Category Archives: Homelessness

When one man stands tall, we all rise up: ending homelessness.

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It will be home to 30 individuals with long-term lived experience of homelessness.

Housing. Supports. Community. Possibility.

These things will be there too.

Yesterday, we celebrated the official opening of Stepping Stone Manor, a 30 unit permanent housing apartment building with supports for individuals exiting chronic homelessness in our city. Dignitaries, builders from the RESOLVE Campaign who are supporting the building of an additional 7 – 10 more such buildings in our city, agency partners, neighbours, all came out to be part of the celebration.

Those who spoke had great words to say. About how we need more affordable housing. How ending homelessness begins with housing first. How people experience homelessness because of societal issues, not because they choose it. How addictions, divorce, mental health issues, all these things contribute to someone becoming homeless — but only when we do not have the necessary richness in our social welfare system to provide access to the supports they need to live their lives with dignity. When we do not have enough richness in our communities to build or safeguard someone’s resilience so they can weather life’s ups and downs.

It was inspiring. Exciting. Affirming to hear the speakers. To see so many people come out to be part of the event.

And then, Michael spoke. And what was a ‘hey let’s celebrate what we’re doing to make a difference’ became, ‘let’s remember that we don’t do this ‘for’ people so we feel good, we are doing it with them so that in the possibilities created, we have a better chance of becoming a better society where everyone knows that they belong, where everyone is treated with dignity, respect, kindness, care.

Michael spent 20 years living on the streets.

He slept in the woods. Used and abused drugs and alcohol.

He felt the shame of being imprisoned for things he’d done. The way he had become, the way he so often felt and was treated as ‘less than human’.

Fifteen months ago, Michael was released from prison and the Calgary John Howard Society (CJHS) started supporting him in his transition away from the streets, away from reacting to his life through crime, to finding the path he is so firmly committed to walking. The path of a brave, honourable and caring man.

“Housing is everything,” he told the crowd of 60 or so guests. “It gave me a place to begin again.”

He talked about the support CJHS has given him through housing. How it helped him make the decision to enter rehab. To get clean and sober. To walk a different path than through substance abuse and crime.

And it helped him see clearly the difference he can make when walking this path.

“I could look at the last 20 years as wasted or I can look forward to the next 20 years as an opportunity to do better,” he said.

His decision is to see the future through eyes of possibility, hope, growth, strength.

Last week, in a conversation with Michael about speaking at the event, he told me he still struggles to release his shame.

“You don’t deserve to carry shame,” I told him. “You deserve to carry pride, courage, strength.”

Yesterday, I watched a man step out from behind his past to claim his right to stand tall, to stand proud, to stand for what he believes in.

The chance to ‘do right’ for himself, his community, his people. The right to let go of the past. The right to build a new life on the path of his choosing. The right to see himself through eyes of compassion, love and hope. The right to be the true human being he is, not the one he was labelled before he awoke to his capacity to make a difference by being the difference he wants to create for all his relations.

Yesterday, I witnessed a man stand tall. He shone bright and in his light he illuminated the path for all to see; Ending homelessness doesn’t happen because one man decides to get off the streets. It happens because we as a society collectively take action to create paths away from homelessness for everyone. Where we all recognize that one man is every man, woman and child who has not had the opportunity to find their way home, not because they didn’t want to, but because there was no path.

Yesterday, a brilliant human being courageously stood tall and spoke up. The path is clear. We must all work together to end homelessness. It is the right thing to do.

Namaste.

 

Intersections.

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I am walking out of the building where I work to go next door to the convenience store for a bottle of Pellegrino. A tall man walks towards me, smiles. I smile back. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I think it is possible he is homeless.

He stops and says, “Excuse me…”

I stop and turn to look at him. “Yes?”

“I don’t want money” he says immediately. “But, I’m kinda stuck here. I just got out of emergency and I’m really hungry.” And he shows me the cut on his foot. “Would you be able to help me out with lunch?”

I look at him. Consider my options and say, “I could buy you some lunch here.” And I point to the little take-out restaurant on the other side of our office doors.

“I’d rather go to Mac’s,” he says.

“I don’t have time to go to Mac’s,” I tell him. “I’ll gladly buy you lunch right here.”

He considers it for a moment, thanks me and we walk into the restaurant where he orders lunch.

As we wait for the server to tally up the bill, I ask him if he has a place to stay.

“I’m kinda couch-surfing right now,” he tells me.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“Hobbema or as I call it, Hellbema.” He laughs. Shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t like it there.”

