Speakers Corner: From living on the streets to owning three homes

Overview

Nicole Lewis, featured on Speakers’ Corner in Quinte West, Ontario, shares her personal story of homelessness and the path to eventual stability. She left home at 16 and spent 12 years couch-surfing and moving through shelters, describing the experience as one marked by constant fear and insecurity.

Today, Lewis says she has improved her financial situation through multiple jobs. She now owns and rents out several properties, and she uses her lived experience to advocate for more humane treatment of tenants. Her approach includes keeping rents low (and not raising them), and in some cases helping tenants with food when they fall behind.

View on the Housing Crisis

Lewis argues that the housing crisis—and the system designed to manage it—has not improved enough to protect landlords, either. She describes being taken advantage of by problem tenants. In one example, beginning in 2019, a basement tenant stopped paying rent, and she waited more than a year for an eviction order.

Critique of the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board

Lewis criticizes the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board, arguing that backlog delays affect enforcement against non-paying tenants and harm everyone involved. She suggests that the slow process makes it harder to resolve serious housing issues.

Policy Recommendation

Lewis’s main recommendation is for the government to speed up Landlord and Tenant Board wait times. She contends that the current system forces people—including both landlords and prospective tenants—to navigate difficult hurdles such as credit checks, while eviction options for problematic tenants are too slow to be effective.

Community Involvement and Broader Message

Lewis connects her work to wider community efforts. She volunteers for the Quinte West Community and Wellbeing Safety Plan, an initiative aimed at addressing both the housing crisis and mental health concerns.

Her message is that everyone deserves a place to live—but that meaningful improvement requires fixing systemic delays and dysfunction that currently undermine the housing situation.

Presenters/Contributors

• Nicole Lewis
• Pat Taney (City News)