Homeless: Sweep Them Under The Rug?

Now everyday that I walk outta my building,
I see homeless people sleeping and chillin' on the steps to the apartment that I live in.
I'm not saying everyone is a victim, but the people that I live would treat em more like villains then actual citizens.
I walk past a man laying in his own vomit, who gets his food and his garments by digging in the garbage-     ....
Now every face tells a different story, a different message.
Now how can we judge the book when we don't know the beginning.
We don't know what turned 'em to the bottle, or started injectin',
We just see dirty clothes and another bum beggin'
                                       
-                 Macklemore

Some of us would know Macklemore as the extremely popular rapper who popularized Thrift Shopping. However, in his song City Don't Sleep, the lyrics do describe quite accurately how urban dwellers perceive the homeless, especially without regard for them as human beings and all the while cultivating a misconception that all of the "vagrants, beggars and bums" have placed themselves in this position, and many of them deserve to be/ or are accountable for their own position. Lets face it, the common vision is that these people have become a nuisance, an eyesore and quite frankly should be removed. More emphasis is placed on sweeping them under the rug, or just simply transferring them to some type of special housing (often "Mad-housing" scheme), which in itself creates problems, stress and often does not provide any concrete solution to the actual issues faced by these homeless. When i was initially choosing a topic to do my blog, much thought was given to doing the entirety of the blog on the plight of the homeless, and in also obtaining viewpoints from other actors in urban space who interact with them. 

Concrete Bench, Cardboard Box, Newspapers

Frank awoke to the sound of pigeons, coo-cooing as they pattered around ungainly, pecking at specks of leftover chicken from the burst garbage bag that lay on the floor. The contents of the bag had been rifled through, rapidly and hungrily by the man that now lay there, aching and cold, with the sun finally providing some warmth, its rays directly prodding him in the face and urging him to get a move on before the homeowners saw him in front of their three story "summer" home. He stretched, yawning, breath as rancid as it could possibly get, and rolled off his back, throwing off the makeshift blanket of old newspapers. His once white vest, after weeks of being worn without removal, had a tinge of newspaper ink, coupled with various random food stains and something that vaguely looked and smelled like dog urine. "This was the life eh!", he thought sarcastically. What had gone wrong? Imagine he was once a rising star! Not of the Digicel kind, but a hotshot business-man who had completed his UWI degree with ease. Now riddled with holes from the needle, initially he was looked at with sympathy by his family, then as he became more distant they saw him with scorn, as a disgrace, and finally shunned by both those that he knew and now even people who did not know him, who only passed him as they commuted back and forth in the busy city. Never mind them, things were looking up! Mr. Moto, who had only just come to Trinidad, was giving him a fridge box, complete with all the amenities of bubble wrap and Styrofoam packaging (would make a real bess pillow!). Picture that as the height of luxury for this man; Sounds far-fetched, but such is the life of many of the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. Next thing Frank knew, he was being carted off to a institute constructed to help him mentally, against his will and surely ignoring the fact that he was completely and utterly sound of mind. A summit was to be held. Swept under the rug like some rubble; or more realistically swept into a straight jacket and "rehabilitated". 

This picture can be related to the previous post on security, with its extremely high walls and gate designed to protect inhabitants from the "other". The shopping cart, most likely stolen, does little to improve the image of this man and homeless persons in general; which is already quite bad to begin with. We must ask ourselves, how do these persons become like this? Is it through their own choice? What circumstances, financial, mental, physical, social, family, employment, previous housing etc. drives them to this point? The multiplicity definitely presents a major challenge which undermines an overarching question of whether housing is a right (personally, yes it is) and how such housing should be received and distributed. My viewpoint is that urbanization can serve to destabilize and steamroll a large number of inhabitants, and the conditions which it imposes further serve to exacerbate and create problems in housing, especially from a financial standpoint (how much better is living in urban slums? At least it affords SOME type of shelter and stability). Therefore, proponents of urban systems and construction need to address homelessness within urban areas not as an eyesore, but as something which was potentially and quite possibly created BY urban systems and hence must be properly cured by them, and not seen as something to be simply swept under the rug.









*Thx Niri