I volunteer for both a food bank and community centre/drop-in. I’d say the past year or so I’ve seen a lot more homeless seniors, especially women, then ever before. Hell I’ve just seen more “regular” people in general then ever before. Homelessness in this country is 100% no longer something regulated to the mentally ill or addicts it’s now affecting everyone. Majority of people I work with now you wouldn’t think were homeless if you walked by them no the street or saw them having a coffee in tim hortons. At first I was shocked like “you’re homeless? you don’t look it” but now it’s no surprise. You could have a clean cut person wearing clean and nice clothes looks like they work on king street come up to me and say their homeless and I wouldn’t bat an eye.
The problem is the system as it exists now and as done for decades isn’t built to deal with these people. It’s not meant for people who are elderly or families or people who are simply broke. None of the resources we have can help these people because they’ve always been tailored to the addicts and the mentally ill. Shelters aren’t going to help even if there were space available again because shelters are set up and staff trained to work with addicts and the mentally ill. I’ve had co-workers come up to me and say “I don’t know how to help this person or these people because none of the resources or programs we have will help them”.
We took a very narrow look at the homeless and instantly said that they’re homeless because they’re drug addicts or crazy. And that just simply isn’t the case anymore. The fact of the matter is, based on my experience, Addicts and the mentally ill are quickly becoming a minority within the homeless population. I know that will be difficult to swallow but it’s the truth. I work more with “regular” people now than I do with someone on drugs or someone that doesn’t know where they are.
We need to rethink and rework how we deal with the homeless population in this country. We need to ditch the thinking that they’re all addicts and finally accept that most are now just like you or me. Thus we need to start tailoring resources and programs to instead of focusing on rehab, mental health, and street health to focusing on housing, jobs, and food. Because I’m no longer being asked about safe injection sites or CAMH referrals now I’m being asked about Jobs and where to eat daily.