The journey from the 52 Division to the grounds of New City Hall was a long and unforgettable one.  It tested our patience and also our will to keep going in that cold February morning.  My husband took the lead, and he pulled that heavy wooden cart by the rope he had screwed on to it.  To help him along, I got behind the cart and tried to push it so that it would not move as slowly as it was, nor kept pulling to one side as it did.  We travelled past block after block, and each time we got tired or frustrated, we would stop and catch our breath until we felt strong enough to continue.  Our daughter was colder than we knew.  She did not have a thick pair of socks on her feet, and the boots that she had on were too tight for her feet.  Poor Mahogohney was slowly getting frost bitten.  Shaka was feeling cold, and that made us more determined to pull that cart faster towards our destination.  We pushed our way north on Spadina Avenue towards Queen Street.  However, when we turn the corner and headed east on Queen Street towards New City Hall, one of the front wheels on our wooden cart fell off. 
We suddenly were thrown into a crisis.  We were only about two blocks from our destination but there was no way that we were going to be able to pull that heavy cart with one of its wheels missing.  A short distance away was the front entrance of the television station at 299 Queen Street East, called City Television.  It was open, and also getting ready to go on air with its Breakfast Television Show.  We pulled up to the front door of that station, and my husband asked the door security staff if we could stand inside the front door just to warm up our cold bodies for a few minutes. At first that security guard did not want to allow us to even stand inside that front door, but after I spoke to him as a sister to a brother, he decided that we could.  I also revealed to him that one of the camera men had invited us to come down to the station, and that said he would try to get the producer of the morning show to have us as one of the guests on that show.  This was the camera man who had stopped by the police station while my family was waiting inside the lobby of that police station, and film us while we sat there I believe one of the people from that station called that camera to have him cover our story.  He suggested at the time that he would try to get our story on the air that morning, and also that we should stop by the station later on once we left here.  The security guard asked who that person was who had invited us to come by the station, and he also stated that this cameraman was going to be in trouble if he had in fact done so, without getting clearance from the producer of the show.
Anyway, we waited inside those warm doors, and thawed our cold bodies out a bit, while this security guard went to speak to the producer of the show about us wanting to be on it.  A short time later, this same producer came over, looked at us, and then disappeared back into the studio.  We did not get to go on that show that morning - we were not the kind of guest that they wanted on their show.  We were a homeless family who was stranded on the streets of Toronto, with a heavy wooden cart that had lost a wheel.   While we were there I asked if he was able to get us some help for us to fix our broken wheel. 
The next problem with had to deal with was trying to keep warm, while my husband and I decided where we would take cover on that cold property.  I was tired and cold and hungry, and so was the rest of my family members.  We had not eaten a warm meal since the previous day before we were evicted from our Dunmail address.   We were also drained and exhausted from not being able to get a good night sleep.  We had all been awake since we were arrested at 4 p.m. or so the previous evening, and it was now about 17 hours since then.  We parked our heavy buggy just inside the main doors of the entrance of the New City Hall, and opened up our two sturdy folding chairs, and I slept next to my daughter for as long as I could.  My husband allowed us to rest, and he and our son, found a telephone inside the building, which he could use. 
My family had reached our limit. We had no place to go that was warm; we could not stay out in that cold winter weather. All the places that my husband and I had checked on the grounds that morning were too open to provide my family with the shelter we needed from the cold.  After we spoke about our situation, as we sat inside that warm government building, each one of us agreed with the decision for us to seek shelter in an emergency shelter for homeless families.  While I slept next to my daughter, Andraggon took our son and he went and made a call to find us a place to stay somewhere in Toronto.  Our protest on the grounds of the building of the government of Toronto had come to a quiet and uneventful end.  It had lasted less than twenty-four hours. 
