It’s a happy ending for Fran Flann, the North Vancouver senior who spent more than a week living in a homeless shelter while trying to recover from breast cancer surgery. But, the 82-year-old wants her case to be a reminder of the gaps in the system.
After undergoing a mastectomy last month, Flann found she was unable to return to her apartment as it was being remediated for bedbugs. Vancouver Coastal Health funded her stay in a motel for a week but she soon after wound up at the Lookout Emergency Aid Shelter.
Following news of her plight, the widow and her friend and advocate Robyn Brown received a deluge of media interest and offers to help.
“It’s overwhelming,” Flann said Thursday morning after a night’s rest back in a hotel. “I’m just totally amazed. I just can’t believe it.”
An anonymous donor paid the cost of the room and offered “walking around” money. The Grouse Inn later reversed the charges and allowed her to stay for free until her Lower Lonsdale apartment is ready. Vancouver Coastal Health and Hollyburn Family Services Society are arranging for new furniture for Flann and covering the $750 cost of her apartment cleanup.
Up until her hospital stay, Flann was still working part time at a drycleaners in Vancouver. A regular customer stepped up and raised money to provide her with new clothes, linens, toiletries and a stocked fridge. SeaBus crew passed around the hat and came up with another $500.
Any donations she receives over and above what she needs will be passed along to the Lookout Emergency Aid Society, which runs the shelter where she’d been staying, she said. “I’ve got to get a card for them too, to thank them.”
Flann said without Brown and the support of the community she would still be in the shelter. It should be a lesson for everyone else, Flann added.
“I would have bitched to everybody. You complain but you don’t do anything about it, whereas Robyn did something about it. I was told, ‘Don’t rock the boat.’ It’s the best thing that could have happened,” she said.
FirstService Residential, which manages Flann’s building, has expedited the repairs to her suite. “We have been co-ordinating with Hollyburn to pull our collective resources to restore the living conditions in her apartment to a level that will allow her to return home as soon as possible,” said Judith Harris.
Harris said it was not time for “finger pointing” on why Flann ended up in the shelter.
“It’s going to have a good ending. Everybody has come to the plate and we’ve done the right thing,” she said.
Once things are settled, Brown said her top priority is for her and Flann to have a nice dinner out together.
Flann’s case came up in question period at the legislative assembly in Victoria on Wednesday, with NDP health critic Judy Darcy needling the government over her situation.
“That is a shameful way to treat a senior and a cancer patient – absolutely shameful,” Darcy said. “If a society is measured by how much it is willing to help the most vulnerable, to the finance minister: How does his government measure itself when it comes to treating Fran Flann?”
The health ministry issued a statement Thursday saying it was monitoring Flann’s situation and working closely with her to see that her needs are met but that the case was “predominantly an issue between a former patient and her landlord.”
“Health authority staff have gone, and continue to go, above and beyond their normal duties to help her, and paid for her to live in a hotel for one week, while her landlord cleaned her apartment,” it stated. “There continue to be many VCH staff working with Ms. Flann, including a social support worker, a nurse practitioner, and home care support. Her social worker is also working with her to help her apply for low-income housing.”
The NDP’s seniors critic Selina Robinson said she could not sleep after reading about Flann’s case.
“I was just sick,” she said.
Robinson said Flann never should have ended up in the shelter in the first place, and that the government should be prepared with emergency funding for cases like this.
“You can’t spring for another 10 days in a motel? There are resources. I refuse to believe there are no resources to take care of the Frans of the world in instances like this. I refuse to believe.”
