ALL I WANT IS A ROOM SOMEWHERE

Homelessness is a significant issue in Canada, affecting many people across the country. In Canada, approximately 235,000 people experience homelessness in any given year. On any given night, around 25,000 to 35,000 people are homeless. Image credit: *MART PRODUCTION* on Pexels.

By CHANDRAKANT SHAH, MD

Many of us read about or see images of unhoused people living on the street in makeshift shelters, wonder who these people are, shrug, and carry on, without thinking much more about them.

I used to be like them until I encountered some of our fellow citizens who touched my consciousness and prodded me to learn and do something about them. One of the first lessons: The term “homeless persons” is used in place of “homeless” to denote individuals or persons who are homeless due to their unfortunate circumstance and not to stigmatize by using a term to describe the circumstance of being homeless, thus bringing humanity, compassion and empathy towards their situation.

In the winter of 1995, I took the subway to work on a freezing morning. No one was sitting in the seat next to one man. Even though the train was full, the other passengers were shunning him for his appearance. Not dressed for the weather he was obviously on the train to keep himself warm.

I recalled the trip back from India with my wife and one-year-old son in 1970. As London airport was under a heavy fog, many flights including ours were diverted to Manchester. With the influx of thousands of unannounced passengers, the airport ran out of food and benches to sit on. We spread newspapers on the floor to sit or sleep on and lined up for soup and buns the Salvation Army provided.

I decided to sit next to the man on the subway, reasoning that he was just another human being whose situation I did not know. While we did not converse, we exchanged glances through the corners of our eyes, acknowledging each other’s presence. While leaving the subway car, I asked whether he was hungry and would accept some of the food I was carrying. He nodded and I noticed the happiness on his face. As I am from India, I have seen abject poverty and homelessness in the past. However, at the time, I may have seen it as a ‘part of everyday life’ and my inability to bring about social change. Having been a part of Canadian society for over thirty years by then, I felt I had changed and was able to see what was ‘invisible’ in past. This was the first time I actually became aware of the state of an individual who is unhoused.

A few days later, I saw another homeless person – this time, a mother in her twenties with a baby sitting at the subway entrance. How was a country like Canada, with so much wealth, unable to provide aid for its underprivileged citizens?

I began to reflect on unhoused individuals in Canadian society. These two incidents also happened to coincide with an increase in panhandling in Toronto due to the 1995 economic downturn and a large public debate about the increasing number of ‘squeegee kids’ in the city. As a professor, I studied people who are unhoused by reviewing articles about them but realized that the issue needed a more human connection or what I like to call a ‘heart and soul connect’ with the plight of the unhoused people – beyond statistics and prognostications.

I decided that the best way to understand and develop an emotional connection with and empathy for the unhoused persons was to interact with them directly and hear their stories. I strongly believe that the effectiveness of advocacy is more credible when one can narrate one’s stories from his or her first-hand experience rather than cite statistics. To take this forward, I decided to work at a food bank as many of their clients are unhoused. I was acquainted with Gerard Kennedy, head of several food banks in Toronto (many years later, he was a contestant for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada) and he arranged for me to work at one of the largest food banks giving me a four-hour shift every Saturday morning.

On one of my shifts, a man came in asking for pears. Unfortunately, the food bank distributed only nonperishable food items. Curious about his demand’s specificity and his somewhat desperate demeanour, I asked him why he wanted pears so badly. “It’s my six-year-old’s birthday, and I promised her fresh fruit,” he said. A parent’s love for a child transcends every limitation. I felt overwhelmed by the father’s desperate attempt to please his daughter and my powerlessness in helping him do so that day. That memory is still vividly etched in my mind.

After three months at the food bank, I felt that it was time for me to move to a setting where I could witness unhoused individuals’ health issues. I read an article about a medical clinic in a men’s homeless shelter (Seaton House) looking for a physician to help. The shelter could house 400 men, and the then physician, (late) Dr. Robert Frankford, a past member of the Ontario provincial parliament, could not handle the workload by himself. He knew of me as a professor, so I felt comfortable calling him to offer my services one day a week. For three months I worked there, helping the shelter’s patients with their physical, emotional and social ailments.

One winter morning, a man who had a mental health issue came to the clinic. He had been wandering the streets barefoot the previous night and had severe frostbite on his feet. He had completely lost the thick skin of the soles, exposing the muscles and bones of his feet. This was another moving moment and perhaps the most illuminating in understanding the health consequences of being unhoused.

I also worked as a volunteer for the Street Patrol program run by the Anishnawbe Health Toronto clinic, catering to mainly Indigenous homeless people. The Street Patrol would go every night in a van through the areas where Toronto’s homeless population lived – under bridges, abandoned warehouses and public parks. We distributed sandwiches, soup, blankets, shoes and socks, and I also provided essential primary medical care out of the van.

