Homeless
There is one thing about cities I still am not used to. I lived in a tiny 800 people isolated village for the first 17 years of my life. Then I moved to Quebec, Amsterdam and finally Montreal, 6 years in cities. And in all these cities there is something I find disturbing. It’s homeless people/beggars. In my little village no one is homeless. No one sits on a corner to beg for money. But in Montreal it’s everywhere. Everytime it evokes an emotion, sometimes I feel bad, sometimes I feel annoyed, and so on. For example today I was waiting for the metro to arrive, watching the people/action on the other side of the platform. I saw a very old man (like a grandpa) dragging 5-6 old shopping bags (Old Navy, Transit, etc). He was looking in the garbage cans for bottles. And also looking for change in telephones. He had trouble carrying the bags around, changing them from one hand to the other, walking slowly, dragging his feet. Then I saw a younger guy also homeless probably. He was going around asking money to people. No one sitting on the benches gave him anything and at the last person he walked away swearing. Then he approached two old ladies (grandmas) and they opened their purses to give him money as my metro approached and I got aboard.
Photo by Whiny Dancer, flickr.
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You’re right, i think nobody gets used to it.
It’s always the same each time i see a beggar: first i tell myself i can’t give money that will be used for drugs (i’ve seen too many beggars in TV reports saying out loud they constantly buy drugs, or worse: people who don’t need money at all but are begging because it can pay a lot…),
then i think to myself ‘but what if this person REALLY will buy something useful and try to get out of this situation’,
and then as i’m still walking i end up wondering how in the world i’d be able to know.
i’ve never found an immediate solution to this questioning, but right now i’d say we should have an official governmental way of inquiring who really needs help and is trying to better his/her situation.
I have lived in Montreal for almost 10 years and am not used to it either.
One possibility is to offer to buy the person food. Once I baked muffins and offered them to the homeless people near the Guy-Concordia metro. But I think that the most important thing of all is to treat them as human beings and not as inanimate objects. A little smile, a nod, a “hello”, an acknowledgement of their presence… I think these things go a long way.
Don’t worry about it. Those people are not all homeless. In front of my house, there is a guy who looks for cans and bottles in the trash. I’ve seen him do that at several metro stations. Don’t ever feel bad. There are not all homeless and you never know if they are hiding a few thousand dollars somewhere.
This article may be of interest:
Who are Canada’s homeless?
Monkey, maybe media is indeed a part of the problem, how they portray homeless people in general as drug/alcohol addicts but only letting us know once in a while about positive things homeless people have achieved…
McGill, giving food is may satisfy their needs for that moment. But I also think they aren’t very approcheable. They usually have a basket for money or so. What if I throw in an apple or a granola bar… I’m scared of their reaction… Will they be thankful or be annoyed or be angry because it’s not money? And as for giving them attention, sometimes I nod at them or smile but in general I don’t. Because then they think you want to give them something…!
Long, I agree, they might not all be homeless… You can’t assume someone is homeless because they are begging/dressed a certain way…
Vila H, thanks for the link!
Wake up, Christelle, and welcome to the wolrd! Your tiny village might have been an isolated shangrila, but out here in the real world there are real people with real problems. What’s the point of writing that you can’t get used to seeing homeless people?! The whole world is full of sadness and misery.. not just MTL.