4 faces of homelessness: Kyle falling through the cracks

Kyle Puittinen took his first drink at age 12 and said it was all downhill from there.

Heavy drinking was such a part of the sports culture in which he participated in his hometown of Nipigon, Ont., that he said he didn't realize he was doing anything wrong until he started getting busted for impaired driving.

Once he'd been to jail, Puittinen said people close to him started giving him their leftover opioids to sell on the street for a bit of extra cash; before long, he was hooked on his own product.

Now he's undergoing methadone treatment in Thunder Bay.

"I have a 13-year-old daughter turned 14, it's just time to shape up," he said. "I have to set the bar and be a father and those types of things, because I haven't been at the plate as a father for a long while."

Puittinen is a member of the Red Rock Indian Band's Lake Helen Reserve, east of Thunder Bay, so the federal government's health benefits for Indigenous people paid for his accommodation in the city, he said.

But those benefits run out after six months.

According to Indigenous Services Canada, the six-month period allows people time to become stable on treatment in order to take "carries," or quantities of the treatment home with them.

Struggling to stay clean in the homeless shelter

But Puittinen can't go home, he said, because he fears being lured back into the drug culture.

Puittinen, who is on the Ontario Disability Support Program, applied for social housing early in the year, he said, but when he first spoke to CBC, he hadn't had any news.

So, he is living at Shelter House, where he said he's struggling to stay clean.

"I'll see people come to the window at the front," he said. "When I overhear them ask for needle kits, right then and there I know they have drugs so the blood starts to boil almost like a Siamese cat in a window looking at a bird outside."

Puittinen lives with both addictions and mental health issues.

As such, he might be a candidate for the district's high-needs homeless wait list or its Home for Good program, initiatives that fast-track homeless people with complex needs into housing.

But asked if he had been surveyed about his needs enrolment is based on one's score on surveys such asthe Vulnerability Index Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool, or VI-SPDAT, and the more thorough SPDAT Puittinen answered no.

"I go [to the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board office] quite often to ask to see how things are going, but you get no answers," he said. "They just more or less say 'the Shelter House is there for you.'"

"They didn't ask any questions at all."

Situations like Puittinen's are the reason social service agencies need to do a better job of working together, said Michelle Jordan, the executive director of Shelter House.

Thunder Bay has many helpful services right now, Jordan said, but people are still falling through the cracks because they don't know about them.

"Sometimes people look for services and the agency isn't able to help them, but rather than send them to where they can get the help they need, they may just be like, 'oh sorry, we're not able to help you with that,'" she said.

"Then they move on to somewhere else or they get discouraged because they're sent to so many different places and if you have a mental health issue and addiction, it's hard enough to get yourself going daily."

Shelter House is one of approximately 50 local organizations that takepart in the housing and homelessness community advisory committee.

That group is in the process of striking a roundtable to develop a system of coordinated access to housing in the city.

With that in place, someone like Puittinen could go to any of a number of agencies and get connected to all of the housing and support services he needs regardless of who ends up providing them.

But there's no timeline yet for when that will happen, said Bonnie Krysowaty, a social researcher with the Lakehead Social Planning Council.

"It requires time and energy from people who work at organizations," she said. "How many hours in a day do people have to actually put toward those kinds of things? So I mean, are we adding things on to the sides of people's desks?"

Puittinen told CBC he was thinking of going to jail to get coordinated access to services.

"Sometimes in jail you sit there, and you think, and you ponder, and then when you come out they'll steer you in the right direction," he said. "People will come and see you and say, 'OK, we'll set you up here. We'll help you out there.'"

"They have so much people that come into the jail people from Alpha Court, John Howard Society, social services and they arrange everything for your discharge date."

"But I don't want to go to jail for that," Puittinen added. "I want to be able to know that I can make it from the street and not have to utilize the system."

CBCasked KenRanta, thedirector of housing services for the Thunder Bay District Social Services Administration Board,whyPuittinendidn't appear to have been identified as apossible candidate for its high-needs housing programs.

Rantapledged to look into his case and, whenCBCnext spoke withPuittinen,counselors from the Home for Good program were helping him find a home.