Photo by Thomas Le on Unsplash

Let’s be clear. Homelessness does not belong in our backyards. It does not belong on our streets. It actually doesn’t belong in our society.

Homelessness doesn’t create better communities.

Not having people experiencing homelessness does.

The challenge is, when we think of homelessness, we see the person as the ‘homeless entity’ and don’t see the social issues beneath the stereotypes that keep us believing that speaking out against the person who is experiencing homelessness is actually making a difference.

That’s not how homelessness ends.

Homelessness ends when we as a society take better care of those who do not have the same privilege or same opportunities as we do to create better in their lives.

Homelessness ends when we stop targeting people and start addressing social issues that continue to create the very thing we don’t want on our streets or in our backyards, homelessness.

Because here’s the deal. Someone experiencing homelessness doesn’t want to be in your backyard. They don’t want to be on our streets. Being belittled and demeaned, ignored and shamed is not fun.

Years ago I got stuck in New York City because when I tried to fly out, the attendant noticed I’d entered on an expired passport. Yup. It was a surprise to me too but somehow, my expired passport had passed through two scanners and four different sets of hands as I exited Canada. And nobody noticed.

“Sorry, I can’t let you go home,” the attendant informed me as I tried to check into my flight. “You’ll have to go to the Canadian Consulate and get an extension so you can fly home tomorrow.”

Needless to say, I was the first person in line when the Consulate opened. Except. It didn’t matter. They didn’t give extensions and as my valid passport wasn’t lost (it was at home in Calgary), they couldn’t issue me a new one.

For 24 hours I waited for my passport to arrive. And while I waited I aimlessly wandered the streets of NYC. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything but wait for my passport and hope it got there without incident.

I eventually made it home but not without feeling traumatized by the whole incident. Yes, it was my mistake that lead to my being stuck in New York but there were a whole bunch of contributors to the saga of my not being able to make it home as planned.

Now, imagine if you made a mistake and the penalty was losing your home. Maybe you lost your job and didn’t have any savings. Maybe your spouse left you and cleaned out your bank account. Maybe, in the process, you got to feeling so badly about yourself and your life, you turned to substances to numb your pain. Believe me, I drank a fair amount of wine while I waited for my passport to arrive if only to quell my fears, no matter how unrealistic, that I’d never make it home.

See, people aren’t homeless because they aren’t willing to change, or to address their mistakes, or let go of the substances that are helping them cope. They’re homeless because the resources they need to create change in their lives are not easily/readily available. Like the Consulate office that didn’t provide passport extensions, doors keep closing in their face, and despair keeps rising with every ‘no’. Eventually, the despair outweighs their hope and they sink listlessly to the ground, letting go of any hope they’ll make it out of the darkness that is homelessness. Getting up again becomes harder and harder until one day, up is no longer an option. Staying down just hurts less.

And that’s the challenge. The longer someone remains in homelessness, the greater the impact on their resiliency, health and mental well-being. Not only must they face the challenges of finding their way home, they must deal with the mental and health issues that have arisen because of long-term exposure to the toxic stress and trauma of homelessness.

Homelessness hurts. People. Families. Communities. Society.

Let’s stop blaming the people and start doing the things that ensure people don’t fall through the cracks because there are lots of exists leading away from the danger of homelessness before they fall.

Let’s stop blaming and shaming the people. Let’s start looking at our systems and how we can make them better so they open doors, not close them.

Let’s ensure our social services are deep enough and rich enough to give those with limited options enough supports so that if they do fall into a hole, they have enough resources to climb out before they get trapped in homelessness.

Let’s speak up to create a more fair and equitable society where those on the margins don’t get locked out of possibility for a better life simply because they never had the coin to pay the entrance fee to a better future in the first place.

Yesterday, in a comment on my post, To Be Happy, We Need Boundaries, Mark Kolke wrote,

“Kids without clear lines wander/experiment in ways that can lead to confusion and unhealthy behaviour […]

We all want to do good but don’t always do good – so it is important we have a deep early grounding in what is OK vs. what we should have twinges of discomfort about. These things, clear or fuzzy, stay with us all our lives.”

Every day at the family emergency shelter where I work, I see this statement in action.