“I know a number of people from Maskwachees,” I tell him, using the Indigenous name. “They are working very hard to create positive change.”

“Yeah,” he says. “But all my people there, they just judge me. Make me feel bad about myself.”

“Do you feel bad about yourself?” I ask.

Again, a nervous laugh. A shrug of the shoulder. “Yeah. Pretty well all the time. Life’s not easy.”

“I would have to say that for your people it has been very, very hard.”

He nods his head up and down. Looks me in the eyes. “You’re a good lady.” And he leans over and gives me an awkward, sideways hug.

I return the hug.

“How come you know people from Maskwachees?”

“I’m involved in a program called Choices,” I tell him. “I’ve met them through it.”

His face lights up. “Hey! My cousin went to Choices. When he came back, all he wanted to do was hug everybody! He loved it.”

This time, he gives me a full on hug. Laughing as he does so.

Laughing, I hug him back.

The server has my bill ready. I pay. I wish him well and tell him he could check with his band about going to Choices. “It might help you feel less bad about yourself.”

“I’d have to go back. I don’t want to go back there.”

“Sometimes, going back is the only place to find the way forward,” I reply.

He nods his head, side to side as if weighing my words.

I tell him I have to go. He thanks me for lunch and as I’m about to open the door to leave he calls out, “Hey wait! Don’t forget. We gotta hug!”

And I turn and we hug and I leave. I go to the convenience store next door to buy my Pellegrino and he waits for his lunch.

And life flows onward.

And both of us move on carrying the memory of a hug where our paths intersected.

 

A fight he didn’t see coming.

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He is bleeding. His face a mass of blood oozing across his skin.

He is angry. Yelling. Thrusting his fist into the air. Walking in tight, angry circles.

When I first see him he is lying on the ground. Curled into a ball. Holding his stomach. There is a swarm of youth around him. Kicking. Punching. Yelling.

I stop my car. Honk the horn. Others do the same.

The crowd of 15 or so youth who are beating on him run off, darting down the alley with the lightning fast speed of a school of fish escaping into the shadows.

The young man lies on the ground, three youth remain protectively near him, trying to ward off any of the youth from returning.

A woman runs across the road, kneels by the young man. I park my car, grab my cell phone, put on the emergency flashers and run across the road towards the young man lying on the ground.

A woman stands on the sidewalk, cell phone pressed to her ear. “Are you calling 9-1-1?” I ask.

“Yes. Did you see it happen?”

“No.” I reply. “I just saw the end.”

Her hand is shaking where she holds her phone to her ear. “It was awful. They appeared out of nowhere. A whole swarm of them. It was awful,” she repeats.

I touch her arm. “It’s okay. Just stay on the line for 9-1-1.”

I walk over to the youth and the young woman kneeling beside him. “What can I do to help? Do you need tissues?”

The young woman looks up at me. The young man slowly sits up. Blood streams down his face.

“Yes. Go to the shop across the road. Grab some tissue.”

I run across the street and into the store. The owner is on the phone. Talking. He looks at me, mouths 9-1-1. I nod. Ask him for tissue. Paper towel. Anything.

He looks around. It is a bindery. Large machinery. Rolls of leather. A beautiful antique cash register.

I spy a box of kleenex on a counter. I grab it. Show it to him. He nods.

I run back to the scene where the boy and woman are now sitting on the pavement. Except the boy can not sit still. He stands up. Moves in tight, jerky circles. Swearing. Cursing.

I hand him the box of kleenex. He says, “Thanks.” He begins to wipe the blood off his face. There is a lot of it.

A man has joined us.

I ask the young man, the boy, to sit down. Please. You may be hurt. He shrugs off my entreaties.

The man comments on the cuts on his hands. His swollen knuckles.

“You got some swings in,” he says.

The boy shakes his head. “Nah. Those are from a fight earlier today.” He is sheepish yet proud.

“Do you know why they swarmed you?” the man asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replies.

We three adults stand and look at each other. The boy is moving around now. Nothing seems to be broken.

I go ask the man in the shop for water. No glass I tell him. The man gives me a plastic tub and roll of paper towel.

Again, the boy is appreciative of the help.

The other woman asks him to sit back down. He sits. Quickly stands back up, pulls out his phone and dials a number. “Hey man,” he says when someone answers. “Do you know _____________? The bastard just beat the f**k out of me. Yeah. I’m gonna get him.” And he hangs up.

“Did anyone call the police?” he asks. “I don’t want the cops.”

