Author: Emily Anne Opala, MSc PMP | Editors: Romina Garcia de leon, Janielle Richards (blog coordinators) Reviewer: Eden Hoffer
Published: September 19th, 2025
Note that this blog discusses difficult subject matter such as gender-based violence, homelessness and death.
* Names and details been changed to protect personal identity
On the author: From 2018 to 2021, Emily Anne Opala was a counsellor and case manager for a Supportive Housing program in Toronto. The following story is an account of an individual that she encountered during this time. Although experiences in Supportive Housing programs may vary, this is far too often a common experience.
It was a few months into 2019 and Nora* was living a real-life horror. The situation started hopefully: after over 10 years spent living on the streets of Toronto, Nora’s name finally came up on the Supportive Housing waitlist and she was provided her own studio apartment. The apartment was small but it was hers, and she was so proud to have a home.
The Horror Begins
While Nora was thrilled, the program required her to live alone and loneliness soon overcame her. She eventually invited her partner to secretly move in with her. Unfortunately, things started to unravel from there. First, a few of her partner’s friends started to come over uninvited. Then they started staying for days longer than anticipated. Before she knew it, Nora was no longer in control of her home. Her apartment had become a hub for dealing substances, and Nora herself was coerced into sex work. She would later go on to describe the situation as the darkness of hell.
Housing Unit Takeovers
What Nora experienced is not uncommon in the world of Supportive Housing. It’s known as a Housing Unit Takeover (HUT), a situation where a tenant is manipulated by people who have moved into their home. At first, it may not be clear to the tenant what is happening, or how it could escalate. Perpetrators can take advantage of tenants’ vulnerabilities, and often threaten the tenant physically, financially, and psychologically, keeping those in need of housing in an unhealthy and seemingly inescapable situation. Often, these situations involve substances, guns, and/or human trafficking. While the phenomenon of HUTs is not widely understood outside of the field of social work, it is in fact quite common.
A 2017 study called Safe At Home, which looked at HUT prevalence in Toronto’s Supportive Housing programs, found that 58% of residents had experienced a HUT, and 20% reported they were currently experiencing one. The researchers also interviewed other stakeholders, such as case managers and law enforcement officers, all of whom reported having witnessed HUTs. While the study did not analyse data by sex or gender, about half of the stakeholders in the Safe At Home study said that being a low-income woman with children makes someone more likely to experience a HUT. Unfortunately, very little research has been conducted on HUTs, and even less has been conducted specifically among women.
Supportive Housing: Benefits and Risks
The Housing First Supportive Housing model is an approach to homelessness which aims to provide people with permanent housing as quickly as possible. Generally, women in Housing First programs experience positive outcomes, such as greater quality of life, improved recovery from mental illness, greater reductions in drug use, and enhanced safety. However, this model does not necessarily improve the person’s community integration, which can be important for their overall well-being and could help protect individuals from HUTs. One study found that among women in a Housing First program there was a limited sense of neighbourhood belonging, and that participants were not interested in belonging to their community because they don’t want to be judged by others.
While some Supportive Housing programs fail to proactively protect tenants from HUTs, others fail to investigate the effectiveness of their approaches to reactively addressing HUTs. In a study looking at approaches to high-risk behaviours (i.e. substance use or violence) and challenges (i.e. HUTs) in Supportive Housing programs in North America, the authors found that across all approaches their effectiveness was not rigorously examined. They also advise that some approaches, like those that use legal, restrictive, or surveillance measures, may conflict with other program goals, like housing stability, and resident empowerment or choice.
The Future of HUTs
Clearly, further research is much needed to help us understand the impacts of HUTs on women’s health and mental health and effective approaches to supporting the women who experience them. The Safe At Home study was a good start and can be life changing for many. The authors of the study made a number of recommendations to address HUTs, including:
- implementing proactive community measures, like creating councils to monitor and provide support in each building and developing more community spaces;
- helping at-risk tenants better understand their options by screening them for HUT risk at intake;
- and developing an education campaign to inform and protect tenants, such as creating resources on HUTs that peers and existing service networks can share.
Moving Forward
Nora fought for two years to regain control of her home and keep from getting evicted, with some successes and many barriers along the way. Unfortunately, Nora passed away in 2021, but her story does not have to end there – many things can be done to prevent others from experiencing the same fate. Further research on HUTs, particularly if examined through a sex- and gender-based lens, could help us identify effective approaches to supporting women and other vulnerable individuals in this situation. Additionally, donating to Supportive Housing organisations can help provide them with the resources they need to appropriately address HUTs when they occur. The YWCA is one of the largest providers of Supportive Housing for women in Canada.
Nora’s story can serve as a warning – a lighthouse, if you will, cautioning us of the rocky shores and risks of Supportive Housing ahead – to remind us that people in the Supportive Housing system need more than just housing to thrive, or even survive.
Resources
If you or someone you know is experiencing gender-based violence in Canada, there are a few national resources that can help. One example of this is ShelterSafe.ca – developed by Women’s Shelters Canada, it is an online map that can help women and their children find a shelter to escape violence and abuse. Alternatively, the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline is a confidential service, connecting victims and survivors with social services, law enforcement, and emergency services.
