‘How many of you avoid the eyes of homeless people out on the street’
How did you get involved with the Drop-In Centre?
I had worked in a nursing home for 13 or 15 years and I was due for a change. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and then a lady I knew at church said “You should apply at the Drop-In Centre.”
Now you’re working at the satellite location. How did that happen?
I was asked a year ago if I was willing to transfer and I agreed to that. It’s much quieter; we don’t have to deal with staff having radios and panic buttons. It’s a fairly stable clientele.
Is the satellite location just for overflow?
That was the first reason for its existence but it’s been such a stable place for so long — nine years now since the Drop-In first leased it from the city.
What’s your role there?
I’m a night supervisor with three staff each night. We bus every client in bus them out provide food at night bag lunches in the morning make sure the coffee is ready and everything is cleaned up when we leave.
What do you think when you hear people call the Drop-In Centre the “Homeless Hotel” or say ‘Why don’t these people just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?’
I would ask those people how many of them would like to sleep with 100 farting snoring roommates. How many of them would like to stand in line for the bathroom the shower for meals for a place to sleep. I’d ask those people how many of you avoid the eyes of homeless people out on the street. Or do you deliberately make eye contact smile and say “Good morning.”
What do you hear from clients about the lack of contact?
That it’s hard to maintain one’s dignity. It’s a subtle thing but it’s so pervasive.
What was your first job at the centre?
I spent three years working on the first floor welcoming people at the door clients who are intoxicated and either going into the first floor sleeping area or clients who are going to the upper floors and need to be checked for sobriety. I was keeping the peace in the room full of drunks making sure people get their wake-up calls because a lot of them go off to do temp work. We also do calls at 3 a.m. for snow removal.
So how do you keep the peace in a room full of drunks?
I am six-foot and about 220 pounds. But a lot of it is just knowing people and calling them by their name being recognized as a fair person who wasn’t interested in being cruel to anyone but will say “Keep quiet or go outside. There are people trying to sleep.” It wasn’t one of the most challenging parts of my job.
What was the most challenging part of the job?
The really hard parts were turning people away when it was bitterly cold just because we were past capacity and not allowed to take anyone else.
Even if it’s -40 C?
If it gets to -40 C the Drop-In almost never turns people away but if it’s -20 C then yes. If we reach the capacity of the building then we have to tell them to find some other place. That can be difficult especially if it’s someone who has been barred from everywhere else. A lot of people are barred from the centre too.
How does someone get barred from the Drop-In?
Fighting threatening staff selling or using drugs on property drinking on property. The length of the bar changes but all of those things will result in a bar.
The number of homeless in Calgary exploded during the boom. Has that changed?
I don’t have as clear a picture because I’m not on the front lines anymore so I’m a bit insulated from that upfront view. I would say that over the past year I’ve seen a slight increase in the number of clients moving out and it’s nice that a lot of them have been phoning us three months later saying they still have their place and are doing well. That’s good to hear from people.
This job sounds like it can be pretty stressful.
I have a friend who has known me for 10 or 12 years and she says I’ve toughened up a lot. I didn’t think I was a pushover before but she made a number of remarks in my first few years. I cut to the chase more and don’t put up with as much bullshit.
What do you think of Calgary’s 10-year plan to end homelessness?
If I could add something to a wish list for how that’s going it’s that I’d love to see more continuity. When people leave the institutions of homeless shelters and some cases have been there for years plopping them out into the community — whether with some kind of agency support or they do it on their own — it’s almost doomed to failure if there isn’t some kind of continuity provided because all of their friends are back at the homeless shelter. They keep getting drawn back there. I’ve asked our volunteer co-ordinator if we could set up something where we have volunteers who know those clients already and would be willing to commit to meet with these people once a week at a Tim Horton’s or go bowling once a month. There should be some kind of bridge between familiar faces at the shelter and being out in the community.
It sounds similar to inmates who can’t cope with reintegrating into society.
Yes. I see it very much the same way. I am part of a circle of support for a sexual offender who was released from jail in January. The program is called Circle of Support and Accountability. One thing that drew me to this program was having seen at the Drop-In Centre the poor success rate of people moving out and being back again in six months because they couldn’t pull things together on their own.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
I think affordable housing in Calgary is extremely important but breaking the institutionalization of people who have been used to living in shelters is very difficult. Historically speaking there has always been across many cultures and thousands of years gypsies who are nomadic and aren’t good at putting down roots. So I think to some extent we’ll always have people like them.
