Read about MIND's work with CMHA's: The Carlton House
- Grace Chan
- Oct 7
- 7 min read
Below is a copy of the original newsletter in full:
Carlton House Offers a Safe Place to Land
September 23, 2025
Carlton House, newly opened in May 2025 in partnership with the City of Toronto, is filling a gap in housing sorely needed in the city. Devoted to refugee claimants new to Canada, the 25-person housing facility quickly reached full capacity. The staff bring with them not just expertise in mental health care, but also the lived experience, knowledge, and skills to walk alongside people as they navigate Canada’s complex refugee claimant system.
As the only shelter in the city specifically for refugee claimants who experience addictions or mental health challenges, Carlton House case manager Allen Walaga says that the facility is a response to the tremendous need created by the large number of refugees arriving in Canada and the shortage of available housing for them – a gap particularly acute for those experiencing addictions and mental health issues in addition to the trauma they’ve experienced migrating.
The building is deliberately and sensitively managed with a focus on creating a community of care where people can feel safe and begin the work to heal from their traumatic experiences.
Carlton House: Different from other shelters
“We are trying to create a home atmosphere,” says Melaku Dessie, a case manager with a specialization in immigration. This means a move away from the more rigid environment of typical shelters. “There is no curfew. [Clients] have their own key to access the building, can come and go as they choose, and they are allowed to invite guests to hang out in the common areas,” he explains.
Clients play an active role in Carlton House’s management, participating in decisions that affect the smooth running of the facility. Melaku explains that staff do not enforce rules from the top down but instead facilitate problem-solving and conflict resolution among clients. He describes a group meeting held to address some issues around housekeeping. “We sat down with clients for a meeting and told them we don't want to impose rules; we want a solution from you, as this is also your home while you are living in this house. When we said that, they started to speak up.”
Clients identified the chores that needed doing and divided tasks among them. “It was amazing. [The ideas] came from them, and when it comes from them, it really makes a difference.”
Allen adds: “We listen, a lot. I tell people, ‘listen, listen, listen.’ When you listen to someone, you learn. We learn from each other every day. So by the time you're giving your piece of advice, you know what you're talking about,” says Allen.
Mental health concerns in the refugee community are often unaddressed
Part of Carlton House’s mission is to help clients deal with mental health and addictions issues that may have gone long unattended. Allen says that there is a real gap in mental health care for people who are refugees during the resettlement process. For many clients, there are often cultural barriers that prevent people from having conversations about mental health, understanding it, or seeking care.
“When someone says they have an illness, they feel like they will be stigmatized, or made to feel small, or made to feel unworthy to be with everyone else,” Allen says.
Carlton House offers on-site support, mental health counselling, addictions care, medication management, and case management, delivered with a trauma-informed lens by people who have lived experience. And while clients must meet certain criteria to be eligible to live in the City of Toronto-funded shelter – they must be refugee claimants, at least 18 years old, with a mental health or addiction challenge – the most important thing is that they are willing to take part in the programming.
“We have activities, we have therapy … [and we encourage residents] to engage with them,” Allen says. The goal is to equip residents to transition to permanent housing within a year. Once they do, clients will continue to have access to Carlton House case managers for follow-up for another 12 months.
In addition to mental health care and housing support, Carlton House offers another crucial service: help to navigate the refugee claimant process.
The challenges people who are refugees face in Canada
Despite its public image, Canada is often unwelcoming to newcomers. The migration process can be difficult, the immigration system is long and labyrinthine, and the employment, financial, and housing struggles that many immigrants face have been documented to compromise newcomers’ physical and mental wellbeing over time (Elshahat, Moffat, and Newbold, 2022).
Refugee claimants, who have endured challenges like conflict, deprivation, or persecution in their home countries, are particularly vulnerable.
Speaking from her own experience, Allen says Canada was anything but welcoming when she arrived from Uganda, and Melaku, who is from Ethiopia, concurs. They and the rest of the staff at Carlton House are committed to changing that experience for people who are newcomers by walking alongside them as they navigate a new environment, far from their home and families, and with a bewildering array of issues to be sorted.
