Julia Frankling –
At 11p.m. on October 6 after nearly 12 hours stranded outside due to an elevator outage, wheelchair user Tony suffered five seizures on the pavement outside his Regent Park apartment building.
It began in late morning when Tony went outside to walk his service dog. Stuck outside until about 11p.m., he was repeatedly told by the Toronto Community Housing tenant line that one of the elevators was still running and that someone would call back. Three weeks later, TCHC had still not called back, he told the bridge.
During those hours Tony had no access to a washroom, safe food or his medications. Living with a broken foot, celiac disease and other conditions, his situation quickly became dangerous.
“At one point I went to the fire station and they said they don’t have the gear to move my chair up five stories,” Tony said.
Adding to his stress, his autistic teenager was stuck upstairs alone. “While he’s okay on his own, it’s not safe for that long,” Tony said. “TCHC was made aware but nobody came out to check or asked if I needed anything.”
Thankfully, Tony’s neighbours took shifts so he wouldn’t be left alone. Other residents unable to manage the stairs faced similar problems — some trapped in their units, others stranded outside.
The 10-storey building at 1 Oak St. designates 25 percent of its apartments for wheelchair users, not including other disabled or elderly tenants.
Senior disabled resident Felix Rinfret, 69, said “I couldn’t take my dogs out or get to my food bank appointment, so I ended up being short on food, and couldn’t get another appointment for a week.”
Residents were also frustrated by a lack of communication. “TCHC put up a sign. There was no announcement,” Rinfret said. “No mention that the elevator was down or being fixed. We’ve got a PA system that goes through the whole place. They certainly tell us when they’re doing a fire-alarm check.”
Brad Evoy, executive director of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, said the public housing agency committed “a Human Rights violation.”
“The TCHC and the city of Toronto need to be held to account,” Evoy said. “It’s unacceptable and reinforces the kind of fundamentally ablest, violent reality that so many disabled tenants face.”
Under the Ontario Human Rights Code, landlords have a duty to include everyone — regardless of disability, race, gender or other grounds. They must make housing accessible, meet tenants’ needs, and remove barriers. The code also notes “Appropriate accommodation should be provided promptly.”
TCHC told the bridge that a review of this incident is under way “While we have protocols in place to communicate with and support tenants during service outages, we can always improve… Both elevators at 1 Oak Street were repaired during the October 6 incident – and they have continued to operate normally since then.”
However, tenants report that since the October 6 repairs that one elevator went down again. “The October 6 incident is the fourth time in the last six months this has happened, though 12 hours is definitely the longest,” Tony said. “There should be more priority for buildings that have a larger disabled population.”
John Mossa, independent living skills coordinator for the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto, said he was once trapped for a week in his TCHC building in his wheelchair during Covid-19 lockdowns due to a similar breakdown.
“TCHC should have a rapid response of repairs, with clear notifications, especially for tenants with disabilities — An emergency contact list of residents with disabilities and seniors, a roaming housing coordinator, back-up generators and, accessible infrastructure that meets the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. TCHC needs to build partnerships with community response teams if they can’t handle crisis’s themselves.”
According to the Act, “The most appropriate accommodation will be the one that most promotes inclusion, respects dignity, meets individual needs, and addresses any systemic issues.”
The outage left emotional scars. Living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, Tony now experiences anxiety every time he leaves home.
“I watched so many disabled children and adults being carried up stair by stair that day coming home from school and work. An older woman couldn’t go home that night ‘cause she’s had a massive stroke. It was such a mess — wheelchairs everywhere, just abandoned by those able to be carried upstairs.”
Another tenant reported that TCHC client care line staff said their protocol was to contact the elevator technicians, with no plans for disabled or senior residents, nor apologies, and no promise of policy change.
Envoy underscores a larger issue, “There needs to be mass reinvestment into the system to make our social housing system one where people can thrive in and have the access they need. The fight must happen both on the municipal level and the provincial levels.”
Anyone can become disabled at some point in their lifetime — through accident, illness or age, temporary or permanently. (One in seven Ontarians lives with a disability.)
