Missing the mark on homelessness

It should never be OK to sleep on a city sidewalk with cardboard for a blanket

Is it OK to sleep on the sidewalk under a cardboard box?

Or in the flowerbox outside Jackson Square?

That’s the question I’ve been asking people lately in response to the growing number of homeless people living on Hamilton streets. Is this OK with you?

You can’t have missed them, unless you’re so used to the picture you tune them out completely. They congregate outside the Salvation Army on York, across from the Central Public Library. The corner of Bay and King is a favoured spot, as well as the corner of Dundurn and King. But the truth is, you don’t have to travel too far in the city to see it all around you.

The importance of a place to stay is lost on those of us who have always had one. We go to sleep and wake up in a bed, secure in a room, in a house or an apartment. We can keep our food fresh in a fridge or stored in kitchen cupboards. Our clothes, shoes and personal belongings are safe from those who would want to steal them, in closets or dressers or even draped on a chair in a room we call our own. What would you do if you lost your place? Where would you put your stuff ? Where would you lie down and put your head?

People think: that will never happen to me. People also think they’re immune from mental-health challenges, debilitating illnesses or losing their jobs. Until it happens. And when it does, they find themselves falling through the many holes in our social safety net. Unable to stop the fall, they maybe find themselves couch surfing with friends or family, or looking for a spot in the woods to pitch a tent. The street takes the most desperate. Our survival instinct is strong.

The prevalence of mental health and addiction challenges among the homeless is staggering. The opioid crisis has only exacerbated the situation. According to the Hamilton Opioid Information System — yes, that’s how bad it is, there is an information system set up to keep us abreast of the tragedy — last year there were 82-87 deaths from opioid overdose in Hamilton. That’s 72 per cent higher than the Ontario average and a 62 per cent increase over the previous year. Somehow I don’t think that’s the kind of stat we’d like plastered on our welcome signs. Hopefully that will turn around with the new safe injection site, unless the Conservative government steps in and sets us back years in our treatment of addiction.

But it’s not just addiction that puts people on the street. It can be adverse life conditions, piled high with no relief, no family to help cushion the blow of life’s hard knocks, or family that is dangerous and damaging to your psyche, a promising relationship gone terribly wrong, or job loss and financial ruin. It’s mental health, but not necessarily addiction. The doctor shortage makes it worse. With universal health coverage we should all be able to at least seek the advice of a doctor for assistance in managing the psychological and physical effects of adverse life conditions. That’s free to us. The help that’s really needed, the counsellors, social workers, complementary and alternate health providers and maybe even the medication we need to cope is out reach for so many.

Gentrification has its effects on displacing vulnerable people from what were once affordable homes. The fault for this squarely sits on the shoulders of landlords, developers, and investors. Why can’t you invest in affordable housing? Do you really need to squeeze as much money as you possibly can from each square foot? What about the costs to our communities in your clutch for profits? More importantly, why don’t we value social responsibility and “doing the right thing” and the saving of millions of dollars in downstream costs over the immediate gratification of the quick flip and a high return on personal investment?

And City Hall? Well, we can find almost $100,000 in our tight city budget to gift our police with assault rifles, but we can’t find a home for the guy in a cardboard box on the corner? Or the woman sleeping in the flowerbox? Or the thousands of families languishing on affordable housing wait lists? I don’t see the problem the assault rifles will solve. But I do see the problem in a city that budgets more on policing than it does on social services.

So, if you ask me, in a civilized society, it is never OK to sleep on the corner in a cardboard box.