My husband made that call about ten o clock in the morning to the emergency shelter system in Toronto. While we were waiting in the lobby of the New City Hall, there were about six police officers hanging around a short distance away from us, waiting like a pack of wolves to pounce on my family and place us under arrest again.  My husband had to inform this gang of law enforcement gang that we were just waiting to be taken to a shelter, and that we did not plan to stay any longer inside their building that we needed to.  About one hour later, we were on our way to Scarborough to the emergency shelter for homeless families called Scarborough Family Residence on Kingston Road.  This was a shelter that housed about sixty or so homeless families on its site, and also had other homeless families who were sent to motels to live.  These families were ones who they did not have any room for at the time for them to live at Family Residence, or who did not wish to live at this residence.  My family fell in that last category: we had no intentions of staying at Family Residence, and we expected for them to send us to a motel to live even though we would still be clients of this shelter system.
When we finally walked into the office of Family Residence they were expecting us, and before we even informed them that we would not stay at Family Residence, the intake worker who dealt with us, revealed to us that we were going to be put up in a motel down the road.  The staff member who signed us into the system was very respectful and caring, and also a member of our African Canadian family.  His name was Dennis, and he made a good impression on me, and my husband, that morning that he processed my family as clients of Family Residence.  It was refreshing to be greeted in such a warm and thoughtful manner, especially after all the abuses my exhausted family had been put through since we were thrown out of our home approximately 48 hours earlier. 
I did not want to have my family end up back inside an emergency shelter system for homeless families.  We had been there twice before in the late 1987 for a few weeks in the family residence shelter downtown, and also for a month in the Lido Motel, just a few blocks from where we now were.  Now we were back inside it again, more than a decade later.  We did not belong here but this was where we were put by the Society that we lived in.  And this was where we were going to stay until the problems that I had been fighting all these years are finally addressed and dealt with.  This would be the third and the final time that I would allow my battered and bruised family to end up in any emergency shelter.  This was the place where this God would finally take her stance against all the wrongs that had been done to her family over the years.
The motel that we were sent to live in was called The Gateway Inn, which was a strange name for a motel.  It turned out to be right next door to the Lido Motel, where we had stayed for about a month over twelve years earlier. On Friday afternoon, on the 7th of February, my family moved into room 223 of the motel.  It was the first room near the entrance into the motel from the side entrance, and also the room that was closet to the street.  We were also right next to what turned out to be a Buddhist temple, which was on the other side of the fence next to the motel.
The room we were given to live in was unsanitary.  It was not made ready for anyone to live inside it, and we also found out that the room that we were originally supposed to move into was no longer available.  So as a last minute resort, we were placed in this one.  Room 223 was not painted as it should have been for new tenants, and the walls had holes in them that were made by the previous tenants who lived there.  The rug was old and stained with grime and other crap that had caked itself into it.  It also had a strong foul smell, which caused me to feel very ill, and each time I looked at it, I felt like throwing up.  The bathroom was small, and the bathtub looked old. This was not a good start for my family.  But I also knew that I could take steps to clean up this room just as I had done when we stayed at the Lido Motel years ago.  And I did.  I got my bleach and my new mop and soap and my new pair of thick gloves and I went to work for hours that afternoon scrubbing and cleaning and mopping and wiping the bathroom, and also the kitchen counter, cupboards, and all the walls.  For the filthy rug that covered most of the floor in the motel room, I borrowed the motel’s vacuum cleaner, and I vacuum that rug as much as I could to try to get as much of the dirt out as I could.  When I was finished, I covered that disgusting looking rug with pieces of mats that we had bought in a retail store. That was the only way that I was going to allow my family to walk on that rug.  We did not have to look at it nor did we have to walk on it.  And that was just fine with me.
But I paid a price for the job I did to get that room clean and sanitary that afternoon.  After I was finished I went and took a long shower to clean myself of all the germs and bacteria that I must have collected from the work I just did. After I had finished my shower, I started to feel some pain in my rectum.  It did not feel like the kind of pain that one gets from being constipated or from having a runny stomach. I did not know what it was, but what I started to discover, was that it was a pain that kept getting worse and worse.  The following day, it dawn on me that I had picked up a virus of some sort that had managed to enter my rectum, while I was cleaning this germ filled motel room.  It was like I was back in that motel room just next door in the summer of 1990, The Lido Motel, and I had gotten a virus that had also entered my rectum, that day I had lost a large pitcher of my blood as I poured from my rectum into that toilet bowl.  This time the feeling was similar, with this new virus, except I felt like there was a lump growing inside my rectum, and that it was causing me more and more pain. 
