Thread by @sunnshiiny

I grew up in Edmonton’s inner city. And I mean inner city. For a while I lived on the fringe of downtown, in Parkdale. But moved to 96 st & 106A Avenue after grade five. Went to Sacred Heart church and school. When we moved, my mother had a new boyfriend/common law partner.

https://twitter.com/ward4aaron/status/1419059456822824963

In 1977, McCauley and Boyle Street were highly populated with the working poor. Some of the older residents were Slavic (mostly Ukrainian) immigrants. Diversity was abundant. Italian, Ukrainian, First Nations and Métis, East Indian, and Chinese people lived in close quarters.

I don’t remember problems with cultural conflicts. Each cultural group kept to themselves & were polite & cordial to neighbours of differing origins. But everyone was poor/low income.

Except my mother’s boyfriend. He was 20 years older than my mom & owned a construction company.

He also owned a rooming house that we moved into and he had converted to a single home.

There were 4 separate residences in the house. From the front it looked like a regular bungalow. But in the back there were several doors leading to different apartments in the house.

The basement had two suites. One was a one bedroom. The other was a bachelor suite. Both had kitchens, but the bathroom was shared.

Upstairs there was a two bedroom main suite and another bachelor suite at the very back of the house. Small but fully functional.

The main floor bachelor suite became my room. My brothers shared a small bedroom in the main suite and my mom and her boyfriend took the main bedroom at the front of the house. There was room for several people in the home.

It was one of many rooming houses on the block. Many of them are still there, but have been converted into single family dwellings.

The point in this long description is that the neighbourhood was very densely populated. Many low income men and women lived in bachelor suites.

Some of them only had hot plates and shared bathroom facilities.

One would think the high density and low incomes would have meant high crime and substance abuse. But that wasn’t my experience. Crime rates were higher in 1977 than they are now. But not by much in the inner city.

I don’t remember hearing about break ins or stolen vehicles. There was definitely a lot more people who were inebriated in the neighbourhood. Many of them lived in the rooming house suites. But we barely saw them. Because they had their own room.

Most of the single men collected bottles & tin cans during the day and then retired to home with a cheap bottle of alcohol bought at the local ALCB liquor store on 96 St & 105 Ave. Which was right next to “the junk yard” (auto crusher yard) in which as kids we frequently played.

Some of the more transient ones socialized on the street corners against a building. Or in Jiovanni Caboto park. (Kind of the reason we preferred the junk yard to the park). But none of them were scary. Most were kindly and polite. They just slurred their words a lot.

They were generally bathed and clean shaven. Their shared bathroom facilities were a luxury they indulged in. So the typical smell one often associates with “bums” wasn’t really an issue.

The point is, they weren’t a harm to anyone. And no one was really bothered by them.

They had their own home and a neighbourhood that wasn’t afraid of them because they were poor and wore disheveled clothing.

I lived in Boyle Street until I was 13 years old. My mom had split with her boyfriend and we moved to brand new low income housing in Castledowns.

Not once did I fear the poor who lived among us in Boyle Street.

When I was 12, I delivered the Edmonton Journal in my neighbourhood. (I was the only girl and only indigenous person to do so in my neighbourhood). I delivered many papers to those rooming houses.

Papers were printed in the afternoon in 1979-1980. So right after school I would grab my sled or cart and deliver 150 papers on my route. I carried three and four papers into rooming houses to leave them outside the doors to individual suites/rooms.

To earn my pay, I had to collect weekly fees from customers and remit their payment to the neighbourhood manager. Any tips were mine to keep. I received a small paycheque monthly and used it for spending money and to start my first bank account.

This I will never forget. All kinds of people lived on my route. Families, young couples, single mothers, large immigrant families, and single substance abusers.

The people who always gave me the best tips were the single men in rooming houses. Always.

The cost was $1.10 per week for daily paper delivery. Almost every one gave me $1.50 and said keep the change. Every one of them was kind to me and many offered me a hot chocolate. (I never took one, but they offered when it was cold outside).

During my life I have witnessed many people sneer and avoid homeless people. Disgust and repulsion registered clearly on their face. Some feel pity and paternal/maternal compassion. But they always look down their noses at people who have difficult circumstances.

Maybe it’s the smell that is common now. Shelters do offer showers, but in group facilities. Most of those rooming houses were condemned or converted to single family homes.

Maybe it’s the state of inebriation many choose to escape lives filled with suffering and going without.

But these people are human. Just like you and me. Many of us are a pay cheque or 2 away from homelessness. We should know better.

When I worked at Canada Place, I would go outside for a smoke on 97st entrances. Many homeless men approached smokers and asked for a spare smoke.

I remember one man asking me for a smoke. I handed him one and the lighter to light it up. I wasn’t trying to be especially nice. Or mean. I’d performed this routine several times in the years I had worked there.

But after he handed me back my lighter he spoke out and said thank you. Then he added not just for the smoke. He actually thanked me for looking him in the eyes. He thanked me for not avoiding eye contact. He said I was the first person who had looked at him directly in a week.

