Ontario Municipal Board adjudicators have upheld minimum separation distances in principle 15 but typically exempted individual housing projects16. Adjudicators sometimes concluded that the separation distance should not be applied because physical attributes separated one neighbourhood from another.17Alternatively, adjudicators determined separation distances were applicable to one group home type but not another.18 One adjudicator hinted that implementation of a specific separation distance might be discriminatory. 19 Because OMB Members are not bound by previous tribunal decisions, there has been adjudicative inconsistency.

Such inconsistencies can discourage appeals. Legal processes extend development timelines and increase costs. It is cheaper to negotiate, even ingratiate, oneself with the opposition, rather than proceed legally. Developers consequently may “cream” applicants and admit tenants unlikely to offend opponents20. Developers may describe tenant profiles to neighbours seeking tentative approval.21 They may compromise architectural design by eliminating overlook or reduce visibility through installation of visual buffering. 22

Scholars whose research investigates psychiatric survivor housing preferences indicate the majority of survivors wish to reside in their own apartments23. Psychiatric survivors living independently in apartments may integrate successfully in their neighbourhoods. From their perspective, group homes could be eliminated in favour of independent housing. Separation distance requirements would not be a relevant concern. For other psychiatric survivors, however, communal life offers an alternative to social isolation24. Group home tenants are friends and, sometimes, family for one another25. For this latter group, elimination of separation distances could facilitate psychiatric survivor relationships.

Nonetheless, dictating to psychiatric survivors that community integration is “good” for them reproduces the very power dynamics the psychiatric survivor liberation movement has sought to challenge26 As Barbara Everett discussed in her book, professionals have often directed psychiatric survivors lives;

Those in power seek control over the less powerful, by force, if necessary, employing an” it’s for your own good” justification designed to elicit both compliance and gratitude and creating an invisible web of hegemonic control (206)27.

Clearly, restrictive zoning such as minimum separation distance requirements impact negatively upon psychiatric survivor housing. Advocates can successfully challenge offensive bylaws in multiple forums. Simultaneously, however, a critique of group homes would enrich the challenge by incorporating an analysis of psychiatric survivor / provider / municipal relations.

1 PhD Candidate, Dalhousie University. Thanks to Professors Jill Grant and Howard Epstein for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

2 Secretariat For Social Development. 1983. Ontario Group Homes Resource Manual. Toronto, Ontario: Province of Ontario.

3 Burbridge, Kate.1986. Social agencies welcome easier group home bylaw. Toronto Star, March 12.

4 Vaughan Bylaw 70-2001.

5 Ottawa Bylaw 125 (1) (a) - (d).

6 Bylaw 6752 in East York (Toronto) stipulates a group home minimum separation distance of 457 metres. However, Bylaw 438-86 which governs land use in the downtown area of Toronto stipulates a minimum separation distance of only 245 metres and then, refers only to residential care facilities with six or more residents. These bylaws were enacted prior to amalgamation and have not yet been harmonized.

7 Pupatello, Sandra. 2004. Ontario Government Improving Support for Ontarians with Developmental Disabilities. Toronto, Ontario: Ministry of Community and Social Services.

8 Newmarket (Town) Official Plan Amendment No 20 (Re) [2004] OMBD No 41.

9 Newmarket (Town) Zoning Bylaw No 1979-50 (Re) [2001] OMBD No 1195.

10 Deveau v Toronto (City) [2003] O.M.B.D. No. 569.

11 Royce-Davis, Joanna. 2001. “It’s the day to day living that matters”: The meaning and process of community in the lives of a couple with significant psychiatric disabilities.” American Journal of Community Psychology, 29:6, 807-834.

12 Yanos, Philip T. 2007. Beyond “Landscapes of Despair”: The need for new research on the urban environment, sprawl and the community integration of persons with severe mental illness. Health and Place, 13: 672-676.

13 Dear, Michael and Wolch, Jennifer.1987. Landscapes of Despair: From Deinstitutionalization to Homelessness. Oxford, United Kingdom: Polity Press.

14 Arthurson, Kathy. 2002. Creating Inclusive Communities through Balancing Social Mix: A Critical Relationship or Tenuous Link? Urban Policy and Research, 20 (3): 245-261.

15 Hamilton (City) Zoning Bylaw 06-188 (Re) [2007] O.M.B.D. No 0154; Newmarket (Town) Official Plan Amendment No 20 (Re) [2004] O.M.B.D. No 41.

16 Simcoe Community Services v Township of Springwater [2007] O.M.B.D. No 2227; Spina v. London (City) Committee of Adjustment [2006] O.M.B.D. No 921.

17 Mallozzi v Mississauga (City) Committee of Adjustment [2004] O.M.B.D. No 1623; Surex Community Service v Toronto (City) Committee of Adjustment [2004] O.M.B.D. NO 548.

18 Ottawa (City) Zoning Bylaw 333-1999 (Re) [2006] O.M.B.D. No 2743.

19 Leeds Grenville Phased Housing Program v Brockville (City) [1991] O.M.B.D. No 105.

20 Knowles, Caroline. 2000. Bedlam on the Streets. London, England: Routledge.

21 Bordone, Sabrina.2003. Siting Supportive Housing Facilities: An Analysis of lessons Learned. Unpublished paper.

22 Finkler, Lilith. 2006. Re-Placing (In) Justice: Disability-Related Facilities at the Ontario Municipal Board IN Law Commission of Canada (editors) The Place of Justice. Nova Scotia, Canada. Fernwood Books

23Forchuk, C., Nelson G. and Hall B. 2006. “It’s Important to be Proud of the Place You Live in”: Housing Problems and Preferences of Psychiatric Survivors. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 42 (1): 42-52.

24 Dorvil, Henri, Morin Paul, Beaulieu Alain and Robert, Dominique. 2005. Housing as a Social Integration Factor for People Classified as Mentally Ill. Housing Studies, 20 (3): 479-519. Jones, R., Chesters J., and Fletcher M. 2003. Make yourself at home: People living with psychiatric disability in public housing. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 7: 67-79.

25 Boydell, Katherine, Gladstone Brenda, Crawford Elaine. 2002. The dialectic of friendship for people with psychiatric disabilities. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 26(2): 123-132.

26 Shimrat, Irit. 1997. Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement. Vancouver, British Columbia: Press

Gang Publishers. Chamberlin, Judi. 1978. On Our Own. Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

27 Everett, Barbara. 2000. A Fragile Revolution: consumers and psychiatric survivors confront the power of the mental health system. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press.

Reprinted by permission of the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office from Honouring the Past, Shaping the Future: 25 Years of Progress in Mental Health Advocacy and Rights Protection, Copyright 2008.