Well, this time I went on the attack.  I got some Dettol, which is a strong liquid product that is used by people from my West Indian culture to disinfect all kinds of germs that gets on or inside the human body.  I went inside that bathtub and I used the hot water at as strong a temperature that my body could take it, with that Dettol, and I flushed my rectum out for as long as I could take the pain of the hot water.  A few minutes later, this mixture of blood fell out of my rectum and inside the bowl of the toilet.  I called my husband and showed him what had just came out of my body, and he could not believe what he saw.  I don’t know what it was about motel rooms and me.  All I did was to clean and disinfect them, and in return the thanks I received from that room was a virus that attacked my rectum. It just did not seem fair.  But that was the price that I paid, and which I will continue to pay, if I have to, for making sure that the place that my family stayed in was always clean and sanitary.
We stayed in that room for a few months.  That was long enough for us.  Finally, the motel manager provided us with another room to move into. It was an easy move for us to make because it was right next to room 222.  This time the room we moved into was much cleaner and the rug was just put in recently.  Apparently, it was a room that was to be used for a family who had a baby, and the rug had to be clean enough for a baby to live in that room.  We were happy to move, and we made the move in about half a day.  The only problem with that room was the bathroom.  It was too small, and water kept leaking from the side of the tub.  The ceiling inside that bathroom was also soaked with water, and the putty was starting to fall off the dry wall that was there.  For a number of weeks my husband tried to convince the maintenance worker for the motel that water was leaking regularly from under that bathtub.
The maintenance worker was a man who was in the wrong line of work.  His name was Mohammed, and he proclaimed himself to be a devout Muslim, who prayed five times a day.  But as a worker he was incompetent, and as a person he was sleazy and someone I did not trust around me, or my daughter.  That man kept arguing with my husband trying to convince him that he was a maintenance staff, and because of that fact, my husband should accept whatever he said about the problems we were pointing out to him.  At first he did not believe that there was a leak coming from under the toilet bowl, then once he finally realize that it was the problem, he then started complaining about how difficult it was to fix that problem.  My husband decided to help him the day that he came to take out the toilet bowl to test it to find out where the leak was, and Andraggon worked with him for an entire day until they were finally able to remove that toilet bowl.  After he tested it, and changed the screws, as well as put in new tubes, he put it back with the help of my husband.  It took two people to do that job, and that was the reason why my helpful husband decided to give him a hand that day.
But the problem was not solved.  The leak returned.  The ceiling above the toilet was now leaking in three different places.  Apparently, the tenants upstairs had forgot to turn off the water and it had poured down  onto the floor.  My family was now living in a motel room where we were not able to use the toilet, because of the three leaks that was dripping from the ceiling.  We actually had to take a large bowl when we went to use the toilet, and put it over our heads while we sat on the toilet bowl, so that the water would not drip on our bodies while we used that toilet.  This went on for about a week.  It was time for us to find another room, and soon.  We also had a problem of trying to take a shower, and having the water suddenly becoming hot or cold without any warning.  I remember screaming out a few times in pain after I had gotten scorched or chilled from the water as it became hot or cold while I was taking a shower.  I even heard my daughter screaming out in the bathroom at least twice while she was taking a shower because of this same problem.  My husband admitted that there was a problem with the water temperature changing sharply and suddenly to hot or cold.  But his manly way of dealing with this problem was to jump back quickly, and push the bottom knob in the bathtub suddenly, to push the water from the shower back down to the tap. And he had done so at least three times since we moved into room 222.
We had to move.  But we did not do so until the staff from Family Residence had come and checked the room for themselves to see the problems that we were dealing with. The people who came were a European woman and an African Canadian man.  I was very upset at the time that they came to see us.  There were a lot of problems with the manner in which this motel management was treating my family, and especially with the manner in which some of the staff at Family Residence had treated, or rather mistreated my family.  When we went to live in a motel, I knew that my family was going to living in a place that was not designed for families to stay in for more than a week or so. Motels are not designed for families to live in.  They are places for individuals, or families, to stay in while they were on their way to wherever they were going, especially for people who were on vocation and making the trip with their own vehicle.
