Forum on shooting reveals misunderstanding of low income communities

The forum was widely promoted and attracted participants from beyond the neighbourhood as well. The disconnect between the concerns of residents of Ottawa Community Housing (OCH) and those who had come from outside was soon revealed. “If they were from outside the neighbourhood, people were talking about crime and gangs. But the folks who actually live in the neighbourhood were talking about employment, job supports, education supports, and opportunities for their kids for education and employment,” said Coun.Taylor, in an interview with Muslim Link.

Mr. Taylor has an office located within the Ramsey neighbourhood, another Ottawa Community Housing project located just up the street from Britannia Woods and Michele Heights. Although city councillors are not required to maintain an office in their wards, this was one of his commitments during his election campaign. This is the first community office the Bay Ward has ever had. “I thought it would be good exposure for other folks in the ward who maybe don’t come into Ramsey that often to see that this is part of their community too.

“The biggest challenge that I find on the outside of the neighbourhood is that there’s a perception that if a bad thing happens in some of our social housing communities, it’s expected,” says Mr. Taylor, “People on the outside just assume that that’s going to happen there. If it happened in a middle-class, upper middle class neighbourhood they would say ‘Oh a very bad thing happened in a good neighbourhood’ so the whole neighbourhood doesn’t get tarred.”

The social inequalities and systemic barriers to education and employment which can lead youth to join gangs were often the focus of statements by OCH residents. In an interview with Muslim Link, Deka Omar, the only panellist at the forum who is also a resident of Ottawa Community Housing, stated that “Violence is just the symptom. Poverty is the cause.”

Ms. Omar is currently doing her PhD in Sociology at the University of Ottawa. She knows that her education would make many perceive her as an unlikely resident of social housing, but she says many residents are quite educated. “You have people who come here as professionals in other countries but who can’t get their credentials recognized in Canada so they have to take on minimum wage jobs. Some people have to work two to three jobs in order to support their families. You have people like me who grew up in this neighbourhood and want to keep living with their families [and] finding affordable housing in this city for a large family is very difficult.” Ms. Omar also explained that few residents of Ottawa Community Housing were able to attend the forum because they had to work or couldn’t find childcare. “This is why our voices are often not represented.”

Poverty and the stigma associated with it can have a real impact on the self-esteem of children and youth growing up within social housing. Pastor Terry Orchard of the Britannia Baptist Church spoke at the forum and described the impact of what he called “economic apartheid” on the lives of some of his church members. He recounted having to comfort a mother whose children were being bullied at school when it was revealed they lived in Ottawa Community Housing.  He also noted that many residents of Ottawa Community Housing fear that putting their address on job applications might affect whether or not they will be hired. “We have to educate people who don’t live in social housing to combat the stigma and stereotypes but we also have to have an inoculation piece for people who live in Ottawa Community Housing neighbourhoods to prevent them from thinking ‘Wow, this is a bad neighbourhood’, which is why we chose to focus on some of the good things that were happening in the neighbourhood at the forum,” says Mr. Taylor.

Ms. Omar agrees that this is necessary because residents, particularly children and youth, are seriously impacted by this stigma. “You internalize other people’s perception of you. You might even start believing it.” Ms. Omar also noted that although many middle to upper middle class Muslims in Ottawa understand all too well the way media can perpetuate negative stereotypes about their community, they often don’t check how their own negative attitudes towards people living in social housing, a large number of whom are also Muslim, are also constructed by the same media. “Muslims should be even more sensitive to other communities who are also being subjected to a very confining narrative by media. Part of the problem is that in Canada we like to pretend we live in a classless society and yet nothing could be further from the truth. Muslims need to seriously think about where their attitudes are coming from before passing judgement on poor folks,” says Ms. Omar.

The panel discussed many of the programs available, primarily offered by Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre, aimed at providing educational supports and recreational activities for children and youth that could help build resilience to both the stigma associated with poverty and the pressures that might lead them to consider joining a gang. And these programs seem to be working. “There has been a 27 percent drop in crime in the Bay Ward, that’s not a statistical bump, that’s proof positive that all of the stuff that has been deployed in the last three, four years has been working,” says Mr. Taylor.

Malik Adjokatcher, an aspiring hip hop artist, was once a child growing up in Britannia Woods who could have benefited from such programs. In the discussion, it was overlooked that several people in attendance, particularly younger community members, knew Mr. Adjokatcher personally, had grown up with him, and had recently attended his funeral. Although he was involved in a life of crime and had been arrested on several occasions, they did not simply perceive him as “a gang member”. He was someone they had known and cared about.

Chelby Marie Daigle is the coordinator of Muslim Link
and a resident of
Ottawa Community Housing.