No place to shelter

IN THE same week that Port of Spain opened its doors to a glittering array of events marking 60 years of independence, the capital city was also host to a far less glamorous event.

It was hoped it would quietly close a troubling era – but it may simply have shifted a problem elsewhere.

The closure of Riverside Plaza’s Centre for Socially Displaced Persons ends more than three decades of efforts by stakeholders, most notably the Society of St Vincent de Paul, to provide shelter to vulnerable people in the capital.

For almost half of this country’s life as an independent nation, the city has featured this unenviable landmark: a crassly converted white elephant of a multi-storey car park doubling as a halfway house.

Sitting smack at the entrance to the central business district, it has long been a sore spot, contrasting sharply with the city’s developed-country, metropolitan ambitions, and itself a relic of an abandoned plan to develop that area of the city.

In 1991, the society agreed with the state to use the centre, which could hold 200 people, as a “temporary” rehabilitation facility.

This reflected realities then – and still now – relating to the large numbers of street dwellers who occupied various berths throughout the capital, with groupings making public spaces such as parks their regular home.

The Ministry of Social Development and Family Services has now decided to close the shelter and temporarily relocate about 90 people. Some left voluntarily, some have been taken to the homes of friends and family, but many declined alternative placement and have settled once more on the pavements.

Meanwhile, the ministry says it is at work to create “suitable alternative accommodation as part of its continuum of care for socially-displaced persons.” Previously, some had been moved to various charities and community-care programmes.

But merely moving socially displaced people out of sight is no guarantee of progress.

This is not helped by the inherent challenge that some street dwellers, long accustomed to that life, wish to remain on the streets.

Still, that the shelter remained in place for so long is in a way testimony to the efforts of charities and the state at least to try to make headway with this problem.

Whether such efforts have been optimally effective is open to question. There are, for instance, reports of an impasse over the reporting of finances. The manager of an NGO involved in the shelter and the city’s mayor wasted time and energy locking horns over access to it.

The problem is not unique to Port of Spain or to TT: all over the world, authorities realise this is an issue that requires a range of options.

We hope the closure of the shelter will open the door to a renewed collective effort at managing this aspect of city life.