Death and the homeless

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/05/2015 (3525 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three homeless men were murdered last month in Winnipeg. Allegedly, by a homeless man.

Of course, there were bold headlines. The Winnipeg Police Service news conference last week was attended by most every local news outlet and streamed live on websites.

Interest in the grim details was piqued. Media wanted to know how two men — Donald Collins, 65, and 48-year-old Stony Bushie — ended up dead in back alleys downtown over the previous weekend. They wanted insight into the alleged killer, John Paul Ostamas, who is also charged in the death of Miles Monias, 39, found in a bus shelter April 10.

One reporter asked Winnipeg police Insp. Danny Smyth if the accused could be classified as a “serial killer.”

“I don’t know if there’s a definition for serial killer,” Smyth replied, “but certainly three murders is significant.”

Replace the words “murder” with “death”, however, and the significance — at least in the eyes of the general public — is debatable. Because homeless die all the time. It’s a fact of life.

Their mortality rates are significantly higher. They die of exposure. They die of drug and alcohol abuse. They get hit by cars. They commit suicide. And on rare occasions, they meet a violent end.

“These things happen — I’m not going to say every day — but if you work with these folks, you know about premature death,” said Brian Bechtel, director of the United Way’s Winnipeg Poverty Reduction Council. “It’s not always violent death, and it doesn’t always come to the public’s attention.

“It’s the ones that happen on the public streets that attract public attention, like a murder or dying of exposure, but there are homeless people dying prematurely all the time. They’re part of the community one day and gone the next.”

It’s not as though those who work with the homeless become immune. But their realities are more rooted in unhappy endings.

“At the end of the day, poverty is one of those situations that isn’t kind to people,” noted Jino Distasio, director of the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg. “This is another example of living in poverty, living without supports and services, these are the outcomes that, unfortunately, what we expect for people. And it’s really sad.

“And we’re almost feeling helpless,” Distasio added. “Where did we go wrong? Why haven’t we been able to reach the right people with the right types of supports and services to stop this type of violence?

‘What else do we need to see on the streets before we act as a government, as a city, as country to end homelessness, end the violence? What do we need to see before we actually do something meaningful?”

Good questions. Just last April, Winnipeg appeared to be making progress. A bunch of politicians got on a stage and made vague commitments to fund a United Way project that boldly called for the end of homelessness in Winnipeg in 10 years.

Now it appears that funding might actually become a reality. In May 2015.

It’s the ones that happen on the public streets that attract public attention, like a murder or dying of exposure, but there are homeless people dying prematurely all the time.
–Brian Bechtel, director of the United Way’s Winnipeg Poverty Reduction Council.

Within the next few weeks, it’s expected the United Way program will receive in excess of $500,000 annually — for a term of five years — between provincial funding and $150,000 a year pledged by the city.

This is good news for the United Way. It may ultimately be good news for the homeless in Winnipeg (estimates vary between 2,000-3,000) on any given night. Either way, it underlines the sometimes glacial pace of attempts to evolve a social system that even many advocates admit is failing those who find themselves caught in the cycle of chronic homelessness.

Initially, the funding will be designated around a universal intake program, among other projects, designed to link individual homeless people with services and agencies. For example, Doorways, which started last June as a pilot project under Aboriginal Health and Wellness, is expected to be operating by this summer.

The Doorways mission statement is, “Right person, right service, right delivery.”

Della Herrera, executive director of Aboriginal Heath and Wellness, said the goal is to not only streamline service delivery, but to prevent “double-dipping” certain services, which clogs limited resources.

“There’s more collaboration amongst agencies and the shelters,” Herrera said. “I don’t know if we’ve had this in a long time. That is really a great place to start.”

A central registry has long been an objective of major Winnipeg shelters, such as Siloam Mission, the Salvation Army’s Booth Centre and the MSP. But advocates contend one major stumbling block remains accessible and affordable housing.

Ironically, on the same day police were holding their news conference outlining sketchy details of the murders, the annual Housing and Homelessness Congress was called to order in a Winnipeg downtown hotel.

“It’s so profoundly sad that things like this happen in our country,” said Jody Ciufo, executive director of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, which sponsored the congress. “The timing is unfortunate. We had moment of silence for the lives that were lost and the family and friends who miss them. I think it’s really helped to focus our resolve, because we know that we can end homelessness if we just provide enough affordable housing for people.”

Yet, the CHRA has accused the federal government of methodically cutting spending on social housing for the past three decades. Many of the existing agreements are expected to expire between now and 2040.

“It’s our reaction as a community that’s going to motivate them to do something,” Ciufo added. “Governments need to know it matters to all of us. It’s unacceptable that a nation this wealthy should allow people to die because they were vulnerable. It’s shameful that this has to happen and we still don’t do anything.”

Last summer, the federal government did provide $28 million under the Homelessness Partnership Strategy for local Housing First initiatives — funding that is disseminated through city hall.

‘What else do we need to see on the streets before we act as a government, as a city, as country to end homelessness, end the violence?
–Jino Distasio, director of the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

Siloam Mission, meanwhile, is planning to open a new, $30.5-million, 160-unit expansion on the Princess Avenue site by 2016 or 2017. And the United Way program is about to begin in earnest.

But the extent of homelessness — with its inherent cost in health care, protection and social welfare — is a complex issue that will not soon vanish from the city streets, experts agree.

While Distasio welcomed the possible funding of the United Way plan to end homelessness, he added: “I haven’t seen the cheque yet. We’ve been waiting.”

Besides, he added, a half-million dollars is “not even a drop in the bucket to what’s needed here. Now we need the real money to follow.”

“We’ve got all the tools, we’ve got all the people, we’ve got all the evidence,” he said. “Basically, now we need the commitment of all three levels of government to make meaningful change to support doing the right thing, which is ending homelessness by preventing it.”

Or maybe it’s just attitudes in general. Mark Stewart, the residential services co-ordinator of the Salvation Army, has been working the front lines of homelessness for a decade. He took note many questions posed about the murders focused on how the deaths affected members of the core-area community. How did this gruesome tragedy affect residents of the shelters?

Stewart is refreshingly blunt. He’s experienced the deaths, public or not. And he understands it’s a problem bigger than his small Army.

“It’s not just a shelter,” Stewart said, matter-of-factly. “We as a community need to come together. This is not ‘our culture,’ it’s a culture of Winnipeg and it’s not going anywhere.”

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca