The OWN Co-op – the place that Bea Levis calls home and a model of inner city affordable housing – owes its existence partly to good timing.
“It was the last housing project to be built before the Harris government cancelled Ontario’s affordable housing funding,” says Erin Harris, a retired nurse who volunteers with the Older Women’s Network, the non-profit advocacy group that was behind the novel housing initiative. “The shovel was in the ground, so we got in under the wire.”
Erin Harris, Older Women's Network - Photo: Goh Iromoto - Copyright: NFB
Completed in 1997, the OWN Housing Coop, located near the St. Lawrence Market in downtown Toronto, is home to a mixed-income population of 167 – mostly midlife or older women and men, along with some families and young people. Reflecting a commitment to affordable housing, about 75% of residents benefit from subsidized rent, with the remaining occupants paying market rates. It now operates separately from the Network, and is governed under the Co-operative Corporations Act.
The Older Women’s Network itself predates the co-op, founded in 1986 by a forward-looking group of Toronto women that included such noted activists as June Callwood and Doris Anderson. “Our mission is to achieve a society where older women can live in security and dignity – where they can age in place of choice and participate in decisions affecting their lives” says Erin, who points to poverty as the key problem facing older Canadians. “The standard Canada pension does not provide enough to live on. If that’s all you’ve got, then you’re living under the poverty line.”
In recent years OWN has focussed its lobbying efforts on the fight for affordable housing and adequate pensions, and Bea Levis, a retired high school teacher who’s been living at the co-op for three years, remains actively involved in this struggle. In addition to her co-op duties, Bea’s a founding member of the Ontario Coalition of Senior Citizens’ Organizations; the current vice-chair of Care Watch, an agency promoting home care; and is active on the Aging at Home Steering Committee with Toronto’s Local Health Integration Network.
“I have great respect for a woman like Bea,” says Erin. “She is the embodiment of feminism – of being able to take social justice to social action, of having a plan of how she wants to age, and actually orchestrating and living it. She’s a role model for women as they age.”
Philip Lewis, writer-researcher
NB: Thanks to Eleanor Batchelder for corrections
©2009 Le blogue PIB / The GDP blog
1 response so far ↓
1 Eleanor Batchelder // Aug 26, 2010 at 4:27 pm
And it’s Ontario Coalition of Senior Citizens’ Organizations, and Care Watch (according to the websites you cite).
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