Living rough isn’t healthy. You’re subjected to all the seasonal discomforts of weather from winter’s bitter cold to the unbearable heat of summer. You risk being the victim of violence. As a young man I was told “locks keep honest people honest”, so a life without locks leaves you constantly vulnerable.
You don’t sleep well because of that risk of violence and/or theft of your few possessions. Not only can’t you be clean, there’s the stress and indignity of having no bathroom.
These things are awful for the individuals, but they look bad for the community. No one wants to navigate a homeless encampment or worry that a trip to a park means wandering in to an open air latrine.
As a society I often hear that many of the homeless are homeless because they have mental health issues. Somehow that seems to make homelessness acceptable. I lived in a small town in southern Ontario, near Detroit. One local “character” was Boots. He was nicknamed Boots because all he ever wore were rubber boots. He rode a rickey bike around town, picking up bottles and cans. That was his income. For over a decade he slept in a closed gas station converted to a warehouse. It was unheated, but at least had cold running water and a toilet.
When that property came up for development, the Mayor said he would look for another garage for Boots to live in. There was no concept that perhaps we could do better than an unheated building. This spurred service club and church members into action. They found a building and created an apartment for Boots. For almost two decades everyone assumed Boots had mental health issues. Once he was clean and you could stand to be around him we learned that Boots was originally Polish. What caused some to think he was weak-minded turned out to be a thick accent. I was happy that his last years were warm, safe, comfortable and social.
Now I look at Halifax.
An article in April 5th Herald says there are 899 homeless people living in Halifax. That’s an astonishing number. It’s more than the populations of Annapolis Royal and Hubbards combined!
Homelessness in HRM appears to be a fast-growing number. In 2019 there were 269 homeless. This grew by 75% to 467 homeless in 2021. The current 899 homeless represents a 90% growth in two years, which means we should expect to have over 1600 homeless by 2025! That’s more than the population of Hantsport.
Why are so many homeless? It can’t simply be a cluster of people with mental health issues. Different studies have suggested 25 – 52% or 25 – 67% of homeless people have mental health issues. Whichever range of numbers is correct it would seem that a third to half those living on the streets are there because of economics. In an era when 52% of businesses say they have difficulty filling job vacancies, can’t we find a fast fix to help hundreds of the homeless find employment?
Forty years ago an article in Money magazine said the greatest impediment to getting a job wasn’t education, but the lack of an address. Employers need to know how to reach employees, and have an address for government forms. Banks need an address for account holders. Governments need an address so they can ensure the delivery of benefit programs.
Lack of an address also means no access to showers, laundry and safe places to sleep. I have to wonder if some of the irrational people we see on the streets may not have a mental health issue, but merely expressing their exasperation over their living circumstances. The longer people are left on the streets the greater the risk to their health. They’re not eating nutritional foods. They’re not getting their rest. The weather extremes can lead from frostbite to heat stroke. Cuts and minor wounds fester into larger medical issues. Any kind of other illness doesn’t get assessed meaning diseases become worse and therefore more expensive to treat.
In seems to me Halifax has unique assets to employ to asses those in need of mental health from those who need an opportunity to be clean, alert and ready to go to work. Those assets are the downtown universities, which are within walking distance to many jobs. According to their websites, Dalhousie University, University of Kings College, Saint Mary’s University and the Atlantic School of Theology have accommodation for over 3,500 students. The bulk of that housing becomes vacant at the end of April. Some is rented out during the summer, but it could be an interesting short-term pilot project to house several hundred people and help them re-enter the workforce.
If the city and province, who are already paying for some temporary accommodations, could utilize 899 beds for four months, we could stream the homeless into various groups: those who need mental health support, those with basic medical problems, and those able to work but for the lack of hygiene and an address aren’t employed. Those able to work could take minimum wage jobs and with some type of forced saving rebuild a stake to transition into real, long-term housing in the fall. Some of those who are able to work might even be able to work on rehabbing buildings into needed transition housing.
For example, across Canada there are over 8,000 churches about to be declared surplus and deconsecrated. Rather than aim for perfection, why not take the downtown churches and build dorm-style housing inside? The average sized church could probably accommodate 40-50 such units, with shared bathrooms, kitchen, lounge and laundry areas. Tenants would be responsible for cleaning and minor maintenance issues.
In a worse case scenario, this would mean somewhere between 296 or 431 people would get their lives back and get off the street. With that kind of reduction, more of the existing $1.4 million the city and province are spending on the homeless would go to those with the mental health impediment.
This helps lives and budgets.
helphealthcare 
Nobody cares about these people until they become a nuisance.