Motels also developed a reputation for being a place where a guy would take his girlfriend to sleep with for the night, or get together with his buddies to have a stag party, or someone other party, where they can spend the night drinking and talking dirty and watching porno movies.  It also developed a reputation for being a whorehouse for prostitutes to bring their tricks that they picked up while walking the streets, especially if that john was willing to pay the cost for the motel room for the night.  The last place that families belonged in were motels, and the families who were the last people to be living in a motel room were families in crisis, who had no home of their own anymore, and whose life was now turned upside down.  Life in a motel does not help homeless families to cope with the stress of being without a home of their own.  A motel room is just too small and crowded and cramped and dirty for any family to live there for any period of time.  Each room is the size of a small living room, and inside that room there are two double beds, and also a roll up bed if there are four our more people staying in that room. There is no room to move around in that cramped space.  And if you are a child, it is even harder to adjust to life inside a small room where your entire family had to move about in that small space.  Some motel rooms, like some of the ones, at the Lido Motel do not even have a kitchen area where you can cook on a hot plate or even use a microwave.
Motels are some of the most depressing places for any family in crisis to have to live in.  Not only do homeless families have to cope with living in one small stuff room, but they also have to deal with additional stress created by the shelter system itself.  These homeless families who are already stressed out and frustrated and worried about their future, are forced to live like prisoners in these motels by many of the degrading and disrespectful policies being used by the emergency shelter system that is run by Family Residence. 
It did not take my husband and I long before we encountered some of these depressing procedures and policies. One day while we were living in room 223, the first room we stayed in, there was a loud knock on our door.  It sounded like it was the police by the force and authority with which that person knock on our door.  None of us knew who it was.  We had not invited any guest over, nor did we have any appointment to see any one from Family Residence, or anyone else, in our home that day.  So we did not answer the door.  The person knocked again even louder this time, and then a voice behind the door stated very authoritatively that: “We are from Family Residence, and we are doing random room checks !” 
My husband and I looked at each other, and wondered why these people would come banging loudly on our door like they were the police or something, at 10 a.m. in the morning to check our room.  No one from the shelter staff had called us or even sent us a note that they were going to drop in on us.  Yet hear they were pounding on our door, and expecting us to open it and speak to them, and let them just walk in on us so that they can check our room.  Both my husband and I were wondering why these people would decide to intrude on our privacy in the aggressive manner that they were now doing.
There was nothing wrong with our room for them to just drop in to check it.  And if there was we would have let them know, just as we had done when we had different problems in that room that needed fixing.  We were not criminals, who were selling illegal drugs from inside our room, for them to want to drop in on us without any notice to catch us with those drugs before we were able to hide it away safely.  We were not a family who was running any kind of illegal operation from inside that motel room, such as selling hot items that some of our criminal friends would have stolen and have us stashed in that room for them.  We were not a family who was using that motel room as a whorehouse for tricks that we would sneak inside that room during the night when our children were sleeping. We were just a homeless family staying inside a motel room that Family Residence was paying for us to live in.  There was no reason for us to be harassed in such a manner as we were now being done to, by some of those same workers from this emergency shelter.
“Just a minute,” my husband shouted back from inside the motel room. I was not happy with what was taking place.  My family was not ready to receive any guest, especially ones that were uninvited.  My husband and I were both sleeping when that loud banging on our door woke us out of our sleep.  Unlike other homeless families staying in this motel, both he and I were up every night working through the night on my autobiography.  He did the typing and I did the dictating, and also provided the information that he needed to finish each issue in my life that I was including in the story of my life.  We worked from about eight p.m. through until about 6 or 8 a.m. the next day, even on weekends.  So by the time morning arrived we were both exhausted and ready for a full day’s rest.  The staff member that we were working with, a lady named Pat, knew this fact, and the people who came banging on our door at 10 in the morning should have also known this.  Actually, I knew that they did, as I am able to know anything that I need to know about anything concerning my life, or people interfering or intruding in my life or my family’s life. But most of the time I do not say a word to anyone about this – until I needed for them to know something in particular.