Kids under stress doing things kids under stress do.

Add in stressed parents and the challenge becomes even greater. How do you cope effectively with your children’s under stress behaviours when you are experiencing extreme stress too?

Being in an emergency shelter is stressful for everyone, so there is little opportunity for the stress to be eased. Thus, little opportunity for the kids to not be doing things kids do under stress.

The brain science is simple. The solution isn’t.

Stress impairs a child’s brain development.

Continual stress creates toxic stress = compromised brain development

(factor in)

human growing process,

(end result)

Emotional, mental, physical impoverishment into teenage years and adulthood.

We can’t end adult homelessness if we don’t end homelessness for children.

A family emergency shelter is not the problem. Nor is it the solution.

A stable, predictable home environment is the solution, but how do you create ‘home’ when the parents themselves have never had the benefit of an environment conducive to healthy brain development?

See, that’s the crux of it. For many of the families we serve at the shelter, poverty is an intergenerational cycle. They have never known anything other than the stress of living in a home where everyone is struggling to make ends meet, lessen the pressure of never having enough and coping with the instability and limitations that come with parents under stress.

What parents do. Children do.

Every parent wants to do what is right and best for their children. Every parent wants to ‘do better’. But, when your starting point is so far below the poverty line, you can’t see beyond the stress of never having enough, it becomes even more daunting to rise above the line to do better for your children.

I wish some days I had a magic wand that would heal all the wounds we cannot see but are so clearly evident in the behaviours of the children we see at the shelter.

I don’t have a magic wand.

What I do have is the opportunity to create better so that those families who do come to the emergency shelter for support, find a more inviting path out of the stress of poverty and  homelessness into a world that is more supportive of their desire to provide a better world for their children.

Namaste.

I was in Vancouver over the weekend visiting my daughter, her husband and my grandson. He’s 8 months old, his life a beautiful big slate of possibilities not yet explored or even imagined.

Three weeks ago, my daughter and her family, along with 43 other tenants who lived in the same apartment building in downtown Vancouver, were summarily evicted the day after a fire destroyed 10 units completely and caused extensive damage in the building.

My daughter and her husband had insurance. They have family they can stay with while searching for a new place. They have the means to afford to find and move into a new place, and they have the resilience that comes from a lifetime of relative privilege that has given them emotional reserves to fall back on to hold them up as they journey through these difficult days post fire.

So many others in the building don’t have those same opportunities. They are senior’s, single mom’s and dad’s faced with enormous damages and losses plus the challenge of having to find a place to live in Canada’s second most expensive renter’s market.

At the family emergency homeless shelter where I work, families arrive at our doors every day seeking shelter after a housing crisis has hit.

Like my daughter and her neighbours, they didn’t plan on the crisis and are doing whatever they can to weather the storm. In this case, bringing their family to an emergency shelter. What is essential to the families we serve is what is essential to my daughter and her neighbours – finding safe, temporary shelter while they seek new housing. Housing that is safe and sustainable. Housing where they can once again be at home in that place where their stories of new possibilities begin.

Everyday families come to the emergency shelter seeking shelter. Like my daughter and her family who are staying at his parents, or their neighbours who are staying with family, in motels or on friend’s couches, the shelter is not their home. It is the place they are staying as they navigate their path back home.

As my daughter and I wandered the streets of Vancouver, checking out shops for furniture and baby supplies for their new home, we talked about the unexpectedness of this event in their lives and its impact. They are moving to a new neighbourhood. Her son will no longer be swimming every week at the Y around the corner or sitting in the park with her across the street watching the puppies play or the birds in the trees.

“Will my son remember what happened?” my daughter wondered. “I just want to get him back into a routine. Get him settled in his own room.”

It has not been easy, but they are doing their best.

I am sure her thoughts are similar to those of the parents who come to the shelter. How much will their children remember? How will they be impacted? How do they get them settled quickly in a new home?

Faced with the crisis of being without a home, they are doing their best to ensure their families are safe. On their journey home, some people will need a little bit of extra help and support to make it happen.  But no matter what, every family needs a place to call home for their children where a better future is always possible.

