Heartbreak on our streets

JUDY V KUBLALSINGH

A HOMELESS person lying on cardboard or a piece of blanket, rummaging through garbage for food, plastic, anything, is more than about people living on the streets. It is about a condition that equates to being helpless.

Right now in San Fernando, our vagrants (yes, they too are ours, our nationals) are grabbing any item of food that you are willing to deliver. Under stay-at-home orders, with food businesses closed, many who relied on the goodwill of passer- bys to provide the occasional meal are going without. This situation, I know, cannot be confined to San Fernando.

Everyday, tons of physical waste are disposed of. Many would easily put our vagrants in that category of useless, dirty, infected things better disposed of. The worst of humankind; let’s not forget those despicable acts by army officers who should know better – to further dehumanise. Harass them, steal from them, abuse them, poke fun at them, torture them, and maybe they will move along, or disappear.

But if you talk to people on the streets, a few things emerge. They too have their stories. From the 50-something-year-old woman who said she did not want to be a burden to an only, also impoverished daughter with children to mind and an unsympathetic husband, to the old man who lost his home to family members, no desire to fight for things. They too have their pride. With no money, no means to earn it, they spiralled into that other life.

Whether we’re looking at mild or severe mental illness, addictions to drugs or alcohol, even the most hardcore addicts I’m sure have their untold story. How do people in these states, with families who have given up on them, navigate the maze of programmes and procedures intended to help? The same bureaucracy that frustrates all of us will utterly stymie those who are barely literate, depressed, or with mental handicaps or drug-addled brains.

In 2018 I entered into discussions with the mayor of San Fernando with a view to initiating a meals programme to aid the poor, including the homeless. I sought the corporation’s permission to have access to and to utilise the San Fernando Centre for Socially Displaced Persons at Kings Wharf.

This facility, already equipped with kitchen, showers, tables, chairs, etc, was established under the former mayorship of Kazim Hosein. The centre had been designed to provide meals as well as medical and psychosocial assistance to the socially displaced of San Fernando. After years it remained unused.

After approximately one year of discussions, meetings and the like, it was finally agreed that the project, intended to be funded by members of the legal profession, would be facilitated by the provision of two staff members by the corporation who would be responsible for physical co- ordination of the programme, namely the distribution of meals at the centre.

Confirmation of these arrangements was received by letter dated February 4, 2019, from the office of the mayor. The letter further acknowledged, “This charitable venture is long outstanding and the committee is committed and determined to provide this service to genuinely needy persons by way of provision of meals to street dwellers and families in need.”

My letter to colleagues seeking financial support acknowledged the limitations of such a programme. To quote, “We recognise that this venture does not in any way present a solution to the various and myriad issues that concern the homeless including the need for shelter, medical and psychiatric evaluation, and other forms of assistance.

“We expect that this effort would be an interim measure to address an immediate need whilst presenting an opportunity to present a more comprehensive plan to the board, including legislative changes that may be required to treat with the needs of the homeless.”

Put simply, better something than nothing.

After much time, effort, energy expended in sourcing families deserving of assistance, mobilising attorneys to assist financially with the project, sourcing caterers, etc, guess what happened?

Nothing. Absolutely and disappointingly, not a single thing. The mayor ceased all communications, calls to the corporation went unanswered, no explanation, excuse, the minutest courtesy extended. A colossal waste of time, effort, energy. How helpful such a venture could have been in these times!

It is obvious that the problem of vagrancy is a complex one. More is needed than just moving the problem along the street. But after 58 years of paddling our own canoes, is it really impossible to establish and maintain facilities to separately house the “healthy” homeless, the hard cases or the hardest-to-house cases or even some form of combined housing with in-house or out-house medical and mental health treatment services?

Interestingly, these are the people that Jesus viewed with the greatest compassion. He loved the alienated, the outcasts, the lepers, those on the fringes because “they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” He too, during His ministry years, lived a nomadic lifestyle: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.”

Maybe, just maybe, with enough compassion, action, activism, the homeless too can take up their beds and walk into a better life in this world. In the interim, they too need to be fed.