Toronto Homelessness....The Face

Yesterday I spoke about the face of poverty being faceless, well here it is at ground level. Inside that blanket is a human being. Underneath that blanketed human being is a metal grate which allows excess warm air from the subway system to escape. In this very specific and confined location is a micro-climate allows life, but just barely. The air temperature where I was standing to take this image was -4. With the windchill it was -10. Later in the day it rained.

This is not an isolated sighting. I've seen it before, I'll see it again. It makes me wonder what would cause a human being to take up residence in the middle of a sidewalk. Are homeless shelters worse than sleeping outside on the sidewalk in winter? Has mental illness or addiction denied this person the opportunity to make rational decisions regarding life? Or was this the rational decision given the circumstances? Has all hope been lost? What does the future hold for this person?

Homelessness still has no face. Many questions...

For all the good that I've mentioned in Toronto, and there is plenty, there is an on-going struggle. It's been there since we 'walked out of Africa'. Food and shelter...how do we get it? How do we keep it? Does this person qualify for welfare? Does he know it? Is it enough? Can we, as a society, afford it now and in the future?

Who answers these questions? I know I can't at the moment, and for once I can't turn to Wikipedia for a convenient and quick answer. I'm not losing any sleep over the issue, to be honest, but I'm not sleeping under a blanket on a winter sidewalk. The city is forcing me to think about homelessness in a way that I never would in Cambridge-Narrows. We have poor folks in the backwoods and cities where I come from, but I've never met anyone without a roof over their head. Life is different here. Everything is condensed. The best of the best, the worst of the worst.

Much, if not most, of my prosperity can be attributed to my parents....thank you. The man in the blanket was born into a family, presumably, though there may be a back story. This story could be shockingly normal or tragically painful. We might be surprised. I heard about someone from a good family in Skyline Acres (my childhood neighbourhood in Fredericton) who is now a homeless person in Toronto. The face of homelessness might even be familiar. How could someone who grew up in a middle class suburb, like me, with good parents, end up on the streets of Toronto? That could have been him wrapped up in the blanket.

That could have been me wrapped up in that blanket, I suppose. It's not part of my 'plan', but I doubt it was part of his.