Probe needed at YWCA residences
There's an old saying that to lead is to choose. And that to choose, you must decide.
The YWCA would do well to remember this advice when it comes to managing two residences for abused women it runs in Toronto, which the Sun's Jenny Yuen has been investigating.
What she discovered were tenants complaining about everything from abuse, harassment, threats and vandalism by fellow tenants, to unknown men wandering the hallways, prostitution and drug use.
Tenants complain the YWCA, which runs the facilities and receives city, provincial and charitable support to do so -- all forms of public subsidy -- seems unwilling or unable to restore order.
While the YWCA has a mediation process for resolving tenant-on-tenant disputes -- and this may be appropriate in some circumstances -- mediation is not going to work in cases where one tenant is harassing another.
In that case, it's necessary to get both sides of the story and then decide who is more credible and take the appropriate action.
What's not appropriate is to tell tenants they should try to work it out and if they can't, maybe one or the other should leave.
Why should a tenant being bullied, harassed or threatened by another tenant have to leave, unless she can convince the harasser to back off, especially if she came to the YWCA fleeing an abusive or violent domestic situation?
Abuse victims, understandably, often lack the ability to stand up for themselves.
Unrealistically expecting them to do so, particularly in a confrontational situation, opens them to abuse all over again.
As Gail Robinson, a University of Toronto psychiatry professor and former president on the YWCA's board of directors noted, victims of abuse already feel guilty and ashamed and wrongly blame themselves.
Expecting them to work things out with an abusive tenant in that situation, or downplaying their concerns, could "reaffirm all of these beliefs and leave them feeling there is no safe place for them."
We understand YWCA CEO Heather McGregor's point that the YWCA cannot arbitrarily evict any tenant and has to follow the Landlord and Tenant Act.
That said, we think it's taking too much of a "touchy feely" approach to these issues and putting too much onus on tenants to deal with the problems rather than address them itself.
McGregor asked if the Sun would have raised them had they come from within a private condo community.
First, the more comparable situation would be tenant complaints about a landlord not doing his or her job.
Second, yes, if there were this many complaints of this nature about a private landlord, we would report on it and have done so in the past.
Coun. Doug Holyday's suggestion the province should yank the YWCA's funding is premature.
That said, someone -- the city, the province -- needs to probe what's going on here and get the YWCA to do a better job.
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