A few minutes passed, and I quickly got dressed, and quickly straightened up a few things inside that cramped motel room.  The last thing I wanted was to have anyone come into our motel room and see any kind of mess, even a small one, because the first person that they always look at, or point the finger at is the housewife – not the husband. I always made sure that my family kept the motel room that we lived in clean and tidy throughout the day; and also before we turn in at night, so that if someone just happened to drop by, the room would only need a few things straightened out, like the beds being made properly, and clothes hanging on the back of chairs, or shoes lying in the middle of the floor, would be picked up quickly and put away neatly in a corner of the room.  My mother taught me the importance of always making sure that I kept my body clean, and wore clean undergarment at all times in case I had to be taken suddenly to the hospital; and she also taught me to do the same thing to the home I lived in just in case some unexpected guest dropped in on us.  And people did when I was growing up, but they always found that my mother’s house was clean and tidy every time.
Finally, my husband unlocked and opened our front door.  Two people stood there, expecting us to let them into our room. One was a Caucasian man, and the other was a woman of the same race as he was.  “Why didn’t you call at let us know that we were coming by to see us” was the first thing that I said to these two workers.  The manner in which they reacted told me that I had asked a question of them that they felt that I had no right to asked. The male worker then informed me that they were doing “random checks” of different rooms of families from Family Residence who were staying in this motel.  And that this was a policy this shelter have been using since it started its operation in Scarborough over a decade ago.  He went on to add that the rooms that they were checking were chosen at random, by the staff each day that they came around to do those checks.
We allowed them to come into our room, and do their random check.  We showed them the different problems that needed repairing, or that were in the process of being repair.  But this was information we had already given to our caseworker Pat, and one that they would have been given already, or should have taken the time to get from Pat. There was no need for them to drop in on us to check problems in our room that they should have already been informed about.  They should have taken the time to get that information, so that they would not have any need to pound on our door, and force us to let them inside so that they can check the same problems that one of their co-workers should have already inform them about.  Those were some of the things that I told those two social workers that morning when they dropped in on us, and expected us to allow them to just walk in on us and check our room.  I also informed them that what they were doing was a violation of my family’s rights to not be intruded upon, and have our privacy invaded by their policy of doing their “random checks.”  And that I was going to speak to someone in charge of this shelter, about the unfairness of such an intrusive and disrespectful policy.
Those two social workers were not happy when they walked out of our room about fifteen minutes later. They got a reception that they were not ready for.  They had ran into a homeless family that was headed by a woman who was an activist, and who was someone who was not happy with their room check policy one bit.  They knew the kind of family that we were, when they decided to come by and flex their muscles to test our patience and to see the kind of fighters that we really were.  They knew that we were a family who had just been released from jail, for setting up a tent on the grounds of the government of Toronto, because we had refused to take down that tent home as we were told to do by officers from 52 Division.  But we were a homeless family who was now forced to live in an emergency shelter for homeless families, in a motel room.  They were not doing any “random checks” of room 223.  These two social workers had intentionally decided, or were instructed to drop by our room that morning just to let us know that they could do that anytime they choose.  They also wanted to send a strong message to my family, especially to me, that we were now living in a shelter system that had rules and regulations that also applied to us.  And that if we decided to knock heads with that system, that the staff would make sure that my family would be put in our place, and forced to go along with the policies and procedures that Family Residence insisted that all families in their care followed.
For the second time in our life my family ended up living in a shelter for homeless families.  But I was not going to allow my battered and persecuted family to be mistreated anymore by anyone – including anyone working or living in this shelter, or in this motel.  My family was a challenge that Family Residence Shelter had not encountered before in all its fifteen or so years of operation in Scarborough.  Andraggon and I were the first husband and wife team of activists that they had ever had to deal with.  At the same time, my husband and I were the first husband and wife team that they had seen inside that shelter, where both spouses behaved and spoke and conducted themselves like we were twins or close friends.  We protected each other, and we stuck together, as a couple; and that was something that they were not use to seeing in any of the relationships between any of the husband and wife of the homeless families, who had come and gone from their emergency shelter system.  Then there was the issue of my identify myself as a God, and a God who was working to bring all beings together, and fighting every system of control and everyone who kept telling me that I could not do it; or who kept trying to find different ways to harass or harm me to try to keep me from moving forward and getting my work done. 
