Georgetown’s homeless, like their counterparts in every other city in the world, are its most highly visible yet unseen residents. Homeless is a broad name used to refer to a wide range of people who live on the streets for myriad reasons. Among them are the elderly, who eschew the lack of liberty available at ‘old folks’ homes or at their children’s/relatives’ residences; the abandoned, who can’t fit in with family/relatives because of an illness; the runaways; the drug and alcohol addicted and the mentally ill.
In Guyana, people who are truly homeless—having lost their homes because of their inability to pay rent or mortgage or to fire—rarely live on the street. They tuck in at a shelter or a relative’s or friend’s place because they know their situation is temporary and they will be working towards a permanent solution to it. On the other hand, the people who choose to live on the street have often tuned out from life and its ‘normalness’—the 9 to 5 grind, homemaking and housekeeping and being social. They tend to congregate in busy areas where they can receive a daily handout.
Many people, without even thinking about it, give the homeless a wide berth. Often, the reason for this is that they cannot discern who among them might be harmless and who might be about to go on a drug-starved or fuelled bender. For the most part though, people do not really see them, though they know they are there.
Georgetown’s homeless population, the total number of which is unknown, was cast into the limelight last week after this newspaper published a report which revealed that sprinkler systems set up outside at least two central Georgetown places of business were as a direct result of homeless people taking shelter there. In one case, the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC) admitted that it used the water to scatter those sleeping outside its premises before it opened for business. It said some of the homeless were aggressive and that it was also concerned about security. In the other instance, Fogarty’s Department Store said it needed to wash the pavement outside of its Rosebud Café daily because the persons who congregated there left a stench behind.
Following the publication of the report, and a series of outraged responses to it, the Ministry of Social Protection, while chastising the GPOC and Fogarty’s actions, revealed that it would soon begin a collaborative programme to have the homeless receive care for their specific needs. Advisor to the Minister of Social Protection John Adams told Stabroek News that the ministry was getting ready to implement a programme in partnership with other agencies. It named the Ministry of Public Health and the Salvation Army, which runs a drug rehabilitation programme, but had not yet been approached, as likely to collaborate in the initiative. Adams was quoted as saying: “With the drug addicts, because there are many of them, we are supposed to approach the Salvation Army to see what can be done…” Hopefully, the Salvation Army will inform those at the ministry that drug rehabilitation programmes are far more likely to work if the addict takes the initiative.
While a programme for the homeless sounds like a good idea, the ministry may well find that it works better in theory. In its previous incarnation, the Ministry of Social Protection, then named the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security had such a programme. It opened the Night Shelter in 2001, which initially was supposed to provide an alternative to those sleeping on the pavements. It offered a hot meal and a warm bed and people taking advantage of the service were expected to have a shower first. But there were constant battles between the authorities there and the street people making use of the service over the shelter’s rules and regulations. Towards the end of 2006, faced with a deluge of street people, who not only stayed the night but hung around during the day, the authorities took the decision to have the shelter remain open 24 hours. At one stage in 2010, some 200 people resided there – a mix of old and young – but there were still people living on the streets.
In August 2013, the $500 million Hugo Chavez Centre for Rehabilitation and Reintegration opened at Onverwagt, West Coast Berbice. Built to house 180 people, it took in the first batch of 30 homeless people, more than a year later. This centre offers counselling and training, but reports are that it is currently underutilized.
When this newspaper spoke to people living on the street just before Christmas last year at least two of them said they preferred their current unstable arrangement to Night Shelter because of its poor condition and the Hugo Chavez Centre because of its distance from the city.
While there is an assumption that homeless people need to be removed from the streets and taken care of, it is more often the case that the streets are where they prefer to be. There, they can live without conforming to any rules. Individuals, restaurants and soup kitchens provide them with meals without any prejudice and they can usually get small sums of cash for their daily needs by begging or doing odd-jobs.
It would be interesting to find out how the ministry plans to overcome these hurdles, whether it knows just how many homeless there are in Georgetown and how it weighs the success rate of its planned programme.
