Victim of hammer attack loses eye, job and now worries he may lose his apartment

CTV Ottawa: Slow difficult recovery The man attacked with a hammer is in danger of losing his place to live, as he struggles back to physical and financial health.

The victim of a vicious hammer attack outside his Somerset Street apartment two years ago is worried he may have to leave that apartment.

Nabute Ghebrehiwet is out of work and can't afford the rent on the only home he's known for six years.

Since 2010, a tiny apartment on Somerset Street has been home for Nabute Ghebrehiwet.

“I don't want to move from here,” he says, “I really don't want to move.”

The 55-year-old has been paying market rent all that time, $980 a month plus Hydro, in the building owned by Ottawa Community Housing, where more than half the units are subsidized.  He was good with that rent until he lost an eye, lost his job and now fears losing his home.

“Now I don’t know what to do.”

It was almost two years to the day that Ghebrehiwet, a contract worker with Canada Revenue Agency, was having a smoke outside his building.  Suddenly, a man struck him over the head with a hammer and changed his life forever.

“I didn't see him coming to me,” Ghebrehiwet explains, “when he hit me, I blacked out.”

32-year-old Jeffrey Weber was charged with the attack, but recently found not criminally responsible.  Ghebrehiwet got disability payments for a bit but wanted to work and landed another six-month contract with CRA.  That ended in March and he has since been out of work, searching constantly for another job and spending his life savings paying full market rent.

Ghebrehiwet has launched a lawsuit over the attack.  He’s suing the Royal Ottawa and a psychiatrist for $800,000.  But even if he wins, that is still years in the works.

In the meantime, he has appealed to the Ottawa Housing Registry and Ottawa Community Housing for help, for a subsidy to stay in his Somerset St. apartment. But it's not that simple.

“There are only a certain number of rent-geared-to-income (RGI) subsidies in Ottawa,” explains Stéphane Giguère, the CEO of Ottawa Community Housing, “likely, we have other units across Ottawa that will be available and will require the tenant to move to those rent-geared-to-income units across the city.”

“There are a number of priorities that an Applicant may be eligible to qualify for when applying for RGI assistance,” says  Shelley VanBuskirk, the Manager of Housing Services with Ottawa Social Housing Registry, “In the case of an in-situ priority for those households currently residing within social housing, the applicant must have resided with the social housing provider for at least 1 year, occupy an appropriate sized unit that meets occupancy standards for RGI assistance, and the household must demonstrate a significant decrease in income, due to no fault of their own, in order to qualify for the priority.  Even if this priority is granted there are often long wait lists while on the priority list.”

Ghebrehiwet hopes it won't come to that.  After so much change in two years, his tiny apartment is one constant.

“This is home for me, yeah,” he says.

Ghebrehewit has even written the mayor pleading his case. Ultimately, it comes down to spending all his savings or moving; neither option, a good one.