I look at the other woman. “I didn’t call them,” I tell him.

“Neither did I,” she replies. We do not mention the other passer-bys or the man in the bindery shop who was on the phone.

But it doesn’t matter. His fear of their intervention is greater than the wisdom of waiting for an ambulance.

He and the other two youth take off.

We three adults who happened upon the scene look at each other. The man says we may as well go. I grab a plastic bag from my car, clean up the dirty kleenex and paper towel and return the box of kleenex to the bindery shop.

“Pretty sad,” the man in the shop tells me. “My nephew died because he was living a life like that boy.”

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him.

“Yeah. It’s hard. You can put all the help you want in front of them but if they don’t know how to reach for it…”

I happened upon a young man being beaten as I drove home from work yesterday.

And I wonder if one day I will open the paper and he will be a victim or a perpetrator of a crime from which he cannot walk away.

It is not a happy thought. But it is a possible reality.

It is why we must never give up on reaching out. Because as that man in the shop said, It isn’t that he didn’t want help. He just doesn’t know how to reach for it.

And the only way to teach him is to keep reaching out so that when he does decide to reach back, help will be there.

Namaste.

.

To end homelessness in the future, we must begin with the children today.

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It is a startling fact. At any given time, approximately 1% of children in Alberta will be involved with foster care.

44% of adults experiencing homelessness report having had experience with foster care.

According to a 2009 report by the BC Representative for children and youth, youth in care are 17 times more likely to be hospitalized for mental health issues than the general public. By 21 years of age, 41 percent of children and youth in care will have contact with the criminal justice system, compared to only 6.6 percent of the general population in the same age group.

Put another way, involvement in the foster care system nurtures homelessness, mental health issues, criminal justice interactions and other risky behaviours in children just as we nurture resiliency, self-sufficiency, self-confidence in our children.

To be fair to the people providing foster care, it is not ‘them’ creating the issue. Many wonderful, well-meaning and competent caring people foster children in their homes.

It is more systemic. More foundational. We believe foster care works.

In that belief we overlook the impact lack of permanency has on the child. As reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “Children who have a government as their parent, no matter how well-intentioned or necessary that arrangement is, are often damaged by it… They are damaged because multiple moves to living arrangements with multiple caregivers – no matter how loving the foster parents – do not promote stability, security and attachment, the building blocks every child and youth needs to succeed.”  (Trupin EW, Tarico VS, Low BP, et al. Children on child protective service case-loads: prevalence and nature of serious emotional disturbance. Child Abuse Negl 1993;17-345-55.)

To end homelessness in adults, we must stop fostering it in children.

This thought came top of mind this morning when a girlfriend sent me a link to one of the stories from the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre’s project Shelter from the Storm. I am in awe of this project which was spearheaded by Michael Frisby two years ago. It is powerful, moving and soulful. I wanted to find the times for a concert, Verses vs Homelessness, that is happening this weekend and went to the DI’s website and on the homepage, the video they did of a child’s journey into adulthood, and homelessness, played automatically.

This is a powerful, and haunting, story.

One of the actors is a client of the DI. Has been for way too long. His journey into homelessness began in adulthood with the breakdown of his marriage, an unaddressed addiction and a prolonged journey through self-defeating behaviours that lead him into homelessness. The seeds of that journey were planted in childhood. They may never have sprouted if he had not experienced the breakdown of his marriage and the subsequent loss of his relationship with his child. He may not have known the challenges of homelessness if he hadn’t succumbed to an addiction that has haunted him for years. He once told me, “I hate myself so I drink and once sober, I remember why I hate myself and so, I drink again to forget”.

An emergency shelter should never become a longterm home for anyone. But too often it does. Not because the individual chooses it, but mostly because the other options seem too daunting, too scary, too impossible to even be considered. The man in the video has thought about housing. He’s thought about leaving. He’s thought about moving on. But always, the lure of the familiar calls him back. The community of understanding draws him in. And his fear of what will happen to him beyond the world he has come to know so well, traps him from stepping out.

We don’t know what it’s like to be homeless. We don’t know what happens to someone’s psyche when they lose everything and find themselves in the one place they never imagined they would end up.

We just don’t know.

In Shelter from the Storm, Michael and all the performers share the experience through song and verse and music and story.  They are giving us an insider’s view of the loss and pain and sorrow that is called homelessness.

These are important stories to hear. What’s even more important, is that we stop creating opportunities for these stories to become someone’s life. and that begins with taking care of the children.

