Nearly five months after a damning audit revealed mismanagement at Atira Women’s Resource Society, another one of the housing provider’s staffers has come forward with allegations of unsafe working conditions.
Jane said she has been on leave from the embattled non-profit since April, after re-injuring her shoulder for the second time while on-duty in “unsafe circumstances” that she doesn’t feel are “being properly addressed.”
Jane is a pseudonym for the woman, who said she fears reprisal from her workplace for speaking out. Global News has independently verified her identity and an injury claim with WorkSafe BC.
“I feel that when issues are brought forward to management, there’s a culture within management to maybe bend the truth or cover them up, act like it didn’t happen or come up with a BAND-AID solution,” she told Global News on Friday. “There’s no thought behind the solutions to these problems and they’re not making meaningful changes that make our working circumstances any safer.”
According to Jane, the first shoulder injury happened in September 2021, when she successfully saved the life of someone who was about to overdose. She said she picked that person up from a picnic table and put them into a recovery position on the ground, something she shouldn’t have had to do alone.
“Usually, we had peers which were not always suitably trained or showing up fit for work. We would often have to carry out duties by ourselves,” she described.
Jane said she filed a WorkSafe BC claim and returned to work, but her shoulder never healed properly.
This year, she re-injured it while lifting boxes at a transition house run by Atira.
“It happened moving a storage bin in the program I currently belong to. At work, we have a storage facility where we store things for people with large RubberMaid bins. They’re often overpacked and you never really know how heavy it is until you try and lift it off the shelf,” she said.
Jane said she now lives with chronic pain and “bad anxiety,” and suffered a “mental breakdown” that kept her in bed for more than a month.
The staffer raised other occupational health and safety concerns as well, including secondhand inhalation of toxic drug smoke from clients who refuse to use designated smoking areas.
“We’ve brought these issues forward to management. They’ve done nothing about it except provide N95 masks, which have limitations. They’re not means to be worn for right hours a day to protect you from toxic drug smoke.”
Jane said Atira advised staff that if they caught someone smoking in a prohibited area, they should leave them to finish and then have a conversation with them about not doing it again.
“That is not a well thought-out solution,” she added, “because we can’t leave somebody unsupervised while they’re using. They could overdose and die and we wouldn’t know, and it’s a part of our job to know that.”
Atira’s interim CEO, Catherine Roome, was not available for an interview Friday.
In a written statement, however, Atira said it is “100% committed to the safety of our staff, our tenants and our buildings.”
“Occupational health and safety training, including safe disposal of sharps protocol, non-violent crisis intervention, first aid and naloxone training are provided to all staff in the new staff orientation, again one-to-one when staff start at a specific site, as well as ongoing as needed,” the non-profit wrote. “Atira’s work is more essential than ever as a result of the overlapping crises we face in British Columbia, including housing, the poison drug supply, and a deteriorating security situation.”
The organization is also advocating for additional provincial funds to improve safety and health in the Downtown Eastside, it added.
Jane is not the first Atira employee, present and past, to raise serious health and safety concerns.
Ksenija Collinge, a peer manager who was on leave when she spoke with Global News in May, said she endured months of harassment at the office, with one employee routinely bringing a knife to the office. Global News verified that she filed a human resources complaint and a worker’s compensation board report about the situation, but has not verified her specific allegations.
A former staffer of Atira Property Management, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said she was bullied too, and referenced a worker bringing a knife to the office as well. She made a WorkSafe BC claim in relation to her allegations and received a disability award.
At the time, Atira did not provide comment on either woman’s claims.
Atira, BC Housing’s largest housing provider, has been in the hotspot next to the Crown corporation since the release of a forensic audit on May 8. It revealed substantial mismanagement issues, in addition to a conflict of interest between then-CEO of Atira Janice Abbott, and former BC Housing CEO Shane Ramsay.
The married couple held their positions at the same time, and while no individual materially benefitted from that relationship, the audit revealed while Ramsay was CEO, Atira was awarded contracts without a competitive process, received a substantial increase in funding, and got at least $3 million in COVID-19 funds without appropriate internal BC Housing approval.
Atira also took action contrary to its operation agreements, the audit found, including using $2 million in restricted, repayable funds to help fund a property purchase. The provider bypassed BC Housing’s standard approval channels and approached senior members of the Crown corporation directly for funding and other requests multiple times, it added.
Ramsay, meanwhile, modified meeting minutes to alter concerns raised about an Atira property purchase, and regularly deleted text messages despite habitually conducting BC Housing business through texts, the Ernst and Young report stated.
Within a week, Ramsay was no longer employed as the vice-president of Nch’kay Development — a Squamish Nation company — and Abbott resigned as Atira’s CEO.
The non-profit housing provider’s provincial funding was restricted, its operation agreements put on pause, and its buildings physically inspected. It also returned $1.9 million in provincial funds.
Atira has been working to rebuild public trust ever since, promising a task force to oversee a third-party review of its policies and practices, including a deep dive of into how the organization makes decisions on real estate and deals with potential conflicts of interest. That task force, however, came under fire immediately for being comprised of Atira’s board chair and chairs of the society’s finance and governance committees.
Interim CEO Roome was appointed on May 30 to “get the financial house in order.”
Earlier this week, Atira published a “100-day update” on the progress of its “reset and renewal” efforts, touting a new code of conduct, the introduction of a new third party-established whistleblower line, a compliance review, a board of governance review, and other measures.
“We are in a different stage now. We are absolutely in a different place,” Roome told Global News on Wednesday. “What has changed is, maybe the rigour around how we are conducting the business of providing housing in a way that serves the community, and the governance.”
The next day, Vancouver city council unanimously voted to approve nearly $800,000 in grants for the housing operator.
Jane, however, said she wasn’t encouraged or satisfied by Atira’s progress report and remains afraid of the working conditions she will return to when her leave is over.
“I feel like there’s been a huge emphasis on Atira restoring faith and trust within the community, but I don’t see the changes restoring trust within their employees,” she explained. “That trust has been so broken for so many years, and I don’t see the emphasis on that. We’re not seeing the changes that make us want to trust them.”
Shortly after the BC Housing audit was released, more than 500 workers at over 35 Atira worksites unionized, citing the need to address safety concerns, staffing shortages, and other living and working conditions.
On Wednesday, BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) treasurer Paul Finch said despite Atira’s claims, workers aren’t seeing the changes they need to see, with a collective agreement not yet in place.
“We’re still not seeing the training for the new and casual hires, we’re still not seeing the overdose prevention training — but the most important and fundamental aspect of what we need to see at Atira and from Atira’s management — is a solid and firm commitment of moving into the Community Health Bargaining Association with our (supportive housing sector) peers,” he told Global News.
Jane, meanwhile, said she’ll keep speaking out because she wants “real change” that will result in everyone feeling “safe at work.”
“It’s very hard to go into work and to advocate for other people when you feel like you’re not allowed to advocate for yourself,” she said.
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