Mental Health Survivors and the Addicted, Need Homes, Not Judgement

It’s 1:15 right now where I live. I’m on the top floor of a four-story walk-up in the middle of a Canadian city of a million. I had three hours’ sleep tonight, but I don’t know if I will be able to get any more. I’m a light sleeper and even on a Monday night, there is a plethora of disturbing sounds going on keeping me awake.

One of the things that keeps me awake is what I call Drama. Out my window, especially on warm nights but even in winter, couples walk by fighting over drugs or alcohol or infidelity, completely oblivious to the fact that there is a whole neighborhood that can hear everything they shout.

The next thing that keeps me out is the fact that recent efforts to improve security are working. We now have an outside door to our building that locks at a certain time, discouraging people from coming in to use our foyer as a place to cook up or shoot up or smoke up. The noise doesn’t come from the addicts, it comes from addicts who can’t get in that scream, smash the door, hammer on the door relentlessly.

I can’t help but feel bad for these people. First off, I live in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Western Canada. We attract the marginalized like flies, and even the police bring them to this neighborhood when they encounter pandhandlers or addicts or people who appear mentally ill in other parts of town. This is where they can get help for addiction, find safe injection sites, use non-judgemental shelter space and find places to get fed. But as I hear steps and shouting from the hallway and slamming of the door that is next to my bedroom dozens upon dozens of times a night, I sometimes wonder if it is worth the reduced rental rates to stay here. The truth I keep coming to is that there is no other place I would want to be.

There is something I need to share. I have a mental illness. When I was younger, I was marginally housed. What this meant was that I paid for one bed in a shared room, often for months at a time. When I did have an apartment, all of my money went to bare neccesities and rent, and I was too ill most of the time to work and get ahead. Now, 30 years after being diagnosed, so many options have opened up.

I should mention that I have addictions as well as a mental illness. I have a severe gambing addiction and another one to alcohol. Growing up living with depression, cigarettes and alcohol seemed like they were my best friends even when they were destroying me. When I was older, when I had gotten a handle on my other addictions and was working and making a little money, my gambling addiction snuck up on me and sucked out all the joy and peace I had in life. Nothing mattered more than my next bet. Around when I was at my worst with gambling, I had to go into a hospital for six months for mental health treatment. It is a miracle that I am even alive after the kind of things I went through. During that six months, I was a frequent victim of violence, I was punished many times by being put in an isolation room, and my prognosis was poor. They thought I may have to spend the rest of my life in the hospital.

I got through that period, mainly because of one thing. Housing. When I left the hospital, I went into a group home. Here I could live free of stigma and stress. My needs were provided, they had a recreation program, movie nights, frequent games of pool, but most importantly everyone there was either diagnosed with a mental illness or trained to deal with mental illness. Housing. I got better, I ended up being able to re-build my life after a horrible time because of housing.

The Candadian government has made promises to increase funding for housing, but I often say it is too little, too late. You can’t treat a person’s mental illness if they can’t be housed, unless you build much bigger hospitals. Building bigger hospitals is an expensive and ineffective way of helping people. House the homeless who suffer from mental illness, treat their addictions or illnesses, but first and foremost, get them off the streets. The reality of street life is living in the worst conditions (including harsh Canadian winters) and using drugs or alcohol to float off into oblivion, or even just to be able to esape from reality long enough to sleep outside, always facing being shuffled along until you are someone else’s problem.

Getting people housing and treatment may seem expensive, but the truth is, the cost to society of homelessness in Canada comes to over $7 Billion a year. If you were to take half of that figure and invest it in getting people off the streets, the returns would be phenomenal, and they would keep growing as people find new meaning to their lives in recovery from addiction and better mental health. And in the end, we would seem like a lot more of a sane society, and I think the crime rate would drop significantly. The alternative is to put people in unthinkable desperation and leave them to destroy themselves. No, I don’t think I should move. I think I need to stay here and keep witnessing how people in the margins are treated, and to keep writing about it until I see changes happen.