LONG ROAD HOME
An apartment is only the first step in the journey out of homelessness for Terry Weaymouth. He shares his triumphs and his struggles with reporter
In the shadow of a 20-storey financial building in downtown Montreal is a small concrete nook, near the entrance of a loading dock, that Terry Weaymouth affectionately calls “his spot.”
Two years ago, We ay mouth spent every day there. It sheltered him from the rain and snow. Air vents along the wall kept him warm.
At night, the commotion of homeless shelters too hectic for him, he would crawl below a nearby terrasse, set down a yoga mat and rest his head on his backpack.
There, with the noise of the city slowly fading, he could disappear until morning, when a security guard would inevitably wake him up, offer him a cigarette, and ask him to move along. And he would, only to return to his spot and start all over again.
Then a little more than a year ago, Maria Valdes, a 57-year-old real estate broker, spotted him. She was volunteering for a local homeless organization at the time. On Fri days, she brought food to the city’s poorest.
As Valdes handed out soup and sandwiches, she was struck by how articulate and well-mannered Weaymouth was. There was something about his warmth, she’d recall later.
He was in rough shape, his skin dark and thick, his face lined with scars. He was clearly hardened from a life on the street. But when he spoke, he was delicate and polite. And always smiling.
The next week, Valdes returned to volunteer. This time she sought out Weaymouth.
Before long, she started going to see him on her own, outside the frame of any aid organization, bringing him food she bought out of pocket.
Weaymouth, a First Nations man, told her about his troubled life and how he ended up homeless. He also spoke of bold ambitions of starting over.
“I knew I needed to do something,” Valdes says now.
With the help of friends, Valdes began raising money to get Weaymouth off the street. They sold chocolates at work and spread the word.
Last March, they secured him a room in an apartment, gathering enough money to pay for the first three months of his rent.
Their goal was modest yet ambitious. Modest in what they set out to buy for him: new clothes, a sports bag with wheels, a métro pass, a community cafeteria card. Ambitious in what they hoped to accomplish: help him reintegrate into society. “We wanted to give him a chance,” Valdes says. “He deserved to have that opportunity.”
How someone manages to break free from homelessness is unique to each person, experts who work in the field say. But it is always challenging.
Without ongoing support and structure, making the transition is nearly impossible. There’s too much to relearn, too many bearings lost at once — and the fear of failure too present—that the prospectof returning to the street often becomes too strong to ignore.
In 2015, the most recent census of its kind found 3,016 homeless people living in Montreal on one given night.
But the real total is believed to be much higher. Those figures from 2015 don’t take into account the hidden homeless — people staying on friends’ couches or in rooming houses.
Nor do they include people like Weaymouth, newly off the street but living on the brink of homelessness, straddling the line between having a home and not.
At 37, We aymou this desperate to make the transition work. He wants to finally do something meaningful with his life. He dreams of returning to school. And he knows it’s all within reach — if he can overcome the challenges ahead.
We ay mouth steps across his bedroom, a small room in a Côt e-de s- Neig es apartment Val des found for him, and tugs on the curtains to look outside.
Across the street is a row of highend condominiums. Down below, near a métro entrance, two homeless men hold out red paper coffee cups, asking for change.
Weaymouth whispers to himself. Something about that juxtaposition, whether people realize who their neighbours are. He’s been thinking about that a lot lately, about where he fits in the mix.
“I guess I’m kind of in between,” he says. “I’m kind of uncertain.”
He then shakes his head and smiles just a bit, as if realizing something for the first time. Everything he owns fits into this one small room, he says, and every single item has been given to him within the last year.
The lamp near the corner. The row of books that line his desk. The radio next to them. The futon bed he sleeps in and the clothes he wears.
“Every time Ire ada book or make my bed,” Weaymouth says, “every time I come home, I never forget where I was and what brought me here: everyone’s kindness.”
When Valdes and the group first chose to help Weaymouth, the first steps seemed obvious. He had no IDs, so they renewed his medicare card and enrolled him for social assistance.
Then they took him to a doctor. His feet were so calloused and blistered from keeping his boots on for so long outside, he could barely walk. His body was covered in sores from wearing the same damp clothes all the time. His eyes watered from constant exposure to the elements.
But despite all the help and efforts, nearly a year later, the transition has proven more difficult than anyone expected.
Weaymouth lived at his spot for so long, everyone who works in the area knows his name. But at his apartment, he feels abandoned, the anxiety of being isolated too much to handle.
And so almost instinctively, as if lured by his old habits, Weaymouth still returns to his spot every day. He spends more time there than he does at his apartment.
“It’s hard to articulate,” he says, “but I still feel very much alone.”
Successfully transitioning off the street often takes time, experts say, and needs to be taken one step at a time. Setbacks and relapses are to be expected.
Reasons that can lead to homelessness, like financial problems, social isolation and alcohol or drug dependence, do not disappear through housing alone. Nor does simply having a permanent address heal the less quantifiable factors, the psychological wounds and mental health issues that lead so many to lose their homes.
Weaymouth developed a drinking problem as a teenager. It started as a coping mechanism, he says, and continues today. It is nothing he is proud of, but sleeping outside, it helped numb the cold.
And his financial means remain meagre.
Without a bank account, each month he heads to a homeless centre where he can cash his welfare cheque.
After rent, $450, his public transit pass, $83, and his cellphone minutes, $43, he’s left with about $50 for the rest of the month. He mostly shops at dollar stores and uses food banks. At home, he keeps a box of cereal and a loaf of bread in his bedroom, a can of tuna in the kitchen.
In October, moments after cashing his cheque, he was mugged in a park. When he got up from thedeep ga sh bleeding on the back of his head, the money was gone.