To stop homelessness in the future, we need to stop doing the things that foster the growth of it in children today.

What if we change the story?

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I watch three men, sitting alone at the bar watching the hockey game on TV. They don’t look at anyone. They don’t chat with the bartender. They don’t look at each other. They eat, sip their beer, watch the game on the screen in front of them.

I am witnessing these human stories at a pub where I have joined C.C. for dinner until his buddy arrives to watch what they hoped would be the last game of the Stanley Cup.

“Do you think those men are lonely?” I ask my husband of the 3 men at the bar.

“I don’t know,” he replies.

“In the story I make up about them, they are,” I tell him. “See their rounded shoulders. The way they never look at anyone. The way one sits huddled over his food, one arm on the bar’s counter, swooping out and around his plate as though he’s protecting it. Maybe he came from a large family where people grabbed for food and you had to fight for everything you got.

In the story I am writing about the man at the end of the bar, he feels lost, his marriage is broken down, his kids are grown up and he feels like life is avoiding him just as he avoids it.”

I am always making up stories of people’s lives. C.C. smiles and says nothing.

There was a man at the shelter where I used to work. He was like those men at the bar. Lonely. Depressed. His marriage had fallen apart. His kids were grown, their relationship with their father strained. He’d sit at the bar by his condo every night just to feel human connections around him, even though he did his best to avoid them.

One day, a stranger came in and sat beside him. They struck up a conversation. They became friends. A few days later, the stranger whispered into his ear, “You know. I’ve got something in my car that will make you feel way better than that Scotch you’re drinking.” And the man decided to try it. His friend was giving it to him for free. His friend would never hurt him.

That man had a Masters Degree in Education, worked as a High School Counsellor. And still, his loneliness drove him into taking the risk. It wasn’t long before he lost everything, including all connection with his family. He did gain a criminal record. He carries it with him today along with the scars of that five year period of his life when, at 60 years of age, he was so lost he gave up on fighting for himself and gave into the despair of homelessness.

Today, that man’s story is one of loss and hope. Of sadness and possibility.

Everyday we pass people on the street who have stories we have never heard, yet about whom we make up stories based on what we believe homelessness to be all about.

Drugs. Addiction. Crime. Loss. Abuse. Hopelessness. More crime. More drugs.

Yesterday, as I took a walk at noon, I passed a couple sitting on a concrete barrier lining the sidewalk. They were visibly homeless. Pan-handling for change. A woman in front of me stopped, handed them a bag with two sandwiches. She smiled and said, Enjoy! and walked away.

What’s her story I wondered? Did she buy the sandwiches to give away? Would she have to stop again to get one for herself and her boss or co-worker? Does she have a loved one who is lost to the street and this is her way of giving back, of making a difference.

What is the couple’s story? Where do they sleep at night? What brought them to the street?

What’s the story we tell about panhandling? People are just asking for money so they can buy drugs? Why don’t they get a job instead? What’s their problem?

What if we change that story?

What if every outstretched hand was viewed as being extended for help, not money?

What if we view our role as a response to someone asking for help?

What if the stories we told changed everything? What if instead of despair we read hope. Instead of loss, possibility. Instead of homeless, humanity.

What if we stopped believing the stories we think we know and lean into the stories of our hearts where truth is written beneath the wounds we carry. Where truth is known beneath the fears we believe are real.

What if the stories we tell are the stories of our shared human condition? The stories of what make us one humanity, not separate human beings.

Would you change your story if you could see all humanity as you? Would you write a different ending for a world desperately asking for help?

Namaste.

 

 

#tbt Gratitude in a glass of water

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FullSizeRender (91)It’s #throwbackthursday – the following post has been edited from where it originally appeared on Recover Your Joy  May 19th, 2007.

Last night [May 18, 2007] we held a dinner for client volunteers at the shelter where I work. Client volunteers are individuals who are using the facility and who volunteer while staying there. In the course of a year, using a base salary rate of $10/hour, client volunteers provide the shelter with about $600,000 in service.

The dinner was attended by over 60 people. The tables were covered with linen tablecloths and serviettes. China and silverware was at each place setting and the room was lit by the soft glow of candlelight. A big difference from the chaotic and noisy dining room on the second floor of the building where dinner is served to over 600 people a sitting.

