The theme of homelessness and tent cities continually recurs in the media. Although it’s a common conversation, often only a surface-level perspective is offered. Two such ongoing local stories are Fraser Health’s fracas with the homeless camp on one of their empty lots and the B.C. Supreme Court ruling in favour of the City of Chilliwack, granting them an interlocutory injunction to have a tent city cleared out from a downtown parking lot. A great deal of attention has been given to the “problem” and “issues” of homelessness but less frequently to the reality of their situation.
Social, cultural, and media studies professor Darren Blakeborough has spent a considerable amount of time analyzing and taking an active role in working towards helping the homeless community. Darren, whose master’s thesis was on the T.V. show The Simpsons and his PhD dissertation on professional wrestling in Canadian television, has looked closely at the reality of homelessness, not just as a problem but as made up of individuals with unique situations. He has worked on multiple projects and conducted research on homelessness and social services relating to mental health, addiction, and homelessness.
What has your experience with the issue of homelessness been?
It actually started in 2006. I had just started working here as a sessional instructor. I had already been a student here; I did my undergrad here and so when I came back one of the professors at the time really took me under his wing and mentored me. He was also the director of the Chilliwack social research and planning council. They got funding to do research on issues related to homelessness so it was more about social services and users of social services, which at that time was dealing with the main issues of addiction, mental health, and homelessness. He was the lead investigator, but he hired me to work for him and that’s how I kind of got into it. Then a couple of years ago the Chilliwack social research and planning council got more funding to look at homelessness and because I had been involved with the first project, they asked me to head this up, so I did.
What did you focus on with this project?
We did a qualitative report where we spoke with 27 homeless individuals about their experiences, why they were homeless, where they would like to see themselves in the future, what services they were using, and questions like that. It took a while to build some trust amongst them; we really had to be visible in a lot of the different areas so we were at Ruth and Naomi’s, the Salvation Army, the needle exchange bus. Whenever there were events we always made sure we were there. Once they started seeing us all the time then people would start to talk to us a little bit more. The project was primarily looking at the notion of low barrier housing.
We also did a review of existing literature on housing issues and noticed that most jurisdictions in North America were adopting what’s called a “housing first” approach. It’s traditionally been that if someone is homeless and was wanting to get into some kind of housing situation there’s always been a requirement of sobriety and that they actively participate in different social programming. Go through that, get themselves squared away, and then we can think about getting you into a house. Housing first flips that around. The theoretical rationale behind it that has been demonstrated successfully in every jurisdiction that’s done it, is that in order for somebody to deal with underlying issues, whether it’s mental health, addictions, dealing with abuse and things like that, they first need the safety and security of shelter. The belief is that until they have safety and security, you can’t even begin to touch the other problems they have. So housing first has no requirements of sobriety.
This housing first program, it incorporates not just housing but jobs training and rehabilitation as well?
Yup. Everything is a part of it, it’s not just a shift in how we deal with homeless or think about homelessness, it involves a shift in policy around all of those ideas as well. All the existing data shows that there’s a much higher success rate transitioning people from the streets into housing, into programming, and into employment through a housing first model than anything else that has been tried to this point. There’s a guy from the Salvation Army that we interviewed and he said that the greatest thing that could ever happen would be for him to lose his job because he was no longer needed. That summed it up for me right there. If I’m no longer needed in this position, that’s the greatest thing that could happen. Who says that about their job?
What are some of the common misconceptions surrounding homelessness?
When people think homeless they think of the stereotype, right? That guy with the big, bushy beard who walks around town and when you see him you cross to the other side of the street because he’s clearly insane and who knows what’s going to happen. And all stereotypes have a basis in reality, they’re exaggerations of a smaller truth, so while that does exist, that’s not the only one that exists.
When I started writing some articles for the local paper, I took some of the interviews that we had done and tried to tell those stories, to put a human face to them, to make people realize that it’s not just that one group of people that are homeless. I got emails from lots of people. One I remember was a couple in their late 60s on fixed incomes and he said they were literally one month away from not having anywhere to live and didn’t know what they were going to do. He basically said thanks for letting people know that there are “regular” people who are having to deal with this too.
What are your thoughts about tent cities?
I will say, first of all, I get and totally understand the complaints that everybody has about them. They’re an eyesore, they’re full of drugs. The tent city isn’t the root of the problem, it’s the visible representation of everything that has lead up to this point. It’s not to say that it isn’t a problem — it’s obviously a problem and I would prefer not to have a tent city across the street from my house — but there are proper ways to deal with that and hopefully we’re moving in that direction. I don’t know what other choice we have, everything that’s been tried up to this point hasn’t been terribly successful.
So while tent cities are in one sense a problem, they’re not the root or cause of the bigger problem?
Right, there are so many underlying issues but again, it goes back to housing first. The safety and security of shelter — housing, a roof over your head, not worrying about where your next meal is going to come from, if there’s going to be a next meal. And once you have that you can get yourself into a mindframe where you say, “Okay, let’s deal with what happened to me when I was a child, let’s deal with my addiction issues.” That was one of the things that came up in our interviews. We talked to people that were addicted and either homeless or living in precarious housing situations and who wanted help. Some of them even went to get help, but while they’re gone they can’t pay their rent and they’re not in their place so they end up losing it. They go through a detox and after a three-month program they come out and they don’t have anywhere to live and the cycle starts all over again.
What sorts of things can anyone do to change this condition of homelessness?
Realize that they’re human beings. I always call it soul-crushing when you go on Facebook or any news website that has a story about homelessness or addiction and you read the comments from other readers. I know there’s frustration, I get that you’re frustrated and you want something done, and the easiest answer for some of these people is, “Well it would make my life better if they were just all in jail.” You hear things like, “Well wouldn’t we save even more money if we just let them overdose; eventually the problem goes away if there’s nobody left.” I suppose theoretically that is a solution but I don’t want to live in a world where our answer to drug addiction is to just let drug addicts die so the problem goes away. You have deemed a certain group in our society not worthy of the same rights to life and happiness as you have. That’s not right on any level.
As the winter months approach, what needs to be done to prevent a lot of the dangers that the cold presents to the homeless?
I think government is getting on board. I know that in Chilliwack, the Salvation Army just got some funding to have emergency shelter beds so on those absolutely horrific days they will be able to set up and accommodate more people than they normally do. The Salvation Army, at least in Chilliwack, is a fantastic organization. They’ve got those big storage containers outside so the people that do come in can lock their stuff safely. So people can have their stuff locked up in these bins and then get it again in the morning and it’ll be safe and secure. They’re actually potentially accommodating pets now as well, which has always been a huge thing.
So the focus is really to shift towards being accommodating, not simply saying you can only have our resources if you do what we say?
Yeah, I can only talk about the people that I deal with specifically in Chilliwack, but I know that the member partners sitting at the housing first table get it. The city counsellor that’s involved in it gets it, the different agencies like the Salvation Army and Ruth and Naomi’s, obviously people like that who are front line, they get it. They understand that we need to have some kind of fundamental shift in how we deal with the homeless and policy that needs to be put in place as we move forward, and I really hope that it’s going to start happening, because we need it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
