed in the city’s Isolation and Recovery Center for people experiencing homelessness who have been infected with or exposed to COVID-19, as the Star’s Trevor Wilhelm first reported. City employees had helped him get a room at the Salvation Army’s shelter.

He had been to the city’s Homelessness and Housing Help Hub and a warming center. Outreach workers knew him.

Many people downtown recognized the sociable 69-year-old Mr. Rybas. He was part of the core.

advertisement

Article content

Yet, I have frozen to death on the city’s main street.

How did this happen?

The city, health and social services agencies and police met Wednesday for the first debriefing on Mr. Rybas’ death. They’ll try to track his life from him during the last month.

“What we’re really focusing on is, did Mr. Rybas or others try to access services and they were not able to? And if so, why? And how do we rectify this?” said Windsor’s Commissioner of Health and Human Services, Jelena Payne.

One thing we know is you can forget stereotypes. Mr. Rybas had once planned to be a university professor. He had a master’s degree in Russian literature from the University of Waterloo and was a PhD student at the University of Alberta. He met a wonderful woman in university and they got married. They were going to build a house.

advertisement

Article content

“He had such potential,” Toman said. “He honestly was brilliant. He could retain information, spoke fluent Russian, was a master at chess. I have read constantly.

“There was a time when we thought he would really have a good life.”

But in the middle of his PhD, “it all fell apart,” said Toman’s husband, Bruce.

Mr. Rybas developed schizophrenia.

He and his wife divorced, and he lived on and off the streets the rest of his life.

We have band-aids to deal with emergencies — outreach workers, shelters, meals at the Downtown Mission.

“There’s a ton of band-aid programs,” said downtown councilor Rino Bortolin.

But, he said, “you can’t keep throwing money at homelessness and not deal with what is putting people there.

“Everybody knows you need addiction (treatment), mental health (care) and (affordable) housing,” he said. “You can get housing but be back on the street because your mental health and addictions are not cared for.”

advertisement

Article content

City council last year approved a plan for a new 60-bed shelter and hub to connect people to permanent housing and services like mental health care and addiction treatment.

These services are a “necessary counterpart” to the government’s $2.5-billion Rapid Housing Initiative to create more than 10,000 new affordable housing units for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, Mayor Drew Dilkens told federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett this week .

But municipalities can’t afford them and have had an “exceptionally difficult time” securing money from senior governments to help pay for them, he said, despite the fact that “there is a clear business case in terms of reduced health care, social services and other costs.”

advertisement

Article content

Dilkens also told Bennett about Mr. Rybas’ death.

Bennett made no commitments.

The Ontario government pledged $3.8 billion over 10 years for mental health and addiction services. Where is that money?

“This needs money today,” said Bortolin.

The city has 1,000 supported housing beds for people who can’t live entirely independently and is adding another 108. The Canadian Mental Health Association also has some. Sometimes, people just need help with everyday necessities like getting groceries and managing finances.

That support doesn’t stop after a week or month or sometimes even a year, said Payne. “Sometimes those supports are needed long-term.”

Schizophrenia is a serious disease. “Anatole couldn’t have an apartment by himself without things starting to go awry,” said Toman.

advertisement

Article content

He eventually lost many of his books and his chessboard because he couldn’t manage an apartment and couldn’t carry them on the street.

Supported housing would have been “ideal” for him, she said.

“To me, that’s what Anatole needed, to have the freedom to live your day the way you want and the protection of having a small space on your own.”

The program here “has been very successful at keeping people housed and providing them the supports they need,” said the city’s executive director of housing and children’s services, Debbie Cercone.

But, again, “we need more of that,” she said.

Homelessness here jumped 27 per cent in the last three years, according to a report in December. About 480 people are or have recently been homeless. And two-thirds of them suffer from mental illness and addictions. Many have suffered trauma.

advertisement

Article content

“The agencies that have the lead for mental health and addictions do their best to provide as much support as they can, but there isn’t enough to go around,” Cercone said, citing waiting lists.

Outreach workers at Family Services Windsor-Essex often feel like they’re “treading water,” said executive director Joyce Zuk. They house one person, and then two more people end up back on the streets again.

So we need supported housing for the 480 people, “and we probably need a lot more than that,” said Cercone.

Some people think that the homeless choose to live on the street if they refuse to go to a shelter. But, “I don’t know if anyone would choose the streets if their mental health was taken care of,” said Bortolin.

The people reviewing Mr. Rybas’ case talked about that.

“It’s something we struggle with all the time,” said Payne. “Is it the mental illness that’s making some of the decisions? If it’s properly treated, supported, would those decisions have been different?”

Said Zuk, “If I offered you your own apartment or your own room and your own bathroom, you would absolutely choose it over sleeping in a dumpster.”

[email protected]

Comments

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user follows comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your e-mail settings.


Leave a Comment