As I was greeting guests last night I was struck by the gratitude each person expressed as they walked into room. “Hey. This is nice!” “Haven’t had a candlelit dinner in years.” “This is for me? Wow.” “Cool.” The comments were simple. Appreciative and reflective. Each guest felt part of a moment in time away from the rigors and fears of homelessness. The meal was a scrumptious buffet of salads, roasted chicken and potatoes or lasagne, a cheese plate with fruit, delectable delights and coffee.

As the guests were arriving and getting settled, someone came up to me and asked, “Is it okay if I pour myself a glass of water?” “Of course,” I replied. A few moments later someone else asked, “May I pour myself a cup of coffee?” “Help yourself,” I replied.

After about the third or fourth person came up and asked if they could help themselves to water or coffee, I decided to take action. I picked up a jug and walked around the tables offering people water. As I went, I reminded them that there was coffee to which they could help themsleves on a side table.

This may not seem like a big issue to you, but to someone who is homeless, who must wait in line for just about everything, who must wake up when told, go to bed when told, cannot just pour themselves a glass of water at will or make a cup of coffee when they want, being able to simply stand up and help themselves to a cup of coffee is a big thing.

What struck me even more, however, was the hesitancy with which people asked if it was okay to help themselves to something so simple as water. The night before we’d had a dinner for corporate volunteers, and no one asked if they could get water or coffee. They just did it.

For the client volunteers, conditioned to having to ask for the simplest things, having an entire evening dedicated to them was refreshing and sad all in one. It reminded them of all that they have lost. And yet, over and above the reminders of the past, there was one single attitude that overrode everything.

Gratitude.

There is so much in my life I take for granted. A cup of coffee I brew myself every morning. A piece of toast made when I want. A computer to work on when I need it. The house a temperature I decide because I have control of the thermostat.

As I listened to the people gathered in the room, there was no difference between their behaviour and the behaviour of community volunteers served the night before. They all knew what a fork and knife was and how to use them. They all put their serviettes on their laps. They chatted and laughed and told jokes with those sitting at the table with them.

What was different was none of them took anything about last night’s dinner for granted. Not even a glass of water.

Next time you pick up a glass of water, think about what it means to be able to pour it at will.

You are blessed.

May we all have the blessing of not having to stand in line for everything we need today.

The Face of NIMBY is Not Pretty

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“Who’s going to live here?”  It is one of the most frequently asked question when talking to communities about housing for formerly homeless individuals.

The challenge is, the answer is the thing that causes their fear to rise. Individuals with long-term experience of homelessness.

Not because formerly homeless individuals and families are scary, but rather, because often we carry misconceptions of what the state of homelessness is and who the people experiencing it are.

Homeless and criminal are not the same words; yet there are those who believe Homeless = Criminal.

People experiencing homelessness may have a criminal record. But then, it’s almost impossible to live in homelessness and not be ticketed for some infraction for which the majority of us would never be ticketed.

Jay-walking. Sitting on park benches. Open liquor in public spaces. Being intoxicated in public. Spitting on the sidewalk. Littering. Urinating in public. These things happen every day in our city, especially during Stampede, yet often they are overlooked by authorities because, well really? Are you going to ticket everyone? And anyway, it’s Stampede. It’s just what happens.

In homelessness, you do not have the luxury of a backyard or living room to pop open a beer and kick back. You do not have access to a washroom when you need it.

As to jay-walking and sitting on park benches and other things that people of all walks of life do everyday, they are less likely to be ticketed at the same rate as those who are visibly homeless. Add to that the fact that individuals in homelessness do not have the resources to pay fines and often do not turn up for court dates, it’s easy to see how a criminal record can easily follow.

The other factor that leads to individuals in homelessness having criminal records is that addictions are often a result of, or part of the homeless condition. And, even though homelessness accounts for less than 0.1% of the population, over 40% of those experiencing it self-report having an addiction (approximately 10% of the total population will report being impacted by an addiction in their lifetime).

Again, without the resources to a) support an addiction, or b) get help; individuals will turn to other means to get the substances they need to feed the beast of an addiction.

And that’s why housing with supports is so important.

Homelessness by its very nature is an unstable condition. With housing and supports, individuals begin to take stock of their lives from a place of stability. In that place, evidence clearly shows that self-care follows. Use of illegal substances, interactions with police and emergency response teams, incarcerations, all decrease.

For six years I worked at one of Canada’s largest homeless shelters. During that time I never once experienced a mob scene where a mass of individuals yelled and threatened staff, demanding they answer questions or give them assurances they will be safe on our streets, or not be ticketed for sitting on a bench, or as happened the other night, give them the names of the people who were coming in that day to serve meals or sort clothing or a host of other jobs regularly filled-in by volunteers.