If they start aggressively panhandling businesses complain and the cops are sent to move them along somewhere else. If they keel over in the street they become the problem of the paramedics and hospital system. Imagine living in a tent or on a sidewalk in a sleeping bag under a tarp during a Halifax winter or heavy rain.
The Premier talks about the need to increase housing units (which is true) but new structures going up now will be priced for upper middle class, they will be out of the reach of even the lower middle much less these people.
We can’t expect the private sector to construct low cost housing because there is no profit in that, unless government partners with them. The City has tried to help with constructing small temporary units or relocating some folks to unused hotels but that only covers some of the need. I guess it’s up to the Province and the Feds to directly bankroll more affordable housing. Maybe they might build a little – but many folks would resent their taxes being used for this. I imagine they would see it as somehow ‘encouraging’ people to freeload when they are busting their guts just to stay afloat.
I was staying in the Mission district in San Francisco briefly in 1986.
There had been much ado made about ‘de-insitutionalizing’ patients there who had been living previously in mental health facilities which were now being shut down. They were now ‘living in the community’. Late one night on a dark street I pressed the button to cross the street and suddenly I noticed I was being watched. All these spooky faces started emerging from the shadows looking me on the eye, all hoping for a handout I suppose. I had been warned not to do that or I’d be assailed from all sides. They were like beggars in India I was told. These people had apparently once been mental or psychiatric patients in public instutions. Now they were ‘living in the community’ – on the streets. I wondered how many could survive such a life if they had once been moved to an institution ‘for their own good’.
It’s easy to ignore the social determinants of health, as though public health care only begins in the family doctor’s clinic (if you’re lucky enough to have one) or the ER when one is sick or hurt. I guess so many of us are just barely hanging on financially in these days of insane accommodation and food costs that few are interested in seeing more of their taxes spent helping homeless people. Many of us are only a missed pay cheque or two away from disaster ourselves. Besides, there are no votes for helping the homeless, except perhaps for the NDP, but they will never win power.
The most striking thing I find is that if there is any hope for these folks it must be the result of collective action, but I see only reactions to bad news stories from government. There seems to be no large scope, longer term plan.
I’m afraid government employees and politicians at all three levels – municipal, provincial and federal – are too wedded to a quest for perfection, which is the failed status quo. A quick dorm-like room, around 8′ x 10′, with a bed, closet, chair, desk/table and lockable door would be ideal for these people. Hell, they’re living on the street now, so getting them inside a building out of the weather and where they can protect their things and themselves is a start. This could be fast, cheap construction within the envelope of a larger building as a start to rebuilding their lives. These units, with shared walls and floors/ceilings could probably be constructed for hundreds or maybe a thousand dollars. They wouldn’t be elegant, but safe, warm and clean. It’s a start.
That was a valuable, coherent overview with some good suggestions. We need a “homeless czar” to energetically effect such change. As it is, the poorer among us are unable to make ends meet, they are given allowances to help them get by, those allowances ending up bolstering the immorally high profits of businesses, even food businesses. The CEOs and shareholders profit almost directly from poverty.
Great idea; except it didn’t come from City Hall
My daughter, now age 49 has had a serious mental health problem since she was a teenager. The psychiatric follow-up system in this province is completely dysfunctional and universally fails patients. It isn’t really human resource issues, though having 120+ psychiatrists in Halifax and less than 20 for everywhere else doesn’t help. The real problem is just lack of motivation to develop a decent system. Patients get lost to follow-up and no-one gives a damn. By and large, outside Halifax Psychiatric departments are in hospitals and are run, not by psychiatrists but by administrators and non-medical staff. They are not motivated to improve or innovate. It’s not their problem if people don’t turn up for appointments. These patients, abandoned by the health care system, are probably half the homeless people in Halifax. Fortunately my daughter has never been homeless and now lives in a group home. It took a hell of a lot of difficulty getting her there
I have friends in London whose daughter was diagnosed as bi-polar. From age 14 to 27 she was in and out of hospitals and clinics costing 10,000 pounds a week. One minute she was fine, then manic. Her mother and I came out of the ballet at Covent Garden to a message she had thrown herself on the tube tracks. She was safe. After 13 years of mood-altering drugs the medical team discovered a misdiagnosis. She had a thyroid condition! The original doctors didn’t expect that in someone so young, so medicated her for a non-existing illness which created her irrational, dangerous actions. She’s now in her mid-30s, a kind woman, fully employed in the film industry. If not for parental persistence, and a great health insurance plan, she could have ended up back on the tube track or Thames.
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