I was talking to an acquaintance of mine as we wolfed down Sunday lunch served by some practicing Christians. Steve is bright and articulate, giving voice to the dilemma he was facing. He had a job that was to begin on Monday, but as you would expect it would be three weeks before his first paycheque. Steve was depending on the Salvation Army for his food, but would be unable to get to the Salvation Army when (if) he started work. Without some source of food Steve was looking forward to starving 5 workdays a week, which could also have a significant effect on how he performed his job.

So what would you do? It is much easier to say Steve should go hungry than it is to do it oneself. Hunger, another barrier to employment, and one that is easy to solve. Unfortunately the provincial Liberals are into paying lip service to the idea of getting the homeless and poor to work, not to actually doing anything to help them back into the workforce.

Good story on this issue. It is great to see the Post, as a local paper, continuing to show its readers the many pieces of the puzzle that are involved in homelessness and drug use. With the increases in these groups forcing them to the forefront of public attention, it is vital that the public be given a full rounded view of the scope and issues involved. Without understanding the reality of the actual conditions that exist, any decisions made will fail to bring about positive changes. The refusal to see reality when setting policies is what resulted in the current growing problems we face. We need to make choices that will have positive results in helping the people branded as either homeless bums or druggies in getting back their lives and all of us together in building stronger, more vibrant communities.

To have any real chance of working recovery must be a choice made by the addict, it cannot be imposed from outside. Addiction is powerful, with a strong grip on its victims, which means that any delay in getting the addict into treatment allows the addiction to re-establish its grip and pull the person back into their addiction. I have seen to many instances where delay has granted the addiction time to do just that. I do not think one can over stress just how important it is for those in need of treatment to be able to get help NOW.

People need to work hard to see what the real situation is, since it is so tempting and easy to see what we want to see or base decision on what we think should be. Then reality bites our …butts and we end up creating some other nasty mess(es). One of the goals that citizens and the City want to achieve in addressing the question of recovery houses is to keep the “good” and close down/reform the “bad”. My first impulse when this is discussed is YES!, we need to weed out the “bad” houses. Which would make me as guilty of ignoring reality as I chastise the public, City and government for being. I was reminded this week, in one of those twists of fate the universe likes to get our attention with, that those recovery houses oft called or considered bad serve a very necessary purpose. The day before the City held a meeting to address the question of recovery homes I was in a conversation with someone on the front lines of the homeless situation in Surrey. During the conversation the existence of “bad” recovery homes came up and it was pointed out just how necessary a part they play in addressing the needs of the homeless and drug users. Arrrgggh. I thus find myself in the unpleasant and decidedly uncomfortable position of having to argue that, as much as we all might like to, we cannot blindly go around closing recovery houses without first putting in place the needed resources to replace the vital function they serve.

Yes, some of the “bad” recovery houses are no more than flop houses for drug users. The problem with just running around closing them or forcing them to only deal with those who are ready to start or are in recovery is what happens to all the residents who are not ready – yet – for recovery. Remember the closing of the Fraser Valley Inn? The View from the Streets by the homeless of this event was very different than that of those snug in their homes. Closing down the Inn created 20 homeless people as only a couple of the people who had been living in the Inn found someplace else to shelter. Some of them had been living in the woods on Sumas Way for months before it became know as Compassion Park. It is a year later and some of them are, shamefully, still on the streets today. I say shamefully as the City, as our representatives, thoughtlessly threw these people onto the streets effectively saying to them “tough luck; to bad; you’re not worth our consideration or help”.

Yes there were many problems with the Inn, as there are problems with some recovery houses. I am not saying you should not want to close the substandard among them. I am saying you cannot close them until you have available alternatives for housing and services. Closing the Inn did not solve anything; it merely spread the people and problems around the city, in reality making them harder to deal with. Until such time as we have invested in the resources required to deliver support to these people, our fellow human beings and citizens, we need all the housing spots for them that we have. Faced with the same situation the more rational and caring of our neighbouring cities have chosen to work with those houses considered to be undesirable in order to minimize any problems and to maximize the help rendered to their residents.

One fairly small piece of the puzzle and what do we have? A complex reality that denies simple solutions and denies us the right to go with our impulses, even if they embody good intentions, because of the harm they would cause the very people we would claim to be helping. One of the prices our society must pay for having swept this under the rug until it became a problem to large to ignore, is that we are playing catch up. Sometimes we are just going to have to live with aspects of the problems until the resources are marshalled and in place to properly address the situation. Such is the current situation with recovery houses. We will have to live with compromises in the immediate future, while working on longer term strategies and supportive resources. Or live with the fallout from dumping 100+ more homeless, all at once, onto the streets.