Yet, last week, when my co-workers and I attended an open house to meet with community about a proposed housing development for 28 formerly homelessness citizens , we were met with an angry mob threatening us, demanding answers, yelling out and demanding to know, “Who is going to live here?”

 

They weren’t there to talk about the merits of our proposal. The aesthetics of the building. Its fit within the architectural landscape or compliance with zoning.

They were there to talk about ‘the people’.

When a for-profit developer proposes an apartment building, community does not demand to know the income, life-history including criminal background-check, race, gender, faith of those moving in. They do not demand to know what will they do in their spare time. Because they have no right to know these things. And to ask would be to risk being charged with infractions of the Human Rights Act.

Yet, because people have been marginalized, impoverished, homeless, and are often without a voice, people feel they have the right to ask questions and use names that demean the human condition of fellow citizens. They feel they have the right to act out in ways that are more threatening and offensive than anyone I have met on the streets or in a shelter who is experiencing homelessness.

This week, I have been sifting through emails from community members regarding our project.

I am stunned by the face of NIMBYism (not in my backyard) many of those who have written in portray. It is not pretty.

Yet, at the same time, I am optimistic. Their opposition is not based on the merits of the development. It is all about fear.

We can, I hope, abate fear by continued engagement that heightens our awareness of the need to  lower our voices against and raise our voices for taking action to get homelessness off the streets and out of backyards by making it possible for people to find themselves at home.

 

 

 

The Mob.

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I am searching for the “face of the divine” in the strangers circling me. I am searching to see them as more than the mob they have coalesced into. I am searching for the essence of our humanity, for the same kind of different we each share. And I am blind.

Fear does that.

It blinds me to seeing, as St. Benedict counselled, ‘the face of the divine’ in every stranger at the door.

My fear is not-ill placed.

I am at an open house for an apartment building the Foundation I work for is considering building. Some community members have already been clear they do not want this 28 unit apartment building for formerly homeless individuals in their community.

The challenge is, we are not there to talk about the people who will be housed. As I told one man, each person we house has the same right to live in community as you and I do.

But the people who have come to this open house do not want to talk about the merits of the development. Does it comply with zoning? Can we decrease the density? Can we change the facade?

They are there to tell us they do not want ‘those people’, or as one man called them the week before, ‘this litter’ in their community.

And my heart is heavy.

But I am not afraid. I believe in the power of our human capacity to connect, to ‘see’ beyond the labels and into the heart of what is the right thing to do.

And then suddenly, fear awakens.

Where the room is filled with small circles of people standing by the renderings we have on display of what the building will look like, talking to my co-workers at the various stations, it suddenly becomes a full blown mob.

All it takes is one woman yelling into the centre of the room “Gather round people. We gotta talk. I’m not liking what I’m hearing.”

And the crowd circles around her. Their murmuring becomes a roar. They turn to face me and start chanting in response to a man’s calling out, “Do we want them here?”

“No! No! No!” And as a mob they raise one arm into the air, fists clenched and keep shouting and glaring at me and pumping their fists into the air.

They are between me and the exit. My back is up against the wall.

“What’s it going to take for you to hear us Louise? We Don’t Want You Here?” the woman who incited the mob yells out.

I take a breath.

“We hear you,” I tell her. A co-worker has come to stand beside me. I turn to her. “What should we do?” she asks. “I think we need to pack up and leave,” I reply.

I turn back to the crowd. “We hear you and so we are going to pack up our display and leave.”

Their anger rises. “No! No! No!” they scream as one voice.

The woman calls out again. “Tell us what we have to do to get you to hear us! We don’t want you!”

I breathe again. Fear grows with each breath as the mob circles closer around me.

“We hear you. We are leaving so you can meet and talk about your next steps.”

The woman screams. “No! Tell us what to do.”

I keep breathing, willing the tears, the shaking in my body to not rise up and take over. “We cannot tell you what to do. Good night and thank you for coming.”

And my co-worker and I turn our backs on the crowd and begin to pack up our information.

With no foci, the mob energy deflates. Someone turns on the lights at the far side of the room and the crowd moves as a wave to take seats where a microphone was already set up for a town hall meeting.

A woman approaches as I am pulling the panels of the display pieces together. “I really came here tonight to learn more about the project,” she tells me.

“I appreciate that,” I reply. “What would you like to know?”

And we talk for ten minutes about the project as the mob settles into chairs on the other side of the room and begin to discuss how to block our bringing those people into their community.

