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A special place for those with special needs

Dufferin Street couple thinking and acting creatively on group home dream.

Evan Petrie, a young man who is developmentally delayed, needs and deserves his own home. His father is building him one.

When Evan was 14-years-old it was recommended that he go on a waiting list for supportive housing. He will soon be 30, and is still living at home with his dad Terry, and stepmother, Lynn Chidwick.

Terry is a carpenter. Lynn is an artist. Together they are working on a creative solution to the housing shortage for those with special needs. The kind of supportive housing that Evan needs isn’t available in Guelph, so they are creating it.

Terry Petrie has long dreamed of giving his son a place of his own – a supportive, caring, independent life of the sort any parent would wish for their child. The carpenter has made good progress on just such a place at 197 Dufferin Street.

A large addition to the family home is taking shape on the two-storey brick house. The couple has a plan: They will live in an apartment in the addition, and have Evan and up to three other special needs adults live in the three bedroom house. A studio space in the addition could also house up to two adults, if the plan evolves as they hope it will.  

Their dream is to turn the property into a group home, with a full-time staff, and possibly funded through a public-private sponsorship agreement.

They plan on calling it Wally House, after Wally Broadhead, the original owner of the house, who believed in the group home concept when he first heard about it eight years ago. 

“When Evan was 14, I went to a meeting about housing, facilitated by Community Living,” Terry said. “I asked if he was too young to be put on the waiting list for housing and they said, no, by all means, put him on the list.”

Evan has been on that list for 16 years. Others have been on it much longer.

Chidwick said it is typical in Guelph, and across Ontario, for disabled persons to spend many years on waiting lists for housing. The province, she said, has not made any specific investment in housing for special needs adults since the early-90s.

“We have a whole generation that hasn’t been funded,” she said.

“Every parent’s motivation is to make their child as independent as possible,” Petrie said. “It’s taken this long for us to realize there is absolutely no hope of seeing Evan get a room somewhere else. We can’t wait any longer.”

Petrie is nearly 60. Under no circumstances would he want to see his son placed, as some special needs adults are, in a long-term care home, seniors home or other inappropriate setting. That happens often enough in the event of the death of a parent/caregiver. 

The couple is financing and building the addition entirely on their own.

“Technically, legally and zoning-wise, we can have up to four unrelated people in a house before we have to seek zoning changes and be classified as a group home,” Petrie said. “Right now, we can go ahead and do what we are doing. But in the big picture we do want to expand and have it classified as a group home so we can house more.”

Chidwick’s father, the Rev. Paul Chidwick, was an Anglican minister, and the Canadian pioneer of hospice care. His idea was to do end-of-life care differently, his daughter said - to think creatively and outside the box of the hospital care model.

Lynn and Terry have taken the same general idea and applied it to this project. There have been obstacles, but there has also been a lot of support in Guelph.

 “We think the answer to the housing crisis is something creative,” she said. “The model currently being used has to change.”

She added that adults like Evan are able to live on their own so long as they have some in-home support.

“I have faith,” said Petrie, “faith that it is going to work out. That’s all I’ve got.”

The plan is for Wally’s Place to provide residential care for the developmentally disabled, while allowing residents to live to the fullest and as independently as possible in a family atmosphere.

The facility would have a full-time staff, and be operated by a management team and board of directors. Funding would come from residents and their families, with government and community support.


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Rob O'Flanagan

About the Author: Rob O'Flanagan

Rob O’Flanagan has been a newspaper reporter, photojournalist and columnist for over twenty years. He has won numerous Ontario Newspaper Awards and a National Newspaper Award.
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