Plight of the Homeless

If the reputation of a country's humane treatment of the unfortunates in its population rested on the quality of care and attention given the increasing numbers of homeless people in Canadian towns and cities, Canada would earn a pitiably failing grade. While governments at every level have been incapable of forming policies and protocols whereby the homeless can be adequately looked after in decent accommodation, with health care and job-training opportunities, people and private agencies in the community have attempted to fill the gaps.

Government, to begin with, must bear some responsibility for the growing numbers of homeless. Where once governments at various levels supported public institutions which looked after the interests of those with impaired mental health, in a downsizing frenzy of hypocrisy the public was informed that it was anti-humane to incarcerate people struggling with issues of mental health. That they would be far better off in the community. As though they would be capable of working and looking after themselves.

Now they wander the streets of the cities as homeless people, befuddled and incapable of looking after their most basic needs. Joined by young runaways, adolescents who have left home to experience freedom from parental authority, and who find themselves trapped in street life. Along with alcoholics and those struggling with drug addictions. Street life becomes their only way of living, and eventually their preferred way of life. They find companionship with one another.

Pilot projects to try to solve the ongoing problems of homelessness in some areas in the United States have been devised and a protocol of assisted housing, public health and social services have seen notable success in weaning people off living on the streets. These initiatives have been seen to be highly successful in improving the health and quality of life of the homeless, offering them some semblance of normalcy.

This intervention has also saved money for governments at various levels, with decreased need for policing and hospital stays. Quite apart from the fact that the homeless are gradually able to achieve a measure of self-respect and worthiness and become truly integrated into the larger society. Yet we remain plagued with a situation that remains unchanged, as we ponder the viability of such intervention.

Canadian winters are hostile and dreadfully unkind to those who live on the streets. Social service agencies, church groups, and concerned citizens try to encourage the homeless to converge on their socially sterile, but functional and safe accommodations, to sleep on cots in their basements or buildings suited to group accommodation through bitterly cold nights.

Soup kitchens offer hot meals to sustain health. Yet there are many homeless people who will not take advantage of those offers. Drugs and alcohol are not permitted in places offering shelter, like the Mission or Salvation Army, or various church basements. And for whatever reason, people often feel safer on their own, on the streets, rather than being thrown together with strangers, resisting proffered help.

And often enough those who resist the help offered by conscientiously thoughtful people concerned for the welfare of these social outcasts, end up dead through misadventure, or the cruelty of a winter night. Like the 47-year-old woman in Vancouver who, having repeatedly refused the invitation of various charities to come in from the cold, in favour of remaining in her own little place on the street.

Workers from a nearby church repeatedly attempted to pry her away from her makeshift shelter. An overturned shopping cart, lined with cardboard. Finally, they gave up, leaving her with a thick quilt, a coat and some hot chocolate. Refusing to give her the candles she also wanted, to stay warm. She refused to go with them to the church because she feared leaving her possessions behind, returning to find them gone.

Many shelters, short of room, refuse to allow their clients to bring along their possessions, including pet dogs. Enough of a reason for those with so little in life, to refuse to accept the charity offered them. In recognizing the limitations that these rules offer to the homeless a new shelter ready to open will drop those exclusions, inviting people to bring along their shopping carts, their pets.

Meanwhile, the woman - whom some who knew her, described as "sweet" and accommodating - had been successful in pleading with a policeman who checked in on her, to leave her with a lighter to light candles she had wheedled from another source. She proceeded to light the candles under the tarp over her shopping cart, then fell asleep.

A passenger in a taxi telephoned 911 after seeing a figure engulfed in flames.