By Helen Jardine
Marriage is never easy for any couple. But for John Deschamps and his wife Karen, the past few years have been an uphill battle. They struggle to find time alone with each other, they sleep in separate beds and bicker about money. They have their problems just like any other couple.
Except that John and his wife are homeless.
As he glanced down at his wedding ring, dull and scratched after living almost a decade on the street, John explained the biggest problem his marriage faces every night.
“I’m part of a couple, and in Ottawa there’s nowhere for couples to go. Nowhere at night to be together.”
In Ottawa, there are no homeless shelters for couples. Currently, the only option available for couples who want to be housed together is the YMCA on Argyle Avenue, which provides overflow beds for the homeless on its emergency floor.
However, because there are only five double rooms, quite often YMCA workers will be forced to squeeze any additional couples in one of their 15 single rooms.
“It’s a difficult situation for couples,” said one employee at the YMCA who has worked there for more than seven years.
She explained that not every couple is “eligible” for a room at the YMCA.
A homeless couple must first go though a City of Ottawa housing worker who decides whether they can stay there or not.
Rooms are only authorized for one week at a time and couples need to re-apply once their week is up.
“The people that come here are under a lot of stress as it is anyway. And to go week by week, not knowing if you’ll have somewhere to stay the next week, gets you even more stressed,” the YMCA employee said.
“Sometimes if there’s a spot at the Salvation Army, they will put them there because the men’s and women’s beds are at the same location. But the couple is still in different rooms. And I don’t think splitting up the couple is a good idea. I’m very pro keeping them together. But the city has the final say.”
So, every night John walks his wife to Cornerstone’s Women’s Shelter on O’Connor Street, kisses her goodnight, and makes his way to the Union Mission for Men almost a kilometre away on Waller Street.
John and his partner are one of many couples in Ottawa facing the same dilemma.
Twenty-one-year-old Shawn Brown was in a similar situation two years ago when he and his young fiancée were evicted from their Ottawa home and forced to live on the streets.
But, unlike John and Karen, after only a few months of being homeless, the strain on their relationship proved too much.
“After we got evicted everything went wrong. None of the shelters would let us in as a couple. Before that, we were together 24/7. She hated the women’s shelters because I wasn’t there. And if I wasn’t there, she couldn’t sleep. She was too scared.”
To cope with the long nights alone, Shawn’s fiancée began taking hard drugs which, Shawn explained, led to two traumatic miscarriages.
Shawn admitted to being a user himself at the time, but said that once he “got clean,” he couldn’t bear to watch his fiancée’s addiction worsen or to deal with her violent mood-swings. They decided to break up.
Shawn has been clean for over a year and a half now. The last time he saw his ex-fiancée was over six months ago. She was still heavily addicted to crack cocaine and other “hard drugs.”
He muses longingly over the possibility of being a father of two and of what could have been.
Dean, originally from Louisiana, enjoys a hot evening meal every Saturday night at Knox Presbyterian Church which is part of the Out of the Cold initiative to provide free meals for the homeless.
He shares Shawn’s pessimistic view on the experience of being a homeless couple in Ottawa.
He explained that it is becoming increasingly uncommon to find homeless couples because it is simply too hard to stay together on the streets.
“The street is the ultimate separator,” said Dean.
“One side ends up dead or the other side ends up prostituting.”