“Why can’t you tell us who will live here?” she asks.

“We have,” I reply. “They are individuals with a history of long term homelessness who need housing and supports in order to end their homelessness. We cannot be more specific than that.”

And therein lies the challenge.

The community wants certainty. They want names of those will live there, histories. To give them what they want would violate the human rights of those we serve. The people we serve deserve better than that.

It is not the ‘who’ the community really wants to know. They want to know the crime that already scares them will end. They want to know their future is secure.

We can tell them our experience in our over 20 buildings in the city does not show increased crime around our buildings. We can show them the evidence from crime data and maps, findings of property values.

They cannot hear us because ultimately, it is not about the merits of the development nor the evidence in other communities. It is about their fear of the world around them today and their fear of what their world will look like in the future.

And I cannot change their fear.

I faced a mob the other night. I was scared. I felt unsafe. Upset. Exposed.

I am writing about it because I am still shaken, still struggling to see ‘the divine’ in the ugly face of the mob. Yet I know, it is the path to finding our humanity beyond our fear of one another.

And so I continue to seek the divine in every face and in that journey, my fear abates.

 

We are all doing our best.

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It is an interesting thought waiting for me this morning in my email. From TUT: A Note from the Universe.  “…no matter what has happened, you did the very best you could.  And so did those who may have let you down.”

Other than those of personality disordered behaviours of the negative kind (and yes, there are some of those in this great big beautiful world), the vast majority of the +7.4 billion human beings on this planet are trying to do their best. Every day. Day in. Day out.

Like you and me, they experience moments of joy, sadness, sorrow. They have felt the loss of love, belonging, connection.

Like you and me, they have searched for meaning. They have wondered, why am I here? Is this all there is? What’s my purpose? Or even, What’s the point?

Like you and me, they have struggled to understand why some people do the things they do that hurt them. Why it feels some days like they are alone.

And, like you and me, they have done things they are not proud of. Done things that hurt others. Let others down. Upset apple carts and tipped over hopes and dreams.

Like you and me, they were not consciously working at letting anyone down, tripping someone up or fighting them off. They are, like you and me, just doing their best to get along, keep going, keep moving forward. They are all striving to give what they can, however they can, where ever they are on their journey so that they can feel like they got something in return for their investment in life.

Framed that way, it’s easier to accept that sometimes, we misstep. Sometimes, we don’t get it ‘right’. Sometimes, we just aren’t playing at our highest — but we are doing the best we can in that moment.

The other night I attended a community association meeting in an area where the homeless foundation I work for is looking to purchase property and build a small apartment building for individuals with lived experience of homelessness (less than 30 units). The board of this association is mixed 50/50 on their support of our project. Like many communities we talk to, those not in support feel that the community has enough low income developments, that they are at a tipping point with the point of no return towards decline too close for comfort given the socio/economic mix of the community.

At the meeting, two community members in close proximity to the property we are considering purchasing came to present their views of the development. “Nobody wants you, not even the businesses in the area,” they said. And one by one they listed off businesses and after each name said, “They don’t want you.” “They don’t want you.” “They don’t want you.”

Clinging to their position of ‘you don’t belong here’, it was challenging to provide these individuals with any facts.

Our evidence, and research from across North America, show that a development of this size does not negatively impact community with higher crime rates and lower property values. In fact, the evidence shows that a low-income project of this size has little to no impact on a community. Crime stays at historical levels, though it can drop given the increased attention to safety the not-for-profit brings to the community, and property values continue to follow prevailing market trends.

Beyond the facts of this kind of development however, is the fact that these individuals weren’t there to do their worst for their community. They were there to do what they believed was best.

It is easy in emotionally charged situations to sit in judgement of what another is doing, especially if what they are doing does not align with what you see as the preferred outcome.

I have been to many of these kinds of meetings. Always, on both sides of the conversation, people sit with their deep beliefs over what makes community work. And both sides work hard to get the other side to shift their perspective to see it through their point of view. Both sides want to defend their positions. Both sides want to protect their right to build better community — the best way they see to do it.

I believe in the vision and mission of creating better community through ending homelessness.

I also believe that within individual communities, people want to create better through ending those things which disturb their peace of mind and disrupt the vibrancy and health of the community they know. They are doing their best to protect what they know and have today so that they can have some reassurance the future of their community does not slip over the tipping point into such disorder they too will no longer feel like they belong there either.

