Fiorito: Evicted and stabbed at a shelter, Leo Wilton gets a second chance

All is not necessarily well that ends well life is rough, and sometimes the pieces are not easily picked up but we take what we can get, and so I am happy to tell you that Leo Wilton is on the mend and he has a place of his own.

He was living in a bachelor apartment last year when he got into a dispute with his landlord, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. A dispute?

His building was unsafe: bullets flying and bedbugs biting. He complained, more than once, and was promised that things would be cleaned up.

They were not.

So Leo, a man after my own heart, went on a rent strike. When his arrears reached $1,500 he was told to pay up or be evicted. He swallowed hard and ponied up an initial payment of $500. TCHC cashed his cheque and kicked him out anyway.

He ended up in a shelter, where a guy he did not know and had never met attacked him, with no warning, for no reason.

I first met Leo at an infirmary on Sherbourne St., and then again at Fudger House, when he was recuperating from injuries that almost killed him: a stab wound to the throat, three broken ribs, a broken nose and a brain hemorrhage.

Hes out of the hospital and in a new place now. I went to see him the other day. The gash has healed; you cant see the scar unless youre looking. His colour is back. His eyes are bright. He looks alive.

The new place? It is a bachelor apartment, freshly painted, with a new countertop and kitchen cabinets, better than his old place. Most of what he had, he left behind, but he does have a tiny table, two chairs, a lamp, a radio, a coffee maker, a bed, a small pot and a frying pan. He has had some help, and will get more, from his brother and sister, who live elsewhere in the GTA.

The apartment comes to him by way of Woodgreen. Leo said, When I first went to the shelter, they set me up with a housing worker. Hed mentioned this place back then. After the attack, he came to see me and he told me again about this place; there are only six vacancies a year.

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Fiorito: Evicted and stabbed at a shelter, Leo Wilton gets a second chance