“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Homelessness begins at home.

No, I’m not trying to be sarcastic or play with your mind. Homelessness really does begin at home long before the homeless land on the street and become a “problem” to the so-called experts, politicians, ordinary citizens and the like.

Excuse me for being a bit personal here, but I’m trying to make a point and it hurts to be this frank. However, I have to admit I was once homeless myself, but not in the conventional way.

Like probably thousands of others in this country – tens of thousands possibly – I became alienated from my family and fled from home before I was capable of living on my own. I attended university for a while but that only made my pain and self-loathing deeper. I desperately needed something, but I didn’t know what it was. So, I dropped out of school with $80 in my pocket and I hit the road to “find myself” – whatever that meant.

It didn’t work.

Less than a month later, I was broke and living in a Salvation Army shelter in Sudbury, Ontario and washing dishes for my keep. This didn’t exactly build my ego and soon I fell in with a gang of scruffy guys that seemed to have money all the time and would buy me a beer when I desperately needed one.

After the bar closed one boozy night, I hit the street with them to visit “Johnny Cash” as they put it for more funds. To my naïve horror I quickly discovered they were rolling drunks like themselves or doing B&Es on the more affluent side of town. The next day I hitch-hiked out of Sudbury forever.

Suitably chagrined, I returned home and reconciled with my parents who had enough faith in me to fund another semester at university where I finally got serious about my studies and wrote for the university newspaper, which eventually led to a career.

I was one of the lucky ones. But what about those who weren’t so lucky? The ones who remained alienated, didn’t reconcile with society or their parents and kept sliding down the rabbit hole to poverty, crime and mental illness. Look around the next time you’re on the street because you’re looking at them right here in Cranbrook and almost any city in Canada.

Canada’s homeless are overrunning Canadian cities and Cranbrook is no exception. Our so-called “Key City,” in fact, is one of the worst in that all we’ve done for almost two years is talk about the dire need for a year-round shelter, especially at this time of the year when sleeping “rough” (outside) could be their last sleep forever. It’s a miracle this hasn’t happened yet.

I’ve said this about homelessness simply to indicate it can happen to anyone for any reason. I’ve also noticed tents springing up in certain secluded parts of the city, and while there are no homeless tent camps in town yet, we don’t want to see that sad prospect developing here.

I see two possibilities for the homeless situation here. Leave it up to BC Housing to build a proper facility in town when they get around to it or utilize an existing building in a good location as long as it can be brought up to code standards for less cost than building a new facility. The taxpayers will pay regardless of which way it goes.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s politics and leadership. We have a new provincial premier and a newly elected city council. Now is the time for both sides to prove they truly care for the homeless and provide them with the basic human necessities of life, namely a warm and safe place to sleep.

Surely, that’s the least we could do.

e-KNOW file photo

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who would sleep easier if he knew no one was sleeping “rough” in Cranbrook.

Article Share