Originally appeared in the Toronto Star on December 20, 2025: ‘‘This is preventative medicine.’ Toronto hospital starts $1-million fund to help patients with rent – Toronto Star

Samreen Ishaq’s priority was to find housing for her patient, an Indigenous man in his 50s with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

He had spent the last four years in a cycle of going to the emergency department, staying in hospital until he was well, being discharged back onto the street, having his condition worsen, and returning to the emergency department.

When he was referred to the University Health Network’s Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine this summer, community health worker Ishaq helped him get an ID, do his taxes, and submit an application for supportive housing site Dunn House, where an apartment had just become available. But a background check revealed the patient still owed some $3,000 in rent for his last government housing, making him ineligible.

On ODSP and with no ability to pay off the arrears, the patient was headed back on the street.

But a new program at UHN meant the hospital could clear his debt. The patient signed a lease at Dunn House this month, allowing him to finally start thinking about the future, Ishaq said.

“Rather than being on survival mode, he was focusing on healing.”

The Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine has been rolling out Ontario’s first hospital-based homelessness and eviction prevention program. Officially announced Saturday, the program uses donations to pay off eligible UHN patients’ rent arrears, or to pay first and last month’s rent so a patient can access housing.

The fund kicked off with $1 million raised from donors — particularly the LRDR Foundation, The Sprott Foundation and The Kress Family, said Dr. Andrew Boozary, founding executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine.

Decades of research show an inextricable link between evictions and worse health outcomes, Boozary said.

According to a 2023 study in the peer-reviewed journal Social Science & Medicine, eviction increases the likelihood of premature death. Research also shows people with mental or physical disabilities, and older adults, are more likely to be evicted, and eviction can increase the likelihood of depression, substance use disorders and suicide, Boozary noted.

“Evictions are implosions on people’s mental and physical health,” he said. “This is why I really don’t see this outside the lane of health care — we are really focused in on people’s health and survival.”

The program comes at a time when the homelessness crisis is worsening and city funding for eviction prevention struggles to match “eviction pressures,” Boozary said.

It also comes on the heels of the Doug Ford government passing Bill 60, which tenant advocates say weakens renters’ rights in several ways, including by reducing the time renters have to pay off arrears to void eviction and allowing landlords who evict their tenants for own-use to skip compensation if they give four months of notice.

As part of the initiative, UHN’s social medicine team is partnering with The Neighbourhood Group Community Services, in which people with lived experience of homelessness or drug use accompany and advocate for patients in the emergency department; as well as LOFT Community Services, which Boozary said offers expertise in helping people access housing and stay housed.

It will cover two to three months of rent for patients with complex medical and social needs, determined on a case-by-case basis, which Boozary said will help patients avoid the “cascade of health and economic outcomes” associated with eviction.

“This is preventative medicine,” he said. “This is social medicine at its core.”

Community health worker Jessica Ayoub said that this summer, she was able to use the fund to help house an elderly patient who had ended up homeless and in hospital after he stopped receiving his pension due to mailing issues.

She found private supportive housing for him that would require first and last month’s rent payments. Much to the patient’s and Ayoub’s relief, they could use the fund to cover the costs. She was then able to continue working to help him restore his income.

“That was a lot for him to navigate on his own, so he needed that support, and in the meantime, somewhere to go,” Ayoub said.

“A lot of times things fall through or they take months to put together,” she said. “But to be able to have our own bucket of funding that’s easily accessible to our patients, and that can very simply solve a problem — that is extremely, extremely helpful.”