MY TAKE
ALL I WANT IS A ROOM SOMEWHERE
Several municipalities announce the opening of warming centres – and, mind-bogglingly, they are open until 11 pm only. Where are those who seek shelter from the cold during the day to go after 11pm? Image credit: JON TYSON on Unsplash.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
The coldest I ever recall feeling in Canada was while helping our son’s Scouts group sell Christmas trees one December.
By then, we’d been here long enough to learn the value of layering up to keep out the cold. Multiple layers, thick winter jackets, toques, mitts, winter boots... and yet, as we stood there for our three-hour shift, the cold seeped into my bones. This, while we held mugs of hot chocolate in our hands and will confess to taking turns to duck into a parked vehicle to thaw a bit.
My thoughts often turn to that evening – full of cheer and bonhomie as families picked the perfect tree and bore it home – and I wonder, just how do the homeless survive similar frigid nights?
Yes, it’s March and yes, spring is around the corner. But remember, the weather doesn’t often get the memo about the season having turned. The good folks at Farmer’s Almanac are predicting a stormy end to March with lots of snow and serious cold all across the country.
And so, really, just how are the homeless to survive the cold? By making their way to warming centres, you might think.
Think again. Several municipalities announce the opening of these warming centres, but only when an extreme cold advisory is in effect – when god knows it’s bone-chilling on most days of winter – and, mind-bogglingly, the far too few warming centres are open until 11 pm only. Where are those who seek shelter from the cold during the day to go after 11pm?
There are shelters, as some point out. A report in the Toronto Star in January quoted someone living in a tent in a homeless encampment as saying that at a brand new shelter in Halifax he felt like he was in a jail.
While encampments aren’t the answer, media coverage of tents being cleared from parks is heart-wrenching. But is there another way of looking at this?
Clearing out homeless encampments is the right thing to do – even if it looks bad, wrote Kelden Formosa, an elementary school teacher in Calgary, in The Hub, recently. “Letting our homeless neighbours freeze in tents is not the compassionate response,” he says. In our visceral response to seeing tents being torn down and people forced to move, we overlook the fact that the idea is to move them to warm, safe spaces. But the element of force, the inherent helplessness in the situation, is hard to stomach.
Even in Calgary, of the infamous winters. As Formosa reminds us, “temperatures in Alberta dropped below -40C with the windchill earlier this month. At that temperature, you can get frostbite within minutes, and freezing to death is possible – almost certain if you are so strung out or intoxicated that you don’t notice what’s happening to you. Campfires and makeshift heaters can light a nylon tent on fire quite easily, and there are horrific reports of encampment residents burning to death in their tents.
“If all that wasn’t bad enough, many of Edmonton’s homeless encampments have been infiltrated by criminal gangs that extort, threaten, and prey upon their most vulnerable residents. Nature abhors a vacuum, so when government cedes control of some parts of our cities, other authorities emerge. These other authorities are not the peaceable matrons of an imagined commune; they are often those most willing to exercise violence to maintain their profits and control.”
Mental health issues and addictions are just two of the many factors that keep the homeless on the streets and in encampments, and to be fair, shelter crews do the rounds of our streets, trying to bring them in to warmth and provide hot meals. If someone refuses to go, are cities to blame?
This is not about finding someone to blame but seeking humane solutions.
When bombs were set off in a terrorist attack at Brussels airport in 2016, the authorities were caught unprepared. What were they to do with the thousands of passengers milling around at the airport?
They rallied remarkably quickly. The hurt and the injured were taken to hospitals and attended to. The rest were transported to a hangar where heaters were set up to keep everyone warm. Food was provided – including vegetarian items scrounged from grounded planes – as well as diapers, toys and colouring books for little kids and menstrual products for women – while better arrangements were being made at a community centre. When we arrived there, we saw row upon row of camp cots, tables with coffee, tea and snacks, charging stations for phones and laptops, even emergency medicines for those who had left theirs in carry-on bags that we were asked to drop and run.
Perhaps it was the naivete of a good people that they were caught so unprepared, but they pulled out all the stops in the aftermath and I recall the four days we spent at the community centre waiting for flights back to Canada with gratitude for the care and attention that was lavished upon everyone.
We can’t use the “unprepared” excuse. In Canada, harsh winters are a given. We can’t be taken by surprise by the numbers of people who need shelter every time the mercury dips.
According to Statistics Canada figures, the total number of shelters across Canada grew from 392 in 2018 to 518 in 2022.
The number of beds, from 15,859 to 18,467 during the same period.
Clearly, not a case of no one trying to fix things.
But on a single day in 2018, more than 25,216 individuals across 61 communities lived in a situation of homelessness, in a shelter or not. Similarly, it is estimated that an average of 235,000 people in Canada experience one of the many types of homelessness each year.
All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
Lots of chocolate for me to eat
Lots of coal makin' lots of heat
Warm face, warm hands, warm feet
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
I picture a forlorn Eliza Doolittle singing this and think, that’s not too much to ask, is it?