During my attempts to understand the plight of the homeless person, I came across a homeless woman running away from domestic abuse.

She came into my clinic, yelling and demanding to see the doctor. I heard the commotion, came out, and seeing the distraught woman, asked the receptionist not to fuss about registration and invited her to come with me to my office.

She stood in front of my chair, opened the top two buttons of her blouse and asked me to look at her chest. I noticed a perfect circular second-degree burn, about five centimetres in diameter just above her breast. I asked her how it happened and she said she’d spilled scalding coffee. Not believing her explanation, I asked again what had happened. Upset by my insistence, she exclaimed, “I told you it was hot coffee!”

I told her, “I am your doctor, and it is okay to tell me the truth”. Suddenly, she lost her balance and fell. I tried to catch her, but because of her weight and height, I could not manage, and we both fell. We sat on the ground, and she cried for almost five minutes while I comforted her. She then told me that two days earlier she had an argument with her partner, and in his anger, he scorched her with a propane torch. She left home and had been on the street for the past two days and nights. She also revealed that she was hospitalized a year ago in another city for a month with a head injury leading to a coma. She told the hospital staff it was due to a fall when it was due to a blunt instrument that her partner used to hit her.

It broke my heart to hear her story and to think of the ever-increasing number of women who end up homeless after escaping domestic violence.

All these experiences helped me gain a true understanding of people who are homeless beyond their statistical profiles.

Let me describe the magnitude of the problem.

Homelessness is a significant issue in Canada, affecting many people across the country.

In Canada, approximately 235,000 people experience homelessness in any given year.

On any given night, around 25,000 to 35,000 people are homeless.

On a single day in 2018, more than 25,216 individuals across 61 communities were reported to be experiencing homelessness.

The causes of homelessness include poverty, changes in the housing market and changing delivery systems for mental health services. As a result, homeless Canadians include increasing numbers of women and children and other groups in special circumstances including adolescents, persons with mental illness, and Indigenous people.

The Federal Library of Parliament’s 1994 paper on homelessness describes three categories: chronic, periodic, and temporary homelessness.

Persons facing chronic homelessness are estimated to make up 20-40 per cent of those using emergency shelters and hostels and are typically socially marginalized people, often with substance abuse or other psychiatric conditions.

By contrast, persons facing periodic homelessness generally leave home because of a crisis such as domestic violence or abuse but may return to such homes after periods in shelters or on the streets.

The last group, persons facing temporary homelessness, comprises those who lose their shelter due to extreme catastrophic events such as fire or flood, hospitalization, or increasingly, unemployment leading to eviction or foreclosure. In recent years we have witnessed extreme weather events due to climate change causing an increase in forest fires and rainstorms resulting in the temporary evacuation of the population in northern Canada. This has been highlighted by recent fires wiping out one-third of the homes in Jasper, Alberta, and extensive destruction of the town of Lytton in the British Columbia. With increasing influx of refugees, we also recently witnessed temporary homelessness in Toronto and Montreal.

The stereotypical homeless person is generally thought to be a single alcoholic or possibly drug-using male. The reality of today’s homeless persons is different with more mothers and children among the homeless, shelters increasingly functioning as longer-stay housing, and an atrophied range of housing options for people marginalized from housing markets. In addition, as persons in special circumstances make up an increasing proportion of the homeless, meeting their housing needs requires more of increasingly scarce resources. There are persons with mental illness, street youth, families with children and Indigenous People.

Efforts to address homelessness often focus on providing stable, safe, and permanent housing, along with support services to help individuals regain stability and independence. The Canadian government has implemented several initiatives to combat homelessness, focusing on providing stable housing and support services. These initiatives reflect the government’s commitment to reducing homelessness and supporting vulnerable populations.

There are also several religious and nonprofit voluntary organizations that are actively involved in providing shelter and other necessary services to homeless people.

While these initiatives are needed, we as fellow citizens of homeless people can also do something within our capacity.

For example, Gyan Jain used to provide vegetarian meals for 700-800 people once a month at Good Shepherd Home for homeless people in Toronto for several years. His family members and friends cooked and fed the homeless people.

Another group, Sushil Sanjha Parivar led by Prabha Jain and her four friends and supported by over 170 donor members, provides 700 meals a month to homeless shelters and isolated seniors. They also provide blankets, hats, gloves, etc., in winter.

Homelessness is a community issue and we all should not only be aware of it but should help our disadvantaged fellow citizens in whatever way we can.

SENIOR MOMENT

ALL I WANT IS A ROOM SOMEWHERE