By Suzy Kendrick
A formal voice has finally been given to Ottawa’s homeless.
After years of asking questions but getting no answers, the concerns of the homeless reached city council earlier this month when it received recommendations from the Homelessness and Safe Streets Act Task Force, providing possible solutions to the problem.
“This was an opportunity for the business community, panhandlers and police to finally talk and hear each other out,” says Sean McKenney, chair of the task force.
The silence reached its breaking point in the summer of 2004 when a protest took place at City Hall.
The six-tent protest, just outside of Mayor Bob Chiarelli’s office, housed a group of homeless, including poverty activists, for months.
The protesters tried to draw attention to the experience of people on the street including access to basic shelter, treatment under the Safe Streets Act and opportunities to earn additional income. At present, the Act makes panhandling illegal.
“The homeless can’t survive on what is being paid right now,” McKenney says, talking about assistance given from the government. “It’s hard and panhandling is an opportunity for individuals to put much needed food on the table.”
Following the protest, the task force heard from hundreds of people during the 13 months they spent looking into these problems.
The public was invited to bi-monthly meetings to provide input before recommendations were presented to the Health, Recreation and Social Services Committee on Feb. 16.
The recommendations include lobbying the provincial government to change certain regulations to enable the homeless to keep earned income without having financial assistance from the government reduced.
“These recommendations and gathering the information for the report has really started the communication process,” McKenney says. “It’s the start of something and if a lot of the recommendations go forward, the communication can go forward as well.”
On March 8, city council referred the report to the business advisory committee for their input as many of the recommendations could possibly affect businesses in the community.
The overall goal of the task force was to raise awareness, says Mary Martha Hale, co-chair of the alliance to end homelessness and member of the task force.
“You can’t easily categorize these issues,” she says. “It’s very complex why they’re on the street and how to reduce that.”
She says the focus of the task force was not only assessing the basic needs of affordable housing, but to help the homeless gain more stability to be able to support themselves.
“People who are homeless or who are at risk of being homeless need to be treated with respect,” Hale says. “The Safe Streets Act, and the implementation of it, has made life much more difficult for disadvantaged people. These laws are written for the homeless and certain groups shouldn’t be targeted based on their status.”
It also called for the city to appoint an ombudsman to specifically address the concerns of the homeless.
Daniel Lalonde, a poverty outreach service worker says society in general needs to re-evaluate how they look at the homeless.
As acting manager of Centre 507, Lalonde says he hears many stories of how the public treats the homeless including being yelled at, spit on and even propositioning a young girl.
“People know it’s there but they just think it isn’t their problem,” Lalonde says.
“It’s a whole other level of society that people don’t like seeing and really, people just need to have a heart.”