Having spent the past 10 years working in the homeless-serving sector, I believe we cannot end homelessness by telling people ‘you don’t belong in our community’, or conversely, “we belong in your community”. We can end it by recognizing that we are all doing our best — and sometimes, our best means finding common ground through shifting our position from fearing what we don’t know to seeing the human cost of keeping homelessness on our streets.

We all belong in community. We all have the right to find our way home, even when the way we get there might be different than yours or mine.

Namaste.

 

 

Can you choose compassion?

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flowers in spring copyIn, Start Where You Are: A compassionate guide to living, Pema Chödrön teaches simple steps and simple tools to find compassion for our own wounds so that we can hold others in compassion too. It is the first step she counsels — unconditional compassion for ourselves leads to unconditional compassion for others.

My eldest daughter and I were having a conversation about judgement. How so often, we look at those who have committed heinous crimes and talk about how we can never forgive them. How we want to rip their faces off, or put them in jail forever and a day because, ‘they did bad and are no good’.

Yet, to truly change the world, to make a world of peace and loving kindness, we must  separate ‘the crime’ from the soul. We must see the ‘crime’ as an act of being human, while still holding the human being in compassionate thought.

It is not easy. It is necessary if we are to create a more peaceful, healthy and balanced world.

So often, in condemning those who have harmed others and sentencing them to live in shame we are giving up on them. We are saying, you have no value. You are non-redemptive. You are not worthy. Yet, beneath the crime, beneath the harm they have caused, is the wounded human acting out against the pain they carry from the crimes committed against them. In our giving up on them, we are continuing the cycle of abuse. It leaves little room for awakening, little room for someone to see that what they have done to cause another harm is creating a world of harm all around.

And so the cycle continues.

A few years ago I worked extensively with police officers on ‘homelessness training.’ Every week I’d present to a different group of officers on the facts and myths of homelessness, as well as the impact our perceptions and beliefs about who ‘the homeless’ are have on our ability to work effectively and compassionately with individuals to support them in creating paths away from homelessness.

In the room there were always many perceptions of homelessness.  From’homeless = criminal’ to the belief those experiencing homelessness are there because they choose to be there to if they just stopped drinking, doing drugs, had a shower and cleaned up, they’d be able to get on with their lives. These beliefs created a barrier that inhibited everyone from feeling like they were doing their jobs well. For many, the frustration of working with the same person over and over again lead to disconnecting their hearts from their work so that they could do their job and not carry the pain of feeling ineffective, helpless, and a host of other feelings the officers shared in our conversations.

One day, one of the officers angrily told me that I was wrong. That treating ‘those people’ with compassion was not the path. That tough love was the only way to make ‘them’ change.

He yelled, pounded the table, talked over me in his attempts to get me to change my glasses to his view.

I sat in silence. I held the space for compassion to be present in our conversation. I was there to find common ground. Yelling back would not have opened minds. It would only have created bigger barriers.

Another officer in the room spoke up. He told the angry officer to listen up, to hear what I had to say because it was important.

At the end of the session, the second officer apologized for the other man’s behaviour. I told him he was not responsible for someone else’s behaviour. I did wonder about the pain the angry officer had to be carrying to be so volatile in that situation.

Later, I had an opportunity to find out. The district Commander heard about the incident and insisted the officer apologize. We met in the District board room and the officer acknowledged his behaviour was out of line. That he had no right to talk to me in the way he did.

You sound like you care deeply. You sound like you carry a lot of pain on this issue, I told him.

And he began to talk. He told me about his brother, an alcoholic, who died on the streets. He told me about his pain and frustration in not being able to help him. How he just wants the best for those he serves, and how he feels helpless.

He talked for an hour and I listened. Deeply.

In the end, we hugged. We had connected through our shared human condition.

To this day, I carry deep compassion and respect for this man. He cares. Deeply. His lack of compassion for himself, his lack of acknowledgement of his own pain, stood in the way of his heart breaking open in love instead of shutting down in fear.

We all do it.

We all feel deeply and then, to protect our delicate hearts, to soothe our aching souls, we build walls and barriers in our minds that we believe will keep us safe.

And in the process, we shut off our capacity to see that those who hurt others are hurting.

Desperate people do desperate things.

Hurting people hurt others.

It does not make ‘wrong’ right. It does mean to heal it, to stop it, we must stop condemning and begin holding ourselves accountable for how we respond.

I wonder what a world of difference we could make if instead of condemning, we chose compassion for ourselves and one another?

Let’s all begin where we are and see what happens next!

Namaste.