“You’ve left your people. You’ve run away because you’re not safe. There's so much that is happening with you,” Allen says. She adds that many newcomers don’t know what resources are available or how to access them.
“When we took this job, we said, ‘Let us make something different, something better for the next person who comes after us. Let’s try and make sure the next person who comes after me has it a little bit better. That the system is kinder to them,’” she says.
Melaku outlines the end-to-end support Carlton House provides: “We support clients the moment they come to our house, for example, by finding an immigration lawyer, preparing their documentation, connecting them with professionals to prepare for their scheduled immigration hearings.” If there are gaps or delays in the process, the team steps in to help move things forward.
“We know what is required and how to put the evidence together,” Maleku explains. Carlton House staff arrange for clients to participate in mock hearings facilitated by the FCJ Refugee Centre in collaboration with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. These sessions help clients understand the preparation process, know what to expect during court proceedings, and learn about the possible pathways to a positive decision.
Melaku says it’s important to give detailed information so clients can be ready for any decision and know their next steps and how to manage the emotional aspects should they be denied protected status.
Creating community around shared meals
A big part of easing the stresses of migration and the refugee claimant process is by creating a supportive community, and a big part of creating community is through food. Melaku says that one of the first signs that residents were forming bonds was when they started to cook and dine together.
Carlton House residents can prepare their own food in the communal kitchen and are provided one homecooked meal a day thanks to the MIND Program – a registered charity based in South Scarborough that runs compassionate food programs in low-income, homeless, or marginalized communities.
For Grace Chan, the executive director of MIND, nourishing people is about more than providing food, it’s contributing to overall wellness and recovery for people in the community. She says that MIND was founded when health and social service agencies expressed a clear need: “they were coming to us saying they could not deliver their services – whether it was health care, mental health, or addictions services – when people were hungry.”
From a 10x8-foot kitchen space, the two-person operation – Grace and MIND’s chef and meal program coordinator, Wilbur Nixon – provides about 500 homemade meals every week to agencies on the frontlines of community care, including through CMHA Toronto's Strengthening Communities in Scarborough program, most recently at Carlton House.
Grace shares that “supporting residents of Carlton House perfectly embodies our mission of combatting food insecurity while promoting human dignity. People seeking asylum are navigating one of life's most challenging transitions – leaving everything behind to start over in a new country. Food insecurity often hits newcomers hardest due to unfamiliar systems, language barriers, and limited resources.
The MIND Program works diligently to ensure Carlton House residents’ food cultures are represented, for example by doing their best to source halal ingredients from the food they rescue or purchase and by incorporating foods, like a West African-inspired cassava and fish dish, in the menu.
With the community-building aspect of food top of mind, Grace and Wilbur hope to continue to work with Carlton House staff and residents to shape a meal program that is a fundamental element of the building’s supportive, diverse environment.
Building networks to support each other
Carlton House staff host a variety of activities, therapeutic and social, in the evenings and on weekends, which also help people establish close bonds. Beyond this, residents have formed their own informal networks for volunteering, employment, and socializing.
“If someone got a volunteer opportunity, they informed others of that opportunity and they would go together to do the volunteer work. A couple of clients got work [and] whenever the company needs other people, they refer their colleagues,” Melaku reports.
Clients from many different countries in Africa and elsewhere are learning how to navigate miscommunication and conflict. They are also supporting each other through feelings of loneliness and isolation, which are only natural when living far from family overseas. Here, too, the less rigid structure of Carlton House is uniquely suited to its residents’ circumstances. Residents are free to travel to visit relatives or friends outside of Toronto just by letting staff know they’ll be away for a day or two.
Allen adds that clients frequently go to church or mosque together and they have a group chat where they can plan activities and organize transportation for outings. Rather than isolate themselves or hoard information, Allen says, “People are trying to help each other, to give information to one another. If someone is cooking, someone will come and help. If someone is doing laundry and there's something they don't know, there will be someone there to help.”
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