After nearly two decades working on the front lines of housing, homelessness and mental health, Michael Tay says he wants to bring that experience to Ottawa city hall.
Tay, who has lived in Ottawa for nearly three decades and in Somerset Ward for about five years, is running to become the next councillor for Ward 14. He said his decision to enter municipal politics grew out of a career spent working directly with people facing challenges, particularly visible in the downtown ward.
“I have almost 20 years of frontline experience working in housing and homelessness, mental health support, community work, youth work, and working with people on the front lines,” Tay said. “I really believe that it’s so important to have people in decision-making positions at city hall who have an understanding of that frontline experience.”
Tay currently works as program manager for transitional housing at the Catholic Centre for Immigrants in Ottawa. He oversees a transitional home for newcomers and refugees, including single men experiencing homelessness who may otherwise be staying in the downtown shelter system.
The program offers wraparound services, including settlement, employment and housing support, to help residents move toward permanent housing.
His career has also included several years working at a community health centre in Ottawa’s south end and at the Roberts/Smart Centre, where he provided mental health support to young people experiencing difficult and traumatic circumstances.
For the past eight years, Tay has also worked as a part-time professor in Algonquin College’s social service worker program, helping train people entering the field.
It is that combination of frontline and community work that Tay believes could be particularly relevant in Somerset Ward, where homelessness, substance use and mental health challenges have become significant issues for residents, businesses and service providers.
“I’ve spent my entire career bringing people together, bringing people to the table saying that we have an opportunity to make the changes that we want to see,” he said. “That’s gonna be one of my biggest focuses, which is really helping people have a chance to speak. I believe that listening takes you so much further than believing that you have all the answers.”
Tay identified housing, homelessness and public safety among the most pressing issues he is hearing about while speaking with residents.
He said Somerset Ward is home to many vulnerable people experiencing significant hardships, but those challenges also have consequences for the wider community. Residents have raised concerns with him about open drug use, conditions in parks and whether they or their children feel safe travelling through parts of the neighbourhood.
“Unfortunately, not only do we have people struggling, but we also have community members who don’t feel safe in their area, whether it’s open drug use, whether it’s, you know, seeing things in parks, whether it’s children feeling that it’s not safe to travel around at night,” Tay said.
Finding a balance between helping vulnerable residents and responding to neighbourhood concerns would be central to his approach, he said.
“I believe in compassion, but I also believe in accountability, and I don’t think that those two things are at odds,” Tay said. “I believe that we can bring them all together.”
Tay also supports supervised consumption services and said he has heard concerns from residents following the closure of the supervised consumption site at Somerset West Community Health Centre.
“I do hear from people at the door that when the safe injection sites were open, things felt a little bit better than what they are now,” he said. “And so if that is the case for a lot of the residents in our community, then what can we do to bring them back to that place where they felt a little bit better?”
Tay acknowledged that many decisions surrounding health care and supervised consumption fall outside municipal jurisdiction. But he said councillors can still use their position to advocate to other levels of government and communicate what residents and frontline organizations are experiencing.
He said his preference would be to bring service providers, residents, businesses and vulnerable community members together rather than approach the issue from only one perspective.
“When we bring everyone around the table, we can have the difficult conversations, but the goal is to make sure that we’re solution-focused. We’re problem-solving. We’re respectful, and we build something that works for everyone,” Tay said.