They Are Us
For the last, oh, fifty years, I have hated when ‘They’, the street people, approach me on the street asking for money. Please just leave me in my private little bubble. I gave at the office. I can’t take on the issue of poverty in my city right now. It’s too big and too depressing. I’m busy trying to …… (whatever my current obsession is).
But really. When you think about it, there is no ‘They’. My story here is my process of rediscovering that fact.
When the City closed the local homeless encampment I became angry at the city officials and worried and concerned about people in my neighbourhood sleeping in the cold and wet and having no washrooms or shelter. I was horrified and was sure that by shutting the encampment conditions worsened for people. It was like kicking someone who is down, further down! Cruel. Letters were written.
My walks in my downtown neighbourhood turned into patrols where I was silently accusing the City of neglect and cruelty. And so frustrated at the slow arrival of any amenities or help for them. (There were letters!)
Time to start learning about what was really going on. In my readings I discovered that the human right to encampments wasn’t held up in the courts. And the rights to toilets, water, and shelter were often not applied out here on the streets.
Everyone said it was ‘complex’. I started to tire of that word. (It’s not rocket science! Let’s get them inside for some rest and feed them and give them a shower.) The federal government provided warming centres. The provincial government worked hard on temporary housing and better help for the mentally ill.
The city government is studying providing temporary shelters and produced a 62 page Health and Housing Task Force Plan. There are some really good words in this plan. For example — “Challenge stigma and change negative public perceptions…….” and “Leverage a human rights approach…..”
Meanwhile on the streets of downtown Nanaimo there is a daily ritual of moving people on and confiscating their belongings. It’s awful. It’s brutal. And disheartening for all involved.
This, in my view is a big and significant disconnect. Pretty words in plans and little to no action on the street. As a person who loves her downtown Nanaimo neighbourhood and feels compassion for marginalized people it’s maddening.
Meanwhile, last week, at a Zoom book launch on the topic of homelessness and social isolation a young man, Michael Mair, who is an outreach worker now, but was homeless at one time, attended. He was asked what can a person do to help? His response was basically advising people to connect on a human level with a street person. A street person, like all of us, needs sleep. A street person, like all of us, needs a friend.
So — I put a toonie in my pocket. Can you say paradigm shift? Within an hour, on a walk downtown, I had given my toonie to a woman who had been panhandling on the waterfront and was told to move on. On another day I helped a gal who fell into a snow bank gather up her beer, set her walker up and get on a bus. (If you’re going to fall in a snowbank and have a walker always do this when a retired Personal Support Worker is walking by). On another day I checked with the warming centre staff on what to do about the two passed out teenagers on the corner. And on another day I donated to a local street poet.
This came with a feeling of relief. I am now walking the streets open to what I might find and seeing it all, warts and all as it were, much more calmly, without fear or judgment.
As the North Park Community Association in Victoria have stated— the unsheltered people are our neighbours. This group found the strength and vision to avoid the trap of treating struggling people as ‘other’.
So, really there is no ‘They’. There are only individual people each with their own very personal struggle and story. And connecting feels way better. Grab your toonie. Make it personal. Because it is.
There is only ‘We’.