10:57 p.m. - 2003-01-14
Homeless
My milk is delivered to my door twice a week. It had been sitting outside for less than 2 hours when we brought it in yesterday. Poured out in frozen chunks in my coffee. That hasn't happened for quite a while. The weather the past few days has been very cold. The thermometer has recorded a high temperature of about -17 C/0 F but the actual effect of the temperature on the human body, because of the wind chill and humidity factors, has been reported to be the equivalent of -22 C/-10 F.
I've been out in it, for some period of time, for each of the past three days. When I went to the doctor's office on Sunday, I stopped at a drugstore before coming home. Walking just a block and a half - about 7 minutes - without my mitts on while carrying my parcels, meant I could barely move my fingers enough to get my keys in the door by the time I got home. They were just about frozen - I should know better.
Yesterday wasn't quite so difficult because I went out with two of my sisters and my Dad - just grocery shopping and socializing. I didn't dress as warmly for riding in the car, because you can get overheated in the store and then find yourself in trouble outside. Sweat freezes to your skin very quickly. A lot of the young workers in the warehouse store we visited aren't paid very well. It was apparent a lot of them had walked or taken the bus and it also appeared some of them couldn't afford to purchase adequate winter gear for that purpose. Some of them were still really wind chapped and shivering even after an hour inside working.
Today my youngest son and I went downtown to visit the chiropractor. There are a lot of homeless people on the streets and it was painful to see them crouched down near the pavement trying to keep warm in such bitterly cold weather. We have homeless shelters, but the belief that there are a lot of high paying jobs just for the taking here - not unless you are in certain skilled professions - has drawn thousands of people from all over the country hoping for a better life. The homeless facilities are overflowing, so not everyone has a place to go. Minimum wage in Alberta is $5.90 per hour - the lowest in Canada - or a monthly gross pay of about $950; take home pay $720. These low paying jobs that most of them are able to find means their wages aren't enough to rent even a room, because even those are several hundred dollars a month.
Statistics indicate that about 55% of the homeless here have jobs - they just can't get on their feet with the cost of living in this city. The other scary figure is that a lot of children in those families, of course, are also without shelter. Often the parents won't ask for help because there have been too many cases where the children have been taken away into foster care, even though there is nothing wrong with the family dynamics or parenting skills. It just doesn't make sense to me to pay a foster parent $2000 a month to care for EACH child, when that same amount of money given to their biological parents would get the family, intact, into housing and on their feet within a few months. Often significant damage is done to the family as a whole, because of the trauma of their separation and the draconian measures to which they are subjected.
This is especially frustrating when there are a lot of really high needs children, who do need the fostering families, who are instead placed in group homes because there aren't enough foster placements left for them. Again, longitudinal statistics tell us that these kids - who are already behind the 8 ball in almost every aspect of their short lives - most often end up back in the cycle of abuse and dysfunction that they came from because they don't get the one on one care foster homes provide. Just doesn't make sense.
Of the other 45% of people on the street,it is estimated that 70% have mental health problems with the balance of homeless being those with addiction issues. The monthly support payment for someone who is mentally ill or physically disabled and who cannot look after their own basic needs is $800 per month - they also are supposed to purchase their own meds out of that allotment. When the mentally ill are relapsed because they can't afford their meds, the government forbids doctors to keep patients long enough in hospital to even stabilize them on their meds. The Docs have tried what they can to change those policies but the government won't bend, so the patients quickly end up back on the street.
Now I live in what is considered very modest housing. With my low mortgage payment and basic services - electricity, water, gas, health care premiums, and telephone - I still need over $800 per month just to cover those set expenses. I'm mentally competent and able to work and advocate for myself and I know I couldn't live on that allowance. How can our community or government expect people who are mentally ill to cope.
There have been endless studies and reports by community based committees (I've worked on a couple), professionals, and even legislative committees over the past twenty years about the problems with the social support network that all point out the same issues to the government. They all have just gathered dust. Often the authors are ordered to shut up or leave the province; one study about the plight of the elderly was shredded by the Minister in charge of their welfare even while she was running daily morning prayer sessions for all her colleagues. I think she forgot to read her Bible. About all the rest of us can do in the meantime is contribute to the food and clothing banks and keep the pressure on the governments whenever the chance arises. It's hard to sleep some of these cold nights.
"Poverty is the worst form of violence." Mahatma Gandhi
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