This emergency shelter system, and its body of social workers, did not know what to do with a family like my own, or even how to cope with - or rather, to contain a force such as myself.  But they were going to use all their resources to try to force me to behave myself, or even to conform to their rules and regulations while my family lived in their shelter system.  At the same time, they were going to discover that this was one woman: that I was one God, who these social workers could not control, and also could not keep from bringing their attention to the different problems that were built into their policies and procedures.  While my family was a client of Family Residence, I was going to fight any problems in that system that I saw harming us in anyway, not just to make life easier for us while we are here, but especially to make sure that all the other families now in the system, and also those who would be in the future – would be able to be treated with the dignity and the respect and the humanity that they each deserve by everyone of the people working in that emergency shelter system.
That was what my life as mother and a wife and an activist was all about. That was what I have been doing since I was a little girl: I was never someone to cause any problem to anyone for any reason.  But I was always someone who saw problems that others were creating or causing to others, and I had become a woman who was a human radar who found any problem that showed its ugly head, and when I did I would follow and confront that problem. That is why my family calls me a “problem finder” who was always ready to spring into action and become a problem solver once I run into that problem – whatever it is or wherever it was coming from.
The policy of random room checking, was one of the first issue that I brought up with our worker, Pat, and the supervisor whom we first were working with.  It was a policy which treated families staying in those motel rooms as if they were criminals or people who were doing something wrong, and the social workers were trying to catch them in the act of doing so by dropping in without any notice on them.  Families living in this emergency shelter system were already stripped of most of their self-esteem, and were already feeling like they were failures and losers in Society.  The last thing that these people living in crisis in this shelter system needed was for any of the social workers to police them, like they were unfit parents, or shady families who were up to no good.  The policy of random checks of their rooms intruded on their personal privacy; and reminded them of how powerless and helpless they were at the mercy of the same people, who were hired to help them to keep their dignity and their self-respect while they lived as families without a home or often without a job to help provide for their families.
It was an easy problem to fix, and all it took was a phone call to that family, or even a note placed under their door, to let them know that they were coming by to check their rooms.  Just because a family was homeless, and had to live in an emergency shelter for homeless families, does not mean that they should have their humanity also stripped from them by anyone – especially by the social workers who are supposed to be people who went to school, to get a good education to teach them how to treat these people with dignity and with respect.  A phone call takes only a minute or so, and a note could be left under each family’s door with just a short drive to that motel. Family Residence had no problems dropping off flyers under the doors of families living in this motel, on a regular basis, to inform them about upcoming meetings or playroom activities, for children that were being held in the basement of this motel.  Yet they saw a problem with picking up the phone and informing families living in the motels that they were coming by on a certain day to do room checks.  Even if they were going to make them random room checks, at least all the families living in that motel would be inform and aware that their room might be one of the ones that will be checked on that day or during that week.  This way, these already stressed out families will not have to deal with the added stress of having someone pounding on their door at any time during the day, to demand that they be allowed to come in right then to “check their rooms.”
This random check policy was one that my family had a natural dislike for. This was the biggest concern that we had with every place that we had lived in our years, and it was also the main reason why we fought with just about every landlord we ever had.  We refused to allow anyone to just drop by our home and just push their way inside, saying that they were doing maintenance check, or that they needed to find out if we were taking care of our apartment, or townhouse, or bungalow, in the manner that they expected us to.  That was an invasion of our privacy, and also a violation of our rights as a family to decide when and if other people can enter our home.  That was one of the main reasons we left 22 Driftwood Avenue; it was one of the reasons why we had problems with our landlord at 17 and 19 Murray Road, and also the one at 94 Danforth Avenue.  It was also part of the reason why our relationship with our landlady at 48 Dunmail Drive was strained over the years.  Those landlords came to find out that just because they owned the house or the apartment that we lived in, that it did not give them the right to enter our home at anytime they decided that they wanted to.
