AS A MATTER of urgency, something needs to be done about the number of people living on the streets of this country.
It is heart-wrenching to see so many young people and a growing number of middle-aged individuals walking our City’s streets, primarily in tattered clothes with a foul odour, begging for money to buy a meal.
And if they aren’t begging, you see them opening up garbage bins searching discarded fast food cartons for left-overs to snack on, or emptying the contents of drink bottles in their mouths.
I am sure that many of you who have witnessed such are as disgusted as I am about this situation and would want to see these people assisted.
The big question however is what can really be done?
The fact is that you cannot remove people from the streets unless they are causing a disturbance. So even though a person may be homeless and walking the street, the police or any other agency has no authority to touch them as that would violate their constitutional rights.
Some years ago the Jamaican government removed several vagrants off their streets only to be slapped with a lawsuit for violating those people’s rights.
But even if they could be persuaded to leave the streets, there are not enough shelters to accommodate the homeless at night, and in the day there are no comprehensive programmes in place to deal with their psychological and physical rehabilitation.
Such a programme is critical in any planned response because there have been cases where people were assisted with houses, but after a while returned to the streets as their mental health issues had not been addressed.
And it gets worse. The homeless we see on the streets and eating out of garbage cans are just the tip of the iceberg.
There are a lot more people who only get a roof over their heads at night by “begging for a scotch” at different houses when the night comes.
These too are homeless and unemployed. And, from what I have learnt, quite a few are women.
Why is this happening?
Family breakdown
Those in the know all point to a breakdown in the family structure here. They blame it primarily on sibling rivalry and family disputes. They also point out that this is also resulting in elder abuse.
Examples of this widening fracture in the family structure here were highlighted in last Tuesday and yesterday’s DAILY NATION.
In yesterday’s paper a woman sat amidst her worldly possessions begging for help for herself and her ten-year-old daughter. She claimed she was evicted by a relative after a domestic dispute.
In the December 28, 2010 edition an individual who gave his name as Patrick told how sibling rivalry led to him “living” in Queen’s Park.
According to him, life was good until his mother died 14 years ago. After she passed, the siblings started to fight over the house he was living in.
As a result his younger sister, “who was born in wedlock”, took control of the house and threw him and his brother and sister out.
“That whole thing was too much to bear, so much so that it sent my sister and brother into the Mental (Psychiatric Hospital),” Patrick said.
As he was working, he rented a room. Though it had no stove and refrigerator and he was forced to eat fast food each day, he survived. But then his working hours were cut, so he could no longer afford the room.
From there Patrick went into a shelter but he said the “hassles and talking down” from those in charge left him feeling more stressed, so he moved into Queen’s Park.
Our small country cannot afford to have able-bodied people like Patrick not making a worthwhile contribution to its development. We need every hand to be productively employed in order to build our society.
If we are supposed to be a society and not an economy, then effective solutions must be arrived at to help our homeless, and get them back into the mainstream of life.
