By Joe Mancini
Published September 2024
You truly exist where you love, not merely where you live.
– St. Bonaventure
A Neighbourhood Story
All around us, we have seen higher levels of anger expressed in political and social environments. You see this in relation to politics, you see it in the eyes of enraged drivers, and we have seen it in our community as people reconcile the realities of more and more people experiencing homelessness and drug addiction, especially around shelters and spaces that support people most at risk.
As supports have moved into more neighbourhoods across KW, we are hearing people worry for their safety as they hold on to a time when homelessness and drug issues were not always as visible. Psychosis can be frightening. Theft can be violating. Fear is palpable as our neighbourhoods change with the growing reality of a group of people who are so left out that they have nothing to fear.
“Place a curfew on people so that they are not on the streets at night, since they are only doing illegal acts at night.” “Why do we give people a social income if they are going to spend it on drugs?” “I worked hard for what I have, why are we supporting these people who do not contribute to society?”
This frustration has become a part of the fabric of our society. The divisions are palpable, the trauma of people left out is unconscionable, the anger of people whose comfort and safety is being challenged leads to “othering” and divisions that we have not seen in our community.
We are witnessing a loosening of the bonds of social solidarity. This is not just about tending to the people who are most left out, it requires a rethinking of the social norms that have led us to this place. Part of the rebuilding process is moving towards embracing the gaze of compassion, the practice of feeling the beautiful interconnections of trees, animals, soil and humans. We are all in this together. It takes community to open our hearts, to be the change we want to see.
The Myth of Normal
In his latest book The Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate has put his finger on this cultural moment. He suggests that people long for Normal, they believe that some kind of ordered existence is attainable. But the reality for most people and groups is substantially different. In fact, our culture is far from Normal. We all participate in what Mate describes as a culture that “stresses the body, burdens the immune system and undermines emotional balance”.
He goes further, noting that the rash of ailments that people suffer through and the social realities they fight against are interlinked. Both come “with ideological blind spots that keep us from seeing our predicaments clearly […] These blind spots – prevalent throughout the culture, keep us ignorant of the connections that bind our health to our social-emotional lives.”
One aspect of the myth of Normal is the belief that everyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Cultural solidarity ends when those most disenfranchised seem to trample on the myth. Particularly if they transcend established boundaries like property. Yet Mate stresses that it is exactly at this point of tension when we need compassion and social understanding.
Homelessness is essentially emotional trauma and multi-leveled social abandonment. For many, it has numerous starting points such as an addiction, psychosis, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), anti-social behaviour, brain injury, developmental issues or debilitating physical illness. Over time the individual dealing with severe social disability is impaired in their ability to navigate society and it worsens when they are subjected to the cycle of homelessness.
Many fight their way through this maze, showing tremendous courage, while others with the same level of courage cannot find their way out. The capacity to rise above social odds is a mystery that is written on the hearts of each person.
Complicating homelessness is the ongoing drug epidemic that has been building for twenty years and flows directly out of this culture of Normal. Drug use grows when family and community ties lessen, and as gangs profit financially from locally produced synthetic drugs. Drugs like fentanyl and crystal meth are potent, cheap and easily distributed. They tear through personalities and wreak havoc on the delicate brain chemistry of their users.
Even when people enter into recovery they face a wall of obstacles. A person has to engage emotional change and the development of personal meaning while also dealing with past relationships, family, loneliness, and boredom. We work with people in the shelter system that are trying to move past addictions while they have no options for housing. It takes a village to support the journey. These are challenges that are enormous for anyone to overcome. Outreach workers are often the friend offering a helping hand.
Ongoing Shelter Work and A Series of Neighbours Meetings
It is in this context of homelessness that the neighbours meetings about homelessness services at the King Street Shelter have witnessed an unfortunate level of anger. The neighbours have raised legitimate concerns about property theft and other disturbances in their neighbourhood that are clearly the result of The Working Centre and the Region of Waterloo establishing a 100 person shelter for those experiencing homelessness.
The contrast in circumstances is enormous, and even as people express their outrage, they see the dichotomy of circumstances. Those who have a place to call home, live under the stresses of life, but they have a home. Those without a home, look at the housed with envy and long for the peace that a home might bring. It is impossible to ignore the resentment of their circumstances.
The sirens of emergency response vehicles coming to the shelter at all hours in response to an overdose or medical emergency are loud, but so is the stark reality of people’s lives as they struggle to survive opioid drug addiction, and the overlapping effect on staff and first responders as they put their heart and soul into offering lifesaving help.
