VANCOUVER – An outreach team for the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver has been working in the city’s Downtown Eastside to ensure people are aware and are prepared to cope with the latest...
Feels. Ngl I’ve been what they call ‘hidden homeless’ many times due to mental health issues. There were times I fell into the ‘visible homeless’ scene that a lot of people focus on and slag off about. I can absolutely assure you that the working poor and hidden homeless account for roughly 10 to 1 of the visible homeless out there. Probably if I’m honest twice that. Anyone in a high turnover field (kitchen work, construction, shipping/delivery, etc etc) knows what it’s like to be making quote/endquote “good money” but never have enough to make it to the next paycheck. And then something bad happens to tip it all over the edge like an injury, a breakup, an eviction due to “landlords use”, a child on the way, an illness, a death in the family.
By the time someone is addicted to hard drugs and panhandling on the street they’ve either had years of unspeakable shit done to them, or a decade (or two, or three) of trying to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” before they caved into the state where standing in full public view asking for change is the only thing they can do to get right even for a few moments at a time. Folk like to think it’s a choice in the sense someone has a good thing going for them but decide to get lazy and go out and take the easy path to drug consumption or something. Nobody who thinks that way ever stops to consider how hard it is as a human being, participating in this culture, to stand on the sidewalk or the intersection and put their whole face into a request for crumbs and quarters.
You’re pretty much dead inside by the time you end up out there. And lots of lifers have been there since their early teens.
Feels. Ngl I’ve been what they call ‘hidden homeless’ many times due to mental health issues. There were times I fell into the ‘visible homeless’ scene that a lot of people focus on and slag off about. I can absolutely assure you that the working poor and hidden homeless account for roughly 10 to 1 of the visible homeless out there. Probably if I’m honest twice that. Anyone in a high turnover field (kitchen work, construction, shipping/delivery, etc etc) knows what it’s like to be making quote/endquote “good money” but never have enough to make it to the next paycheck. And then something bad happens to tip it all over the edge like an injury, a breakup, an eviction due to “landlords use”, a child on the way, an illness, a death in the family.
By the time someone is addicted to hard drugs and panhandling on the street they’ve either had years of unspeakable shit done to them, or a decade (or two, or three) of trying to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” before they caved into the state where standing in full public view asking for change is the only thing they can do to get right even for a few moments at a time. Folk like to think it’s a choice in the sense someone has a good thing going for them but decide to get lazy and go out and take the easy path to drug consumption or something. Nobody who thinks that way ever stops to consider how hard it is as a human being, participating in this culture, to stand on the sidewalk or the intersection and put their whole face into a request for crumbs and quarters.
You’re pretty much dead inside by the time you end up out there. And lots of lifers have been there since their early teens.