By Margaret Brown
A man was walking toward Jericho when he was robbed and beaten and left to die on the side of the road. No one knows how long he suffered as holy men of his own country passed by pretending they couldn’t see him. Finally a good-hearted foreigner stopped and took care of him.
The foreigner was living according to Biblical principles, but the holy men weren’t.
The story of the Good Samaritan inspired Raymond Desmarais to open Jericho Road, a house for men left on the roads in Ottawa. In this modern day Jericho Road story, however, Desmarais, 63, helps homeless men afflicted with mental illness or drug and alcohol addictions.
“On the streets, they sleep in dorms with 35 or 40 other men. They steal from each other,” Desmarais says. “Even if they sleep with their shoes on they wake up and often they’re gone.”
Since the shelters and drop-in centres don’t provide the security and permanence men with mental illness require, Desmarais decided 11 years ago that he would open the first Jericho Road house.
“When I was working on the streets of Ottawa, I began to see people looking just like zombies,” Desmarais says. “They were not taking their medication. They didn’t have a place. They were insecure. They were afraid. They were dependent on a society that doesn’t really care, and the church was not there for them, so we began to take them off the streets.”
Desmarais and his wife still live in the first Jericho Road house with nine men with different psychiatric disorders ranging from schizophrenia to depression.
Now, Jericho Road has expanded; housing 40 men in five separate houses in and around the Centretown area. Two of the houses are permanent housing for men with mental illness. One house runs a six-month drug and alcohol rehabilitation program and two other houses are re-entry homes where the men live for about a year after the rehabilitation program to help them get back on their feet.
“I don’t know where I would be without it,” says Ross McRae, one of the first to graduate from the rehabilitation program.
McRae, 39, is now married and owns his own business. He renovates houses, teaches music and plays guitar with the Five Man Electrical Band.
“I went through the 12-step recovery rooms [Alcoholics Anonymous] for years and years, trying to gain some sort of wisdom to cope with life on life’s terms,” McRae says. “It was so confusing I became really discouraged.”
“Living in Jericho Road gave me the opportunity to look at my spiritual life first and foremost,” McRae says. “But it also gave me, with the re-entry program, an opportunity to look at reintegrating into society as a Christian with these new values.”
By taking care of everyday concerns like groceries and blankets for his bed, McRae says Jericho Road gave him the time to sort through the issues at the root of his addiction.
The men at Jericho Road pay a portion of their welfare or disability cheques to rent their rooms. Desmarais says the men need their own space to rebuild trust. The rooms are large and decorated with personal photographs and posters.
All the houses are located in residential areas. Desmarais says this helps the men reintegrate into society. However, it has caused problems with neighbours.
“People don’t want street people living in their neighbourhood,” Desmarais says.
Desmarais says he’s been to town hall meetings where neighbours have tried to have Jericho Road kicked out of the area. So, Desmarais does not reveal the addresses of the houses.
McRae says one of the major factors in his success with Jericho Road was his mentor, Wayne Moseley, an ordained minister.
Mosley is now in charge of connecting the men in the rehabilitation program with mentors from Bethel Pentecostal Church. Mosley says the mentors help by providing an example of success.
“The guys in the Jericho Road program will hook up with somebody in the church and become friends with them and it just develops,” Mosley says. “It’s a combination of a building a relationship, teaching, and giving direction.”
“When you start to deal with friends that close, you start to build trust up again,” McRae says.
Bethel Pentecostal also helps to fund Jericho Road. Desmarais says the program gets support from all denominations of churches, but he refuses to accept government money. He says prayer provides for most of their financial needs. One woman donated $30,000 the weekend Jericho Road opened..
The rent money comes partially from the men and partially from donations. The medications for the mentally ill are provided by the government. Many of the meals are cooked by volunteers. Jericho Road has eight full-time staff, who Desmarais says are all underpaid.
Desmarais says the staff at Jericho Road work there because they feel they are answering a call from God.
“If you do it because you’re paid by the government it is different, because some of them [the mentally ill] are very hard to serve. They’re very demanding because of their illness so there is often abuse, and yelling and screaming and swearing,” he says.
But Desmarais says he and his staff are no better than the people they serve.“We share our meals together. We pray together. We cry together. We laugh together. We share our lives together,” he says.
Desmarais still meets street people every week in the basement of St. Paul Eastern United Church in downtown Ottawa. They come inside, have a meal, listen to some music, and hear a sermon. Desmarais says he gets to know the men and decides who Jericho Road can help.
The men who live at Jericho Road have to be willing to make some concessions to live there. Staff at Jericho Road control the tenants’ medications and ensure they are taken. The men also have to be willing to see a psychiatrist regularly.
“They’re at Jericho Road because they want to be, because they recognize themselves that they would like to change their lives for the better,” Mosley says.
The men have to be up by 9 a.m. at the latest. They are on a rotating schedule for cleaning the house, but there is always something to be done. Throughout the day the men can talk one-on-one with any member of the staff about any problems they are having. At the rehabilitation house, the men are helped by professional addiction counsellors After supper, the men read or watch television and often hold group Bible studies.
Desmarais says the Christian approach to rehabilitation makes all the difference in the lives of the men. “A man can stop drinking, but his heart is not changed. He can continue to be abusive and aggressive and the lifestyle doesn’t change except that he doesn’t drink or use drugs anymore. Christ changes hearts,” he says.
But Desmarais is in for the long haul because the mentally ill have nowhere else to go.
“We’re not looking to close in 10 years or to solve the problems of the poor,” he says. “We know that they [the mentally ill] will die with us.”