A night searching for Ottawa's hardest-to-reach homeless

Night has fallen over the woods by Hurdman station, and Mikyla Tacilauskas and Jade Fowler are lost.

They're searching for the people who sleep in the clearings. They've been here often as part of their outreach work with the Salvation Army.

The forest is so big and dense it can take hours to search. They've divided it into quadrants — "bite-sized chunks" — with digital pins marking the spots where people have pitched their tents.

But this is the first time they've been here in the dark. It feels different. Tacilauskas calls it "a little spooky."

"Every other time we've gone, it's been during the day, so we might find people we've never engaged with before," she says.

Their mission is to count every person sleeping outside in Ottawa, as part of a one-day survey of the city's homeless population on Oct. 23. Tacilauskas figures there are at least 300.

The two outreach workers turn back to the main path and check the map on their phone screens. Then they head back into the thick brush, until a wall of branches and coloured tarps comes into view.

"This is one of the most unique encampments I have seen in a very long time," says Tacilauskas.

Julie Voltolina lives here. The outreach team calls out her name before crossing the barrier.

"We don't pass this area unless we get permission to do so," Tacilauskas says. "You wouldn't enter someone's home without knocking first."

Voltolina takes some time to sweep up. Then she agrees to a tour of the space she calls "a sanctuary" and "Camp Nirvana." She's alone tonight, but sometimes welcomes others to stay.

"That's my guest tent. I have a friend I just took in," she explains. "Everything's lined with duvets so you don't get cold at night. It keeps you warm and then it's tarped, so we could have a full-out rain storm — you're not getting rained on."

There's a kitchen tent, a bedroom tent and a fire pit. It's almost Halloween, and Voltolina has put up decorations. The front door has a "Welcome Home" mat. She's been here, off and on, for six months.

"It's comfortable. It's homey," she says. "It doesn't feel like you're homeless. I like it here. No one bothers me."

Still, Voltolina wants to find somewhere stable to live, ideally a house, like she used to have before her life took a nosedive about three years ago. The outreach team has helped her get on the social housing registry and connected her with a housing-based case management team.

As she waits, Voltolina has no interest in checking into an emergency shelter.

"I've never been to a shelter," she later tells CBC. "They're extremely dangerous. They're not safe for women."

She prefers the open air and peace of these woods — on the LRT line right in the middle of the city, but so quiet "you can hear a pin drop." 

"Even when I get an apartment I'm not taking this down," she says. "I'm keeping it as my cottage."

Lucy

With Voltolina counted, the outreach team leaves a case of bottled water and hits the road.

"We're going to an encampment on Montreal Road. It belongs to an individual named Lucy," Tacilauskas says. "This encampment is a bit different than Julie's in that it's not hidden at all."

Lucy Shoo's tent is right on the sidewalk, across from a pizza joint and a liquor store. Tacilauskas greets her. They're here to talk, and to ask her some questions.

"The survey has some very personal questions," Fowler warns her. She can stop answering at any time.

In the past 12 months, how long has she been homeless? About five months.

Has she slept in a homeless shelter? No, just the tent.

How old is she? Thirty-nine.

Where was she born? Iqaluit, but she's been in Ottawa for 18 years.

How old was she the first time she became homeless? She doesn't remember.

Any health conditions? Nope.

Substance use? Yup.

Tacilauskas says that survey is a vital part of the count. The needs of the homeless population are changing, she says, and service providers need data to make sure their services match the needs.

Shoo tells Fowler that she doesn't have enough income for housing. She says she got cut off from ODSP and stopped paying her rent. Then, one day, someone gave her a tent.

She says the cops and the city have tried to push her off this spot, but she keeps coming back.

"I love Montreal Road," she says.

She would never consider staying at a shelter.

"Nah, I don't need rules," she says.

Tacilauskas says Shoo feels safer outside.

"She likes the community, and she wants to be there because she's surrounded by the people that matter to her," she says.

Emadalden and Darlene

In 2018, the point-in-time survey reached 1,400 people. Most were staying in emergency shelters. Just three per cent were sleeping unsheltered outside. Far fewer, about 0.7 per cent, were sleeping in tents or vehicles.

Three years later, the unsheltered population had grown to about nine per cent of the total, while more than two per cent were living in encampments. About 0.5 per cent were staying in their cars.

This year, Tacilauskas is expecting those numbers to rise.

She sees signs that the number of people sleeping in cars is growing. They're some of the hardest people to find.

She pulls into a Walmart parking lot, looking for a grey Dodge Caravan. Her colleagues have already connected with the couple living inside. Tacilauskas and Fowler are heading back with supplies and support.

