Man would rather live on the streets over disgusting subsidized basement apartment
1,050 views · Published 18 April 2017 · 1:08 · Indexed 21 September 2026
Channel: Toronto Star · 2017 · News & Politics
James Ribble spent four months in a dirty and damaged basement apartment he was placed with through a city-run program designed to get vulnerable people into safe housing. Due to poor living conditions he decided he would rather live on the streets. For more on this story visit the Toronto Star: http://bit.ly/2o08qIo. Or read and excerpt of Emily Mathieu's article below: Why this man would rather be homeless than live in ‘appalling’ apartment James Ribble is one of thousands of people who struggle to find a place to live. In downtown Toronto, behind a public library there is a small park where James Ribble would sometimes go to sleep. Last summer, he spent many nights on the grass, his backpack clutched to his chest. When it rained he would lie on cardboard on an elevated grate so water wouldn’t collect beneath him. On it, someone had written in black marker: “I am high. I am low. I am cold with nowhere to go.” A few months later, Ribble, 52, did have somewhere to go: a publicly subsidized basement apartment on Coxwell Ave. that cost $950 a month and which he tried to make his home. He found the place through a city-run program designed to get vulnerable people into housing. For four months, Ribble lived in the damp, dirty, graffiti-covered basement punctured with cracks and holes, many sloppily patched with crumbling spray foam. “I left that place to be homeless again,” he says. For more visit thestar.com