It is true that many of those who are homeless are dealing with addictions and are looking for money in any way they can. They have given up on the dignity of housing and they can only focus on their addiction. There are others, a larger group, who deal with PTSD and psychosis who truly scream and yell to let out the turmoil inside. They will do this in a park, in front of a house, or in the middle of the street. Their depth of dislocation is high. Each of these people are part of our community.
Many who respond to this crisis call for more health care, medications that alleviate psychosis or schizophrenia. In reality, medical/mental health and addiction supports cannot keep up. We are living in a stew of prescribed and illegal drugs, seeking to balance out body chemistry, a balance that is exacerbated by street drugs, laced with so many additives that create the ups-and-downs that now govern people’s lives. We all continue to act into this work of finding chemical/medicated balance, helping a person to feel more human, more themselves.
The despair and hopelessness makes people feel lost and unloved. How do we hold on to a person past this despair, to help them see the hope and compassion that makes their life feel meaningful?
Recently, I was at Worth A Second Look (WASL) and a young man was purchasing something at the cash station. After he left, Ayman asked me if I knew who that was. I didn’t recognize him, but Ayman let me know it was someone who I knew well for about seven years when he constantly experienced intense moments throughout the downtown. He was out of control and there was nothing to be done. He was smart enough not to end up in hospital against his will, but he also had deep mental health issues that were obvious. Yet today after slow, deliberate care and coordination of supports, he was shopping at WASL and part of community.
It is not easy to express the depth of good work being done every day, in deep collaboration. Social problems cannot be solved in a magical way. It takes consistent work and resources to support people past their afflictions.
In the community meetings we hear frustration that can border on disregard for the community that is disenfranchised. There were occasions when people stated that they wanted ‘these people’ to go somewhere else. One person called it an infestation of homelessness. The level of fear was high. People are witnessing these harsh realities for the first time and they want it to go away.
In all cases, this person without a home, comes from our culture – a culture where they were abused, abandoned, taught bizarre social skills from birth or from life’s experiences. All humans have the good in them, but many have been shunned. The good is bottled up inside. Fr. Greg Boyle asks, what is the language of this violence, what is behind the pain and disconnection?
Change, Growth, Healing
As the shelter moved into its second year, changes by both The Working Centre and Region of Waterloo have made substantial improvements. A 24/7 shelter for 100 people dealing with the trauma of homelessness is a work of give and take. The most important change was developing the side yard with a fence facing King Street. A fence had been proposed in the first months of the shelter but was deemed not possible for various reasons.
At the same time, over a year, 268 people used the shelter for at least one night. Of that group 63 left for housing including 7 who found housing on their own, 15 who were supported into the private market with last month rent assistance, 36 who found subsidized housing and 5 who moved into supportive housing. Helping people find housing is an important part of shelter work.
Over time we have responded and evolved changes so that all the pieces work better together. The genuine stress of the day-to-day work of providing shelter with 100 people living and sleeping in the same spaces, creates a focus on the work at hand, making the best of a hard situation. The concerns of the neighbours have brought new resources to support the complex needs people are experiencing. However, many of these challenges are not easily fixed with more resources.
Our culture rarely teaches us how to see the whole, how to contemplate the fullness of our wondrous natural world. The joy and struggle of living demands ongoing deep self-discovery. Our culture can only grow past its paralyzed mindset when we identify the frustrations of the violence that is within and among us. Ilia Delio, a Franciscan theologian, puts it this way: the inner war of rejection is inevitably projected into an outer war of rejection. The path of liberation is the growth of the good. It is a path of higher consciousness that demands self-knowledge.
The lessons from this point of tension lead toward gaining the ability to see the wider wholeness of our interconnected world, to follow the greater spirit of healing, kindness and compassion. The actualization of love must become personal, from the heart, practiced on the ground, overcoming alienation and disconnection. Our model can be the natural world where unifying and synthesizing energy results in ever new combinations of growth. The wonder of that growth is a model for our organizations and neighbourhoods. It can be a model for how people heal and grow out of the trauma they have experienced.
Our goal in community is to understand how the power of love can break through the layers of matter around us. On so many levels the depth of relationships need to extend to human personhood and also to the birds, insects, trees, water and animals. It is not about what we have materially, it is the depth of our spirit interiorly that can recognize how we belong to one another and to the natural world. Fr. Greg Boyle repeats that we all belong to each other and none of us are well until all of us are well. This is the wholeness of healing, the wholeness of forgiveness and the wholeness of listening. It is the journey of deepening love, the growth of the good that we need to all continue striving towards.
Remain true to yourself but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love.
– Teilhard De Chardin
