To the editor:
I understand that many readers will take what I am saying today, the wrong way. We’re all human and we all have our own opinions about life on our little green planet and how to improve it. I am totally okay with people disagreeing with me, in fact, I invite civil, thoughtful debate.
Imagine being a single male, trying to survive on minimum wage in Ontario today. Even if he lives in an all-inclusive room, his income will barely cover his rent, food, and basic needs. Any aspirations he has of improving his life will slowly evaporate into thin air as he plugs along.
Maybe he has dreamt of having a family, a car, a home, maybe just a pet, or a two-day camping trip to a local lake. Life goals, even the small ones, start to seem unattainable. He’s discouraged, his self-esteem is low to nil, and to top it all off, he is on the verge of losing his job and his room because he caught a bug and was off work for a week. Without sick days he is now out a full week of pay and has no idea how he will pay his rent this month.
He is already at high risk of losing his room because he is two months behind on his rent. His old clunker car broke 2 months ago and because this is his only means of getting to work on time, he had to use his rent money to repair it. Our imaginary single man ends up on the street, homeless, and now unemployed because as his boss put it “you can’t come in here looking and smelling like a bum.”
Imagine a young single indigenous woman just out of college. She was at the top of her class all through college and is hopeful, rightly so, that she has done what she needed to do to secure a career and reasonably comfortable life, she is on her way, and she is happy.
One night shortly after graduation, she is celebrating with friends, something is slipped into her drink, and she is left unconscious, raped, and beaten in a ditch just down the street from where the party happened. She has never been able to “snap out of it” as everyone tells her to. She starts to drink and use drugs, anything to dull the emotional and psychological pain that is a constant now.
She has no income and her parents won’t allow her to come home because they raised her “to be independent and strong”. She can’t bring herself to tell her story, yet again, to another therapist because, even though it is now 2020, she still feels like what happened was her own fault. Our imaginary young woman’s bright future quickly dims and fades away out of her reach. She can barely drag herself off her last friend’s sofa to run a brush through her hair. She is now homeless, addicted, and making money for drugs from the very thing that stole her dreams, sex.
Imagine a young family, high school graduates, with two young children, both working for little more than minimum wage.
By the time they pay the rent for their two-bedroom attic apartment, daycare, car insurance, clothing (the basics), they are running a deficit every month. They know they should have tenant’s insurance; however, that is a luxury they simply can’t afford. The unthinkable happens and they are left on the street due to a fire in another apartment in their building.
The rent they were paying for the past 3 years was doable, barely, but now there is no place to rent that they can even come close to affording. They do not qualify for government housing because they make too much and landlords, who typically won’t speak to potential tenants in person (online applications only) sift through the applications for tenants who have good credit, proof of employment (with enough income to support a minimum of $1,800 per month for rent, plus utilities), and excellent rental references.
Needless to say, only “the cream of the crop” will be granted a viewing.
Now we have a homeless family. The chances are good that they don’t have a family member who is in a position to take in a whole family. The agency that is providing emergency housing is pressuring them to find a place to rent and they are living in a tiny motel room with two small children, a microwave, and a bar fridge.
The children are traumatized from being pulled from their beds in the middle of the night when the fire occurred and don’t understand where their kitty has gone or why their beloved dog can’t stay with them. They are having a lot of trouble sleeping, as are their parents. Getting to work becomes harder and harder.
Seeking a brief reprieve from the situation, they decide to spend a weekend in the country with a family member. Now they are in violation of the rules for their temporary housing and are told to leave. They are now truly homeless, living in their car, desperate, unhappy, and discouraged, worried that child services will apprehend their children; a very real possibility.
These are just three of the scenarios that render people homeless, three scenarios that could have been prevented, hence my claim that prevention is the best medicine.
All of these tragedies could have been averted if services had been in place to assist them where they were.
Our single male could have thrived with a subsidy that topped up his wages to an income that allowed him some breathing room, or hope if you will.
Our young female college graduate could have pulled herself out of the depths of depression and PTSD, if she had been afforded a living wage, temporary housing, and quality therapy; quite simply, time, to recover.
And lastly, our young family would not have found themselves living in their car, if the income level to qualify for government housing was such that a working poor family could qualify.
I have only skimmed the surface in terms of reasons why people become homeless, there are countless ways life can pull the rug out from under any one of us. We need to have programs and services in place that will prevent people from being lost and forgotten, accused, ridiculed, and stigmatized for becoming homeless.
Please remember, when you see a man sleeping in the doorway of a downtown business, or when you’re doing your best not to make eye contact with the girl begging for money on the median on your weekly trip to Walmart, or you discover a homeless encampment behind the mall, they’re people just like you. They had hopes and dreams that almost certainly did not involve shooting up in an alleyway.
No one chooses that life. If we, as a society, would insist that our governments practice prevention, as opposed to damage control, which has been proven over and over again does not work, we would see our homeless numbers greatly reduced.
Rita Hamilton
North Bay