It takes time. The Caravan is now down the road, parked at a Tim Hortons. Emadalden Kassem opens the front door of the van and shows the space he's now living in.

"I sleep in the chair," he says. "I bring it back like this."

His wife, Darlene Skinner, sleeps in the other empty seat. The back is full of their belongings. Kassem says their subsidized apartment on Coboug Street was damaged in a fire in July, and they've been living in the van ever since. Tacilauskas says it's the fourth time in just a few weeks that she's heard a similar story.

"My life is destroyed," Kassem says. 

Ottawa Community Housing confirmed a single apartment on Cobourg Street was damaged by fire in July. A spokesperson told CBC that tenants have the right to return to damaged homes once repairs are completed, or can choose to terminate their lease and return to the subsidized housing priority waitlist.

Kassem says he and his wife won't book into a shelter because they don't want to be apart. Ottawa has no adult shelters for couples without children, and Skinner is afraid of being alone.

"I wouldn't like it because other girls would probably pick on me or try to steal my stuff or punch the crap out of me," she says.

Kassem says there are few private market apartments they can afford on their income: ODSP payments totalling less than $1,700 between them.

He came to Canada from Syria about 25 years ago. He says he's been homeless once before, but this time is worse.

"I have diabetes. My wife, she has lung disease, and it's very hard to live in a car because she has to use some oxygen. I have to use insulin," he says.

"It's a very, very bad situation. I don't know how to explain it to you. It's not easy, especially when you're sick and you need some medicine."

Kassem keeps the car running through the night for the heat, but he doesn't know what he will do as it gets colder. Skinner is afraid of what's coming.

"This winter's going to be awful cold," she says. "It really scares me because I don't know if my body's going to handle this coldness in the car."

The outreach team offers to do Skinner's taxes — a key step for unlocking government benefits — and to help her find the documents the couple will need to apply for subsidized housing.

The team has one more stop, behind a strip mall on St. Laurent Boulevard. When they arrive, there's no sign of the camp they're looking for, which belongs to a man named John and his dog Delilah.

All told, six Salvation Army teams found more than 125 people over the 24-hour point-in-time count. Tacilauskas calls it a "huge increase" from three years ago.

"However, it's not an accurate or a full representation of the amount of people sleeping outside right now," she says. "Undoubtedly, we missed at least 100 individuals."

Julie

CBC went back to Voltolina's camp two days after the point-in-time count.

Even in the daylight, it's hard to find. Along the path we think we took that night, there's a clearing strewn with belongings, a mattress and an empty fire pit. Is she gone? 

But deeper through the brush, that same wall of tarp and branches stands out from the forest. Voltolina is still there, and says she's in "renovation mode."

"I keep busy. I build walls. I tinker. I build things — like that thing right there is my sink," she said.

She points to a large children's toy with two basins. Water trickles down from one to the other as she pours it in.

Voltolina says she's building a stone oven around a barrel lying beside her firepit. She lights a fire and opens up her coolers, full of a recent haul from a dumpster outside Walmart.

"We got the meat there and all the dairy right here, the vegetables. We got all this out of a dumpster," she said. "Does it look like there's anything wrong with it? You know how much food they're actually throwing out? Tonnes."

Voltolina remembers how things were just a few years ago, when she was living in Cornwall and still had her kids. She had a house. She says life was "perfect" then.

"I had everything I wanted, everything I needed. I was in my forever home. My mom was a block away. I had two cars to drive. Kids were happy. I won in court against both dads," she said. "I had a great guy who loved my kids, who was raising them. I was happy."

It fell apart around 2021. As she tells it, there was a child custody dispute and she went to jail for public mischief. When she got out, she'd lost her house.

She spent a couple years cycling between unstable roommates and jail until she found this spot, her sanctuary by Hurdman station.

The fire is warm now. Bacon is sizzling on a grill. If she has to, Voltolina thinks she will be able to survive here through the cold.

"I'd rather not do the winter out here, but I am figuring out how I'm going to do it just in case," she said.

"I'm going to build something and turn it into an igloo. They do it in the wintertime in Alaska or the great territories. They live in an igloo. So why can't I build one here?"

Voltolina is angry. She watched someone overdose the other day. She wonders why there are people sleeping out on grates on Rideau Street when, in her view, it would be so easy to build them homes out of shipping containers or train cars.

She says she's been helping others, women she finds on Rideau Street, teaching them how to set up their own camps nearby. 

"I teach people how to live. There are two more camps like mine, hidden," she says. "You won't find them."