For most of the ten months or so that we have lived in this motel I have fought with shelter staff for them to stop using that random policy with my family.  Since the first time that they did that when we lived in room 223, they have done so on three other occasions.  Each time that they did so, I spoke out and spoke up louder and stronger than before.  Each of these other times that they dropped in to check our room, they did so after I had just had a meeting the previous day with Pat, and her supervisor, Sherry.  And they did so in order to show me, that they were not happy with the way in which I criticized them for different kinds of things that some of them were doing, or saying, to try to harm me or upset my family.  They no longer do random room checks of my family’s room, nor do they drop by to do any facility checks.  This is supposed to be a check that is done about four times a year of each room that every homeless family is living inside, in one of the motels that is being used by this shelter system to house them.
Family Residence decided to exempt my family from any more room checks - random or otherwise.  Now, they know that if anyone from there staff, or anyone else knocks on our door, that we will not even bother to answer it, much less to open it.  They know now that they will have to call, and arrange for a time that is suitable for us for them to come by and check our room, or even to speak to us.  I accept the exemption that they have made for my family from this policy.  But I am still disappointed, and saddened, to know that all the other families are still subjected to this random or facility room check policy  - where they are not given any warning or notice by the social workers who drop in on them any time and any day that they see it fit to do so.  I still remember what one of these social workers stated to me the last time that they dropped in to check our room: “We have been doing these random room checks for many years now, and we never call anyone to let them know that we were coming.”  I also recall the social worker who told me, that they did not have the time to pick up the phone, and call each family in the motel to let them know that they were going to drop by and do room checks.
For this worker, it would take too much time to have the decency to pick up the phone, and let the dozen or so families inside that motel know that someone from Family Residence was going to stop by on a certain day to check their room.  She did not have any excuse for why they could not just print their usual flyers, and have someone come around and pushed them under the door of each family, a week or so before they came by to do their room checks.  The problem with social workers dropping in on families, without given us any previous notice that they were going to do so, was just one of the issues that I have been fighting to have addressed by this shelter’s management. This shelter system is full of red tapes, and a body of social workers who use those red tapes to tie up the lives of the homeless families who are forced to take shelter in their residence. 
Another problem that I ended up fighting with them about was the issue of having a policy where everyone who had to get tickets had to give their name, as well as their birth date, each time they went to the main desk in that office to get those tickets.  Family Residence is a three-storey building which houses over fifty families, and which always has staff on duty 24 hours a day.  There are a number of offices in that building, which are used by the different social workers who work there, and they are all together in a certain part of the building.  Our worker Pat, for example, has her office in that building as well as another office that she has in a bungalow near the Lido Motel that she refers to as the house.  At any given time of the day, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., there are at least a dozen or so workers on duty in that office portion of that building.  That was another reason why my family would never stay in that building.  Too many workers!  And they would be just too close to where we lived for our own comfort and peace of mind, as well as the fact that there would also be too many families living in that building with us.  Living in this shelter system is like living in a government building with a lot of workers working there throughout the day, and also at night.  And then on top of that, having to deal with all those other homeless families with their baggages of personal problems living there with us also.
I do not like having to go to that building for any reason, and I made that fact known to our worker, and her supervisor, a number of times.  However, because of different reasons, my husband and I had to end up going to that building for meetings with our worker, and her supervisor, as well as others who were invited to take part in those meetings.  We also had to go there to get six bus tickets every week, for appointments.  This was something that was arranged by Pat’s supervisor, a woman named Sherry, in order to help us to keep from starving each week, on the meagre weekly money that we received through social services for us to buy food, and whatever else we needed that week.  The problem with the policy for getting bus tickets was that it was a policy that was being used to degrade women especially, by forcing us to give our names as well as our birthday each time that we go to pick up bus tickets, from one of the social workers working behind the main desk in the main office area. 
