THE PROBLEM

It’s been nearly a year since more than 20 people were left homeless by a fatal fire in an Oxford Street group home run by a man unqualified to take care of people with needs like theirs. Since then, several have stayed on couches and hospital beds and been kicked out of homeless shelters.

And they keep turning to Keith Charles, founder of London’s People Helping People, the organization that operated the burned-out group home and several others across the city.

Because despite an avalanche of agencies and advocates and politicians who came out of the woodwork last year, outraged that downtrodden Londoners had nowhere better to turn than a recovering drug addict and ex-con in over his head, that’s still their best option.

Until police ordered him late last month to fix an out-of-control situation, Charles said he was bringing food to two units at 376 Hilton Place and helping out as he could the six drug-addicted mentally ill Londoners to whom every other shelter in the city had closed their doors.

Facing a police order he couldn’t meet, he said he had no choice but to abandon the units, and the residents he placed there three months earlier when they had nowhere else to go.

Since then, city inspectors have ensured the building be brought up to code.

“We don’t want a repeat of last year,” said one, referring to the fire Nov. 3 that killed 72-year-old David MacPherson and forced more than 20 people to seek shelter at the Centre of Hope.

But now who’s helping the six residents?

They have mostly scattered.





A bed is lit by window light in an upstairs bedroom at a group home on Clarke Road operated by Keith Charles in London. Craig Glover/The London Free Press/Postmedia Network



After last November’s fatal fire, politicians and mental-health advocates called for an inquest and the city vowed to look into better housing options.

Fingers pointed at Charles for running homes full of health and safety hazards, even though social and health care workers at provincially funded agencies across the city had known about his places for years and visited them to provide care.

“Everybody looks at me like I’m Bin Laden, but where is everybody now?” asked Charles angrily in a recent interview. “They are sitting back in their big fancy houses.

“Nothing has changed,” he said, adding he’s still been the only one finding shelter for the most difficult, addicted, mentally-ill former residents of Oxford Street. “They call me 25 times a day,” he said.

Things came to a head after Charles placed six people in two units at 376 Hilton Place in east London in July. Within three months after he started providing them with his service (he said he charged about $420 a month for meals, toiletries and support) the place was overrun with criminal activity. Overwhelmed, Charles called police.

The units were being used for drug deals, prostitution and to store stolen bikes, he told Sgt. Dave Ellyatt. Copper wiring had been stripped, two of his female clients had been assaulted and one client’s nurse — an employee of St. Joseph’s assertive community treatment (ACT) team — refused to go in the unit without Charles.

Ellyatt told Charles he needed to fix things.

“I have grave concerns for the situation that has developed in what I suspect is two unofficial group homes you are operating,” Ellyatt said in a Sept. 22 email obtained by the Free Press. Ellyatt then ordered Charles to “take action immediately to rectify these unsafe conditions.”

In response, Charles said he would be “withdrawing” services “effective immediately.” Later he said he feared he’d be held responsible for another disaster.

“He was looking for us to fix his problems,” Ellyatt said in recent interview. “But in this circumstance, he’s the one who put himself and a whole lot of other people at risk.”

While people continue to question Charles’ motivation, it isn’t clear to anybody whether his clients are better off with or without him.

“This is about years of downloading. . . where do these people go? They have serious addictions, and to feed the addiction they are stealing, shoplifting and (doing) all kinds of other things,” said Ellyatt.

One of the strongest advocates for the former residents of 1451 Oxford Street last year was London lawyer Jeff Schlemmer. When he learned about Hilton Place, Schlemmer was conflicted.

“On one hand it would have been better if (Charles) stopped doing it, but on the other hand we certainly don’t have the community resources to help these folks,” he said. “Where do you house people like this? Traditionally they would’ve been in London psychiatric hospital, but realistically now a lot of people end up on the street,” he said.

“That to me is the worst possible outcome.”

Since Charles contacted police, officials with public health, city bylaw and the fire department visited. Fire and health inspectors had many concerns and the city started a probe into property and zoning bylaw violations.

The following week, both units had been emptied. The tenants and squatters were gone.

Reflecting on the action taken, city bylaw manager Orest Katolyk acknowledged it helped solve problems at that location, but didn’t necessarily help the people.

“The solution here is having enough legal group homes throughout the city that people can get referred to,” he said.

Jill Mustin Powell, director of mental health at Regional Mental Health Care and in charge of ACT teams, declined to speak directly about the situation, but said her employees will “reach out and work with people wherever they live.”

Since the fire, things have gotten worse for his clients, Charles said. Now no agency wants to be associated him. “People used to come in and do crafts with them, play bingo, go for walks, keep them active,” he said. “Now nobody wants to come near me. It’s like I’m ISIS.

“I want people to come help these people that nobody wants. I don’t want a dollar. Where are the churches?”.

Hilton Place is a three minute drive from two homes Charles manages on Clarke Road, just north of Dundas. The residents are mentally ill and have addictions. But it’s a different world.

At one of the homes last week, volunteer Cathy Marlein cooked soup and chatted with some of the residents.

“Where the hell would these people go,” if not for Charles? Marlein asked with tears in her eyes.

“Who would look after them?”



People Helping People client Brian MacDonald talks with a reporter as PHP founder Keith Charles watches at a group home on Clarke Road in London. Craig Glover/The London Free Press/Postmedia Network



THE HOUSE

Somebody went on a rampage with a paintball gun in the living room. There are green splotches all over the walls.

The fridge is empty. There’s a safe needle disposal box on the kitchen counter, but syringes lie on the floor beside pizza boxes and other garbage.

Welcome to 376 Hilton Place, home — until last week — to six Londoners with mental illness and addiction problems whose behaviour got them kicked out of shelters across the city. Also home to random squatters.

There is a bit of furniture: a ratty, soiled couch, a cushionless loveseat — also soiled — an armchair and a coffee table covered in pop cans, ashes, tipped-over coffee cups. A crack pipe. Holes in the walls where copper piping was ripped out and sold long ago.

So many flies. The door is wide open, you can just walk in if you get past the gang of young thugs listening to music next door and shouting threats and insults.

We do. We know some of the people inside. They say we can take their picture. We’re there because of a phone call from the mother of one of the residents. She said her daughter had been placed in the townhouse by Keith Charles, who runs London’s People Helping People organization. He was bringing the residents food, but things got out of control and he stopped, she said.

During the five minutes we’re there before the hoodlums next door literally chase us away, a guy in a hoodie shoves past us — a reporter and photographer — plops on the ground, and smokes pot out of a beer can. A skinny guy with a shaved head pulls up on a bike, twitching as he darts into the unit, sits on a couch and rocks back and forth.

Another man storms through swearing, threatening to call the landlord tenant board to order the media out.

People were living here. People our society calls “vulnerable.” People with nurses and social workers who visited them here. Clients of Ontario’s Public Guardian and Trustee agency that pays their rent directly to a landlord.

Some of the residents once lived in a so-called unregulated group home that burned in a fatal fire nearly a year ago. At the time, advocates and politicians stomped feet and demanded change to a health-care system that forces the mentally ill into such hazardous living conditions.

“I want Keith Charles,” screams a woman sitting in a chair, waving the crack pipe. A housefly lands on her eye brow, lingers there, crawls down toward her eye. She doesn’t flinch.

“Get me Keith right now.”

Keith Charles is gone. He withdrew his services after police directed him to fix the problems happening at the two crime-ridden units where he’d placed six clients three months earlier.

Now they are on their own.

Again.

jennifer.obrien@sunmedia.ca

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