Anne Perkins has lived alone in her Osgoode home for almost 40 years.
She’s grown accustomed to the space she’s known for half of her life. For years, she welcomed Irish dogs and friends needing a place to crash. She re-did the house’s intricate trims herself and carefully tended to her garden for home-grown vegetables.
“I made changes that I wanted and I did them myself,” she says. “It’s very much my house.”
But now, Perkins awaits knee surgery for joint issues. It’s becoming harder and harder for Perkins to climb the stairs of her two-storey home and manage her property’s sprawling acre of land.
Making the difficult decision to sell, she’s gearing up to say goodbye on March 21 — two days before her 80th birthday. She’s been on the waitlist for an Osgoode seniors’ residence for years but has not heard back about a spot. Come spring, she has no idea where she will end up.
“Losing the house has affected me very negatively, and I’m not proud of this, but I’m a bit paralyzed,” she says. “I’ve got to find a place to live, and you know what? I’m in no mood to look.”
Perkins is not alone.
She is one of Ottawa’s growing number of older adults who could one day experience homelessness. According to the City of Ottawa’s point-in-time count, 23 per cent of respondents experiencing homelessness were 50 years old or older. The city projects that people older than 65 will make up 20 per cent of our population by 2030. As a result, older adult homelessness is only expected to climb.
To help pave a solution, Carleton University students Grace Kanto and Shannon Hicks put together “No Home for Growing Old: Older Adult Homelessness in Ottawa.” It’s a social justice zine with information about older adult homelessness risks, renovictions, health impacts and most importantly, potential solutions.
Kanto and Hicks’s goal with the zine — part of a project for their social work master’s degree — was to make their research on the issue artistic, accessible and fun to engage students, older adults and senior providers.
“I’ve done policy briefings or one-page briefing notes, and while they do have a lot of information, it’s not always engaging for the audience,” Kanto says. “We wanted it to be fun and engaging.”
Hicks and Kanto are experienced in working with older adults and people experiencing homelessness.
During her bachelor’s of social work degree, Hicks did a field placement with Ottawa’s Good Companions Seniors’ Centre and worked in a retirement home. Kanto has worked with different populations of people experiencing homelessness for almost six years, and completed a two-year practicum with The Council on Aging of Ottawa during her bachelor’s degree.
“I hope to make advocacy and social action priorities in my future work,” Hicks writes in the zine’s author introduction.
The duo’s zine includes occasional personal touches: In the first few pages, Hicks and Kanto included photos of themselves and their grandparents.
“My passion for advocating for older adult homelessness and housing insecurity stems from both my professional experience and my experience as the granddaughter of a first-generation refugee,” Kanto added in the zine’s introduction.
“My grandfather has lived in a rent-controlled apartment for the last 15 years, and without the proper policies to protect his tenancy, he could be at risk of homelessness.”
The zine’s 16 pages of information are rife with colour: serif, non-serif and magazine cut-out style fonts are highlighted in blues, oranges and greens.
Photos of people experiencing homelessness, smiling older adults and people joining hands make up various pages’ backdrops, along with the occasional non-distracting brick wall or gray design.
Hicks, who worked on the zine’s design the most, said they were artistically inspired by master’s students’ previous zines.
Their design process was nothing fancy — “I’m not super tech savvy,” Hicks laughs — and often relied on Google Slides or free stock images.
“All of our assignments are basically papers, maybe occasionally a PowerPoint,” she says. “It was refreshing to think, ‘Oh, we can make something creative.’ We were both more inclined to that — combining visuals so that it’s not just research.”
Perkins says she is unaware of Kanto and Hicks’s project, but says “it’s a good thing” young people share stories and information about older adult homelessness: “I think working on this issue is important.”
Tim Aubry, a retired University of Ottawa professor who researches homelessness, says the zine is “well-researched” and that he appreciates the students’ creative approach.
“It’s a good way of using research, mobilizing knowledge on a topic like homelessness and making it engaging and common language,” he says. “It’s a very valid way of getting information out about a social issue.”
Kanto has shared the zine with city councillors but only received generic responses, she said. She also shared their work with the Centretown Community Health Centre and the Council on Aging.
“At the end of the day, we’re all human. Being able to see more connection, humility and empathy among people would probably be my biggest goal for something like this,” Kanto says. “This is a really important issue that needs to be talked about.”
But for Perkins — whose monthly income with pension and old age security is roughly $2,100 per month — there’s still no answer in sight, and she is unmotivated to find a solution for her living situation in March.
“I’m having a hell of a time getting myself up and going, which is not like me,” she says. “You live in a place this long, it becomes a part of you.”
Featured graphic by Alisha Velji/the Charlatan
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