A roller-coaster life of Illness and poverty

from the Vancouver Sun

Things are looking up for Lisa Sloan after a rough stretch of being penniless and homeless

Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun

Lisa Sloan has had a rough couple of years, but things are starting to look up.

Her husband Dale, 56, has landed a union job at Safeway and they have an affordable place to live. Two years ago, they were living in the Lookout Aid Society shelter in North Vancouver. The one-time suburban wife and mom was homeless for the first time at the age of 46.

Her downhill slide began about 14 years ago when her first husband left her. Up until then Lisa had managed her bipolar disorder -- a condition that makes her prone to periods of high-tempo activity and gut-wrenching depression -- but the split started a self-destructive spiral that culminated in a severe cocaine addiction and a suicide attempt. Bipolar disorder affects about one in every 80 people in Canada.

"When I got sick and my first husband left me, I lost all my friends," she said. "It was really hard, especially right in your hometown, where everybody knows you."

With a lot of therapy, Lisa pulled back from that abyss and about 10 years ago she met her husband Dale. Two years ago, Dale was working as a medic in northern B.C. when Lisa was hospitalized with depression. He left his job to care for her and "all our savings were soon out the window," Sloan said in an interview in November of 2006, while she was working as a volunteer at the Lookout Aid Society's North Shore shelter. "He would not leave me," she recalled.

Sloan lost her job at Sears in the shuffle, and the two couldn't make the rent on their Lynn Valley basement suite. About that time, Lisa's father broke his hip and she tried to move in with him to share the rent and care for him, but conflict with other family members scuttled that arrangement. With nowhere else to turn, Dale and Lisa spent two months in the shelter while Dale worked as a roofer and tried to put together enough money to rent an apartment.

Anxious to leave the shelter, Dale and Lisa took a place as soon as they had enough to make the rent.

"We got a place, but we left too early," she said. "It started to rain and the work stopped and we were right back in the shelter."

After a second two-month stint in the shelter, Lisa and Dale got a place and almost on queue, Lisa became ill again and had to be hospitalized.

"We were on the verge of losing that place too, but when our landlady found out I was in the hospital she gave us the basement suite in her own house and dropped the rent $200," Sloan said.

Dale managed to put together enough work to keep afloat for nearly a year -- he found roofing, hauling and construction jobs with a partner -- while Lisa took college courses and began to pursue a freelance writing career. She had written several articles for the local newspaper, the North Shore News, and was researching an article on high-end sex-trade workers in Yaletown when financial disaster struck again.

Dale's partnership dissolved and he was not able to find work. Lisa used recently made connections in the adult entertainment field to get work as a booking agent for some of the escorts she had met.

"I did what I had to do," Sloan said in an interview. "I don't talk too much about that.

"There's a lot of money in it and we had the bling and the cash in hand all the time," she said. "I was not going back to that shelter.

"I've had a taste of the bling and I like it."

With Dale back working, Lisa says she has eased back on her work in the "oldest profession" and is again thinking about a writing career.