HELP FOR THE HOMELESS: THE MISSING PIECES

This is not a story about homelessness, addiction, or mental health. It’s a story about pain.

Staff at Windsor’s Downtown Mission see it every day in the addicts, the homeless and those struggling with mental health issues. They’ve “burned all their bridges and slept on all the couches they were allowed to sleep on,” they explain.

David Deets knows exactly what they mean. The Oshawa resident recently moved his mother, 88, to a nursing home in Windsor so she could be closer to her remaining family. Unable to find work, he wound up on the street.

“I couldn’t find someplace, so I became homeless,” Deets said from his daytime hangout at the corner of Ouellette Ave. and Park St. Deets, 58, was panhandling in memory of “Max” – a homeless man and friend who was brutally murdered a year ago.

“But I had the shelter and the sanctuary,” Deets said, recalling the disparity between Max’s circumstances and his. “God bless them. So I’m surviving.”

The Downtown Mission is a 24 hour a day co-ed shelter offering its clients meals, help with housing and clothing, and assistance navigating bureaucracies offering financial assistance.

“I would say probably 85 per cent of our clients have a substance use issue, and maybe 90 per cent have a mental health issue, then somewhere in between have some of both,” said Matt Johnson, the mission’s director of programs and services.

“The number of people experiencing mental health issues has risen in the last five years due to a bunch of factors, but a lot of it I think has to do with methamphetamine use.”

Sometimes, Johnson said, they’re able to get help for an individual’s immediate needs – but there are people who just don’t qualify for help.

Constable Burany of Windsor Police said the decisions police officers make on each call is situational and that often, police have few options available to them.

Lack of therapy, lack of places to go after detox and lack of places to go when immediate intervention is required, are concerns shared by many of those who come into contact with people in need.

“When we talk about gaps in our systems, a lot of times people can get into the withdrawal management part,” said Tammy Kotyk, the Integrated Director of Outpatient and Community Mental Health Services for Hotel Dieu and Canadian Mental Health Association

“But there is a delay to connect them to those other bedded programs, where the next three months of recovery is the building phase,” Kotyk said. “‘Okay, what is life going to look like for me, teaching, giving me tools and coping mechanisms to not go back to use like that.’”

“So that’s where the gap is. Sometimes you can get them through detox and get them clean. But if you can’t connect them immediately from detox to one of those services, there’s a breakdown again, then they’re likely going to go back out and use again.”

“Available therapy is something that’s lacking in the city if you can’t afford it,” she said. “When we get people well, how do we keep them that way? It’s by continuing to engage with them.”

Jean Fortier, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, knows it all too well. The woman said she spent 30 years in an alcohol and pill-induced fog and said ready access to programs is key to getting help.

“Go to a treatment center, learn life skills. Some of the homeless people don’t know how to cook for themselves. They don’t know how to dress, they don’t know how to function as a normal person because they don’t know any other way.”

Now 60, Fortier has never been homeless; the Windsorite had the good luck to have come from money. She said her addictions did cost her her family, her children and for a few years, her freedom – all things money can never replace.

Deets can identify, having lost his girlfriend to cancer, his home and his career as a tile setter. In fact, one of the few things he still does have is his life.

“The ground is under my feet and not above my head,” Deets said as the driver of a passing car shouts “loser” before speeding north on Ouellette.

Deets has found a place since the original interview.

With help from Second Chance, he now has furniture and says he is “good to go.”

Now the sign he has on his small wagon just says “have a nice day.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dave Deets – Downtown Windsor

Photo Credit – Donna Tuckwell