It is easy in homelessness for those of us looking ‘in’ to think the crisis is all the fault of the adults involved. That it is their choices that caused the problem.

No one caused the fire that resulted in my daughter and her neighbours being evicted, and not having insurance is not the problem either. The same is true of the families who come to a family emergency shelter. No one human caused their homelessness. Lack of a social network, lack of social policies that protect the vulnerable from greed and the man-made attributes that contribute to a highly-overpriced housing market are all players. Our human condition’s need to accumulate wealth, to build bigger and more without thought for those who are not able to take advantage of the same opportunities are also contributors.

And the part that is so daunting, that makes it so hard to witness children experiencing homelessness day after day is the fact, it is the children who pay the ultimate price. They are the one’s who suffer the consequences.

Homelessness is not the problem, just as those experiencing it are not the problem.

We all are contributors and benefactors of its root causes. We all buy into and pay forward the creation of this state called homelessness through the things we do to create ‘better’ in our own worlds that have unintended consequences, and sometimes intended consequences, in another’s world. In our complicity, whether overt or covert through our silence, we are all impacting the futures of the children who are its innocent victims.

________________________________________

If you would like to help the families who were impacted by the Thurlow Street Fire that resulted in my daughter and her family and neighbour’s evictions, you can support their GoFundMe campaign HERE.

Photo by Hajran Pambudi on Unsplash

When my daughters were pre-teens I decided to volunteer with an organization that worked with troubled teens.

One of my first meetings with a director of one of their programs was at a building where they provided short-term housing for youth in crisis because of relationships at home. On this day, as I walked up the stairs towards the building, a young girl was exiting. She saw me, stopped and asked me where I was going.

“I’m going to meet someone,” I replied.

She grabbed one of my hands, dug her nails into the flesh and stated forcefully, “You can’t go in there.”

As calmly as I could, I looked into her eyes and said, “Please let go of my hand.”

She kept digging her nails into my flesh so deeply she drew blood. And all the while she kept looking into my eyes and repeated, “You can’t go in there.”

I calmly kept looking into her eyes as I repeated, “Please let go of my hand.”

She paused, looked at me and I repeated, “Please let go of my hand.”

Finally, she did.

She walked away and I walked into the building.

Shaken by the encounter, I told the man I was meeting with what had happened.

He sighed and smiled sadly and told me that she had just been informed she was going home that afternoon. She didn’t want to and had probably done what she did to draw attention to herself and to create a situation where they wouldn’t let her leave yet.

How tragic that home did not feel like a safe haven for her. How sad she wanted to stay and not return to her family.

I’ve thought about that young woman many times over the intervening 20 years since that incident. I’ve wondered what happened to her. Where she ended up. Did she have a safe, secure home today?

Yesterday at a meeting, we were asked to consider the question, “What does ‘homefullness’ mean to you?”

Is ‘homefullness the opposite of ‘homelessness’? As in, instead of being considered ‘less than’ because you don’t have a home, you’re full of possibilities and potential because you have a home.

For me, it’s a word bigger than just a place to lay your head, to come home to everyday. It’s about belonging. Security. Feeling welcomed, wanted. Safe. A place where dreams are planted and love grows.

I work in a world where home is none of those things for the people we serve because home is not part of their reality.

For many, home doesn’t even feel like a dream because the only vision of home they have is what they’ve seen on some TV comedy show where everyone laughs at the exploits of the main character and everything always ends up well.

In their worlds, things don’t always end up well. In fact, their entire existence has been built upon the reality that nothing ends up well for them. Nothing. Ever.

And I wonder… how many of the parents we serve today are like that young girl I encountered on those steps many years ago?

Without ever having known what it means to feel safe at home, without understanding how home, and family, are nurturing, caring, safe spaces, how do you create ‘home’ where you children feel safe and nurtured?

Child homelessness is a complex issue. But there is one fundamental fact that cannot be ignored. Without a safe and caring home, a child will struggle to find a safe and caring place to belong in the world. In that struggle, they will act out in order to get the things their heart so desperately yearns for.

It is only human. We act out when we don’t know what else to do to get the things we most desperately want. To feel safe. To know Love. To have a sense of Belonging.

Namaste.