We stood there and chatted about the weather and his circumstances. I let him know about the shelters in town (he was from Nova Scotia looking for an Alberta job). Asked him if he needed money for coffee or lunch. He turned it down.

After his smoke he thanked me again and left.

The homeless are people. Often through no fault of their own they find themselves homeless. Getting a job when you’re homeless is difficult. Many are also dealing with mental health, trauma, addiction or physical disability.

Provided a home, most are law abiding citizens who treat others with respect.

These people deserve our respect and support as well. Because they’re human beings. Vulnerable, humble human beings who need assistance.

Why aren’t we providing assistance to those who can’t work? Why do we turn away in disgust when a person who is on hard times approaches us or dares to invade our public spaces because they have literally nowhere else to go?

Why did city council allow the removal of the infrastructure that supported these people from having to live on the street? Edmonton had many rooming houses when I was a kid. Even in Parkdale, McCauley, Norwood, and many other inner city neighbourhoods.

Why is our government treating the homeless and those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol so poorly?

Because we tolerate it. That’s why. Not because we can’t afford to build homes and then help people find a home and provide a pittance for food and hygiene products.

It’s because we look away. We dehumanize the most vulnerable because it makes us uncomfortable. We allow our government to treat the most vulnerable like disposable trash.

We should be ashamed for abandoning those with multiple issues.

Real estate developers have bought up prime inner city real estate and transformed it into profit making rental units. Families buy cheap land in the inner city and build large homes with lower taxes. Rooming houses were never a profitable venture.

But there’s no reason low income housing can’t be built in any inner city. Except the neighbours who proclaim NIMBY.

Why do we allow gentrification of neighbourhoods at the expense of the poor? Because developers and investors make more money.

We’ve allowed the displacement of the poor who are unable to work. We drove them out of the inner city to make having to look at them less frequent. We vilify and cast derisive glances at anyone who invaded the trendy public spaces in the city’s inner core.

I don’t like what happened to the homeless encampment in Toronto. But the reaction of many activists and protesters was equally repellant.

The solution isn’t permitting people to set up a shanty town. The solution is to forego profit and build low income housing.

So how do we convince developers to stop building money making real estate and start building domiciles for the homeless and low income singles? Or the families who can no longer afford shelter and food?

It certainly isn’t by arguing and creating conflict with police.

If tiny homes can be constructed for the homeless, we solve the homeless issue.

But that would require people in city cores or urban neighbourhoods to be comfortable with living amongst people who have low incomes.

It means we stop gentrification projects and create policy that permits shared spaces. There are plenty of neighbourhoods where nary a poor person can be found.

NIMBY laws need to be enacted. Homes specifically for low income developed.

But that doesn’t help anyone immediately. Expecting an instant solution is unreasonable. It took several years to remove the infrastructure most cities had to support low income renters.

That’s our collective responsibility for ignoring the problem and turning away in disgust.

We have no one but ourselves (right, left & centre politically) to blame.

There is no such thing as a world without people who are suffering. But past generations tried to hide those who were suffering by removing them from trendy spots in the inner city & other neighbourhoods.

Now there are so many homeless and addicted, we are experiencing the error of those past decisions. And there is no magic wand to fix it or wave it away.

Time would be better spent on policy development to accommodate low incomes and welcome people as part of the neighbourhood.

That’s diversity.

Not storming a police station when police remove an illegal encampment and activists are arrested.

Shanty towns are not a solution.

There are people who bitch about circumstances and obstruct any changes to poorly planned solutions. Those people are not social activists.

Activists solve problems. They identify what needs to be done and they organize the community to get it done.

Passionate devotion to an issue means working to solve the problem. Not create conflict with law enforcement when they are enforcing the law.

Had every two or three protesters chosen a homeless tenant of the encampment to assist to find temporary shelter instead of blocking police, people may actually have a temporary abode until a more permanent solution could be created.

It’s absurd to think protesting is going to stop the police from enforcing the shut down of the encampment. Police don’t get to make laws. They just get to enforce them. That’s it.

The people who created the problem are at city hall, MLAs/MPPs and federal MPs. Not the police.

That doesn’t excuse the police from using excessive force. They did.

But learn how to fight the battles. Tilting at windmills isn’t going to win any support or assistance to solve the homeless people’s predicament. Neither will shaming politicians.

This is when cooperation, compromise and negotiation skills come in handy. Building support for low income in a conservative led municipal or provincial jurisdiction requires a democratic approach.

And funnily enough, assistance for homeless and low income housing is in the Liberal budget. Call the minister or local liberal MP and set up meetings to discuss plans to build affordable housing for the most vulnerable.

And while we’re at it, can someone please redesign shelter services for homeless people? It’s inadequate, archaic and it has demonstrated for decades it isn’t working.

Activism is hard work. It isn’t for people who only wish to signal a virtue. You must get your hands dirty.

But get enough hands, minds, effort and community support together and we can change society. That’s how change works. You become the change you want to see.

You make it happen. Not some hero or saviour government. They just help pay for it.

@threadreaderapp please compile