What does homeless look like? ‘ It looks like Freddy’
Freddy Boyd lived on the streets. And it killed him.
Homeless and suffering from schizophrenia, Boyd contracted pneumonia that caused his death.
On the day he died, a home of his own was within reach.
“He was about to move into a Niagara Regional Housing unit,” said St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik, who was among the hundreds of people who attended Boyd’s funeral on Jan. 15.
“This is the heartbreaking side of it. When we talk about waiting lists, and there is a waiting list for 11 years for certain types of housing in our community of Niagara — not just St. Catharines but Niagara — we have to ask what does that 11 years look like? “It looks like Freddy.”
For local social agencies and his family, getting Boyd housed was a Sisyphean task. No matter what they tried, Boyd always ended up back on the street. His sister Violet Bye would take him in when she could and he even once had an apartment through social housing.
But the schizophrenia that made him prone to violent fits of rage was always there, forever ready to ruin even the most tentative steps to a better life.
“That’s the thing with the mental health of an individual,” Sendzik said. “No matter how much love surrounds that person, they still make choices none of us can fully understand.”
His sister Darlene BoydDe Napoli said the problems began in childhood and lasted a lifetime. As a young girl, she didn’t understand what schizophrenia is or how it could drive him to violence. But she understood her mother’s tears.
“Those kinds of things are really deep and painful memories,” she said. “My poor mother could not do anything for him. He had his own mind, even until the day he died.”
For Sendzik, Boyd’s story is a reminder that the community must do a better job of helping its most vulnerable residents. Understanding Boyd’s story is a step in that direction, he said.
“The more we understand the history of the person we see asking for money or sleeping on a bench, it’s ‘ OK, this is a real person with a story behind them.’ When you understand the story you understand better how the community can help and have more respect for the individual.”
Boyd was worn down by decades on the street. Although many who knew “Fast Freddy” say he was a tough customer — his small, slender frame hid an unexpected ferocity and strength — there is no punching your way out of pneumonia.
Boyd- DeNapoli said her brother contracted the infection about year ago. He recovered to a point, but the street is no place to recoup from pneumonia. His condition worsened during the December cold snap. On Jan. 11 at age 64 and with his sisters at his side, Boyd died in hospital.
Niagara’s social safety net is still not robust enough to find solutions for someone like Boyd, whose extreme poverty and serious mental illness make him difficult to house.
“He isn’t the only one,” said Betty- Lou Souter, CEO of Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold.
The way the social housing and mental health system work is a catch- 22 when it comes to people like Boyd. They cannot be forced into housing, yet they may not be able make choices in their own best interest.
Although Boyd suffered from a serious mental illness, he was not a direct threat to anyone. Police would sometimes have to bring him in during an outburst, but he never stayed in jail long.
And Souter says while a mentally ill person living on the streets in a Canadian winter could be considered a risk to themselves, by law they aren’t.
“The bottom line is you cannot make someone do something they don’t want to do,” she said. “So unless they present a danger to themselves or to others, or break the law, you cannot make them come inside.”
For people of Boyd’s generation, harsh experiences with the medical system — which in his case included repeated electric shock therapy — makes convincing them to come in from the cold difficult. He’d routinely refuse medical help, and rarely took medicine prescribed for his schizophrenia.
Souter said the days of lining up patients to shock their brains are long over, but the younger generation dealing with mental health and homelessness don’t necessarily have it any easier.
“There are more supports for them. On the other hand, if they are on the streets, they fall into illegal drugs pretty easily, which creates its own problems,” she said.
Souter said no matter the extenuating circumstances exacerbating a person’s mental illness, it is not good enough to simply put a roof over their head.
When people like Boyd are housed they need intensive, ongoing support to keep them there. Currently, the social housing system doesn’t do that well.
“To me, that is the humanizing side of this moment,” said Sendzik, who raised Boyd’s case at a Niagara Regional Housing board meeting last week. “If that housing had been built and was ready five years ago, if we had access to hard services for critical housing, would Freddy have been where he was the last five years or the last two years? Would he have got pneumonia?”
Boyd- DeNapoli said she hopes her brother’s story will spur people to change the system. The large turnout for his funeral showed her that people understood her brother was not just what his schizophrenia sometimes made him do.
“I saw how many people took time to come and it really was remarkable,” she said. “I think it’s because Freddy has been on the streets for so very long, longer than a lot of them, that everybody knew him and had respect. Because when he wasn’t having schizophrenia episodes, he was the kindest, most gentle soul. He was so polite and so grateful and so appreciative of any little thing people did.”