By MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION , EXPOSITOR STAFF

Updated 2 hours ago

John Forsyth has a sinking feeling that he won’t ever get the financial help he needs from the Ontario Disability Support Program to make needed repairs in the basement of his Eagle Place home, so he and his young family of four won’t fall through the floor.

After a series of letters, estimates from contractors, and conversations with a caseworker while trying to get a $26,000 repair job covered under a section of the ODSP regulations, Forsyth says he’s at his wit’s end.

“Our house is sinking and it needs to be fixed without delay,” he said at the kitchen table Wednesday.

He had just shown the reporter the spot between the kitchen and the living room where the floor noticeably sinks whenever anyone walks over it.

About two weeks ago, Forsyth recounted, he and his wife Marlie Brooks noticed that the floor of the Sixth Avenue home they bought five years ago was sinking in just that spot.

The house, built in the 1950s, had only a four-foot-deep part basement with cinder block foundations and a dirt floor, with only a pad for the furnace and water heater.

So they and their two young children don’t have many reasons to venture through a trap door and down into its dusty confines.

But when they noticed the floor sinking at one spot and humps forming in others, John Forsyth got out a flashlight and made his way down to take a look. Training the light in different places, he noticed that the height of some support posts were a few inches lower than the floor above and were no longer supporting it. In other places, they had fallen over, while in still others, a few appeared to be the only remaining supports.

Forsyth quickly realized he had a bigger problem than that. He had been working at WalMart for years, until the onset of Multiple Sclerosis forced him onto ODSP a year ago.

How was he going to pay for this?

He called Cochren Foundation and Repair Company to send a specialist to examine the problem, then got on the phone to ODSP to see what help might be available.

Professional engineer John Cochren examined the basement and told Forsyth all the supports were going and that he needed the problem rectified urgently.

“The floor framing is two-by- six joists with intermediate beams, columns and pier pads, many are missing or falling over,” Cochren wrote in a report addressed to Forsyth, which he gave The Expositor.

“The main floor of the home is sagging, the walls are cracking, doors and windows are inoperable as a result.”

The caseworker told Forsyth to send at least two estimates and to fill out an application under ODSP Directive 9.4.

That section allows a client who is a homeowner to receive financial help as long as the repair is necessary to allow the client to reside safely in the dwelling, and that the client would otherwise have to leave.

But Forsyth couldn’t get two estimates because no other contractor or engineer would venture into the basement to investigate.

“After spending about one hour in the crawl space…I developed a respiratory infection within 30 minutes,” Cochren included in his report.

“In all the years I have been in the business I have never experienced an ailment like this. It took five days to clear up this medical problem. This is truly a serious concern for you and your family.”

With no one else willing to investigate, ODSP agreed to accept the one estimate.

On July 15, the caseworker called Forsyth to inform him that his request was denied, and that a letter of explanation would follow in the mail.

When the letter came, it provided no explanation for the refusal.

On the phone again, Forsyth said the caseworker told him the needed repairs were really “home repairs” as set out in the relevant ODSP directive.

But he was pointed to an appeal section, and told to submit request for a review, “marked urgent.”

Officials for the local ODSP office have not been available for comment.

Frustrated, Forsyth wrote letters to Premier Dalton McGuinty, MPPs, city officials, the media… “anyone and everyone who might care and be able to do something,” he said.

“Our walls are already pitching, causing huge cracks in the walls and ceiling, there are humps forming in the floors of every room of our house,” he wrote in one letter.

“We’ve been told by one of the best foundation contractors that this needs to be fixed ASAP before our house falls in. I’m pretty sure we fit all of the points set out in the directive. It leaves me wondering why my request was denied.”

Forsyth said that in his latest conversation with ODSP he was informed officials were open to taking a second look at the case. But he added his experience so far leaves him skeptical.

“I’ve been turned down once and I don’t really know why,” he said.

“Our house is sinking. I can’t afford to fix the problem and we can’t wait much longer.”

mamarion@theexpositor.com

Topic guidelines: We welcome your thoughts, stories and information related to this article.
Please stay on topic and be respectful of others. Keep the conversation appropriate for interested readers.