In response to Mark B. Toth’s letter of Sept. 2, 2006, I would like to suggest that he read his own words – with an open mind. He states “I wrote…,” “I honestly believe…” and “I added…”. “I, I, I” states Mr. Toth then protests Mr. Lanning attributing to Mr. Toth his own words. I draw Mr. Toths attention to the definition of the word I – “the nominative singular pronoun, used by a speaker in referring to himself”. Mr. Toth was speaking of himself personally and I would like to know how anyone was to reply without also speaking of his self stated personal profanities.

I also draw to Mr. Toth’s attention the fact that words such as Bigoted and Narrow minded are adjectives. To address Mr. Toth’s obvious lack of understanding of the concept of adjectives: n. 1: a word that expresses an attribute of something 2: the word class that qualifies nouns. These words are descriptive of the noun, which in this cases happens to be Mr. Toth’s mindset as demonstrated by his own words.

I believe that any reasonable Canadian reading Mr. Toth’s original letter would agree that it clearly demonstrates: Bigoted: blindly and obstinately attached to some creed or opinion and intolerant toward others as well as Narrow minded: 1) having or showing a prejudiced mind, as persons or opinions; biased. 2) not receptive to new ideas; having a closed mind. 3) morally self-righteous.

Trying to suggest that he cannot be held responsible for his clearly demonstrated bigotry and narrow mindedness if he attacks a caste as opposed to an individual is pure sophistry.

The most interesting aspect of Mr. Toth’s letter is his apparent concession to being “bigoted, narrow minded”, in that he offers no defence of these descriptions of his character, but attempts to hid behind word games. Unfortunately for his attempts at deception those reading his diversionary tactics, for the most part, posses a degree of literacy that denies him this dishonesty.

Ah, this mortal coil! I was speaking to my friend Steve at lunch today and I must say he is very lively for a dead person and looking very good for a corpse. He has been dead for approximately four years at this point, although in our conversation it came out he was not aware of the exact date of his death, not having been there for it. We both agreed that, just as a point of interest, it would be rather out of the ordinary to know what day you died – a tiny Bon Mot to drop into conversation.

People often make assumptions, pretty much of a non-complimentary nature; about how and why someone, or that entire class of someone’s, became homeless. Now being dead is, in my experience anyway, a little radical as a cause or major contributing cause to somebody ending up homeless and on the streets. Nevertheless, there are many more unique stories among those categorized as homeless than pigeonholing this diverse group under the simple label “homeless” suggests to the general public.

To return to Steve’s story: he had migrated westward from his home in Quebec, losing touch with his sister along his journey as they were not close. Hey, was it not for e-mail I would have undoubtedly been incommunicado, family wise, during the worst of my mental struggles and homelessness. So about four years ago, after not hearing from Steve in years, his sister had him declared dead to allow for settling legal matters. Had not fate, in the form of flames, intervened this might have been not a major headache and obstacle, but rather a great conversation piece. If you google Steve Aspin you will find a link to the online archives of the Abbotsford Times and can read the story of the fire that consumed his home (trailer) and all his identification. Without ID you may be alive and kicking, but pretty well as far as government and other institutions are concerned you are a ghost, a non-person, a fabricated falsehood. In this day and age of Identity Theft proving you are who you are can prove extremely challenging, especially for those with the added tribulation of being numbered among the dead.

As I pointed out when I wrote up and e-mailed Steve’s corpsehood difficulties to newspapers, radio and television – to get identification you need identification, a rather frustrating Catch-22 situation to try to resolve. I had hoped someone would have a suggestion or way to overcome this barrier but nothing came of this. Currently Steve’s best hope for resurrection would appear to lie with a teacher from MEI who met Steve through the Redemption Café and is determined to help him obtain identification. Hopefully have some acquaintance with our local MP Mr. Fast will give her a foothold on the towering wall of bureaucracy she must climb to accomplish Steve’s return to life.

So the next time you see a homeless person consider that they may not be homeless because of the reasons you assume. Rather they may have suffered one of the many other ways to slide onto the streets and into the ranks of the homeless. You may even be seeing or standing next to someone who has departed ordinary life in more than the customary sense.