There was no reason for anyone to have to keep giving their birth date every time they signed a book to get some bus tickets.  The same worker who asked a residence of the shelter for their birth date can easily step back, and get that information from inside one of the computers right behind them in the office.  They did not need to ask me or my husband what our birth date was, as we stood in front of that counter, so that we have to call it out for them to hear; as well as for other people waiting beside us, or other workers nearby in that office, to know that I or my husband was born on a certain day on a certain month in a certain year.  If they really needed to have the residence state what their date of birth was each time they came by to get bus tickets, they could easily put that book that they filled out themselves, in front of that residence, and have them fill in the dates of their own birthday.  In this way, that homeless residence would not have to deal with the embarrassment, or even the humiliation, of having to announce how old they were - by stating what their birth date was.
This would also meet the requirement for that social worker, of making sure that they had recorded the correct birth date of that person who was given those bus tickets in their logbook.  If that social worker was concerned about making sure that the information was put so that others could read the birth date clearly, all that worker had to do was to ask that residence to print the information as neatly as they could. Now, if that resident did not feel that they are able to print that information properly in that log book, for whatever reason, then that person could then ask that social worker to record that information in that log book for them.  But the way that this policy works right now, the social worker is the one who makes the decision to print that information in that log book for that resident, and also makes the decision to ask that person their date of birth in the presence of others, and have that homeless individual having no choice but to state out loud what their birth date is.  Forcing people who are already feeling stripped off their humanity to announce how old they are while standing behind the counter of any desk, and waiting to get some bus tickets that they need to travel somewhere, is wrong.  There is no reason for that person to be degraded, and to be disrespected even more than they already are, by having to end up living with their family in this emergency shelter for homeless families.  If that information is really needed by that social worker to meet some government procedure, then it can be gotten from that human being waiting to get a few bus tickets, in a way that allowed that man or woman to keep their dignity and their self-respect.
I refused to give my birth date the first time that Andraggon and I went to pick up those six bus tickets.  So my husband decided to give his birth date instead.  He did not want to challenge that policy, and he felt that if it was something that was required by the government of Toronto that he would just give them the information.  However, he decided that he was going to write it down on a piece of paper, so that he would not have to announce how old he was to the person writing down that information, or to the other people who are always in that office working.  My Andraggon was undermining me again, as he had always done whenever he decided that he did not want to support the stance that I was taking: either because he did not understand what I was doing, or because he thought that I was too drastic in the stance I was taking.  He was too blind to realize, and too full of his manly ego to admit that what he was doing was just going along with that disrespectful policy.  He thought that by giving the information about his birth date in a different way, would keep him from having to announce his birth date as other people were asked to do who picked up bus tickets.  Well, he was wrong, and the third time that we went to get those six tickets, when he handed that piece of paper to the worker giving him the bus tickets, that worker surprised him by stating out loud: “Oh! you were born in August of 195*#%, the same year I was born in, except you are a few months younger than me!”
My husband did not know what to say.  He was not embarrassed to have anyone know when his birth date was, or even how old he was.  But he did not want that worker to announce that information to others who were in that office, that usually had at least three people working there during the day. He ended up laughing with this worker about the year of his birth being a good year, and about other issues surrounding that year.  However, he was not happy to have had that worker announce his age without his consent, or the knowledge that this worker was going to do so.  I fought with Pat’s supervisor, Sherry, for her to finally make the decision that we did not have to give our birth date whenever we went to pick up our bus tickets each week.  Yet, even after a few months after she had informed me that none of the workers were going to ask me or my husband for our birth date - most of the weeks since then that we have gone to get those tickets, the worker who gave it to us had a habit of still asking my husband to give his birth date. And each time that worker had done so, I have had to point out to him or her that Sherry had given her authorization for us to not have to give that information in order for us to get those bus tickets.
In fact, I have had to ask Sherry in at least two different meetings with her, to remind those workers not to keep asking us for our birth dates.  At present, none of them have asked us for that information during the last few weeks we have gone to pick up those tickets.  Again, I had managed to get my family exempted from having to follow that procedure in the manner that other families still have to. It is a small victory, and a personal one for my family.  But that policy still remains in place, and it saddens me to know that all the other families have to be subjected to that form of abuse of their dignity and their humanity.