Profoundly Human
What’s Crazy? What’s Human?
What’s Crazy?
The stereotype.
The caricature.
The stigma.
The version of homelessness many people carry around in their heads.
Lazy.
Dangerous.
Addicted.
Living on free money.
Refusing to work.
Choosing this.
The version of homelessness many people imagine from a distance.
Then there are the people themselves.
The people themselves are far more complicated.
Inside an old warehouse shelter, somebody covered a giant chalkboard with messages.
“DON’T GIVE UP!”
“LIVE YOUR LIFE TO THE FULLEST MAN!!”
“HELP ME”
“THANK YOU JOE FOR ALL YOUR HELP!!”
“We Rebels.”
Fragments of conversations.
Fragments of grief.
Fragments of hope.
Doodles.
Love notes.
Memorials.
Jokes.
A public diary.
A community bulletin board.
A collective scream.
A collective hug.
Humanity written in coloured chalk.
Outside, laughter and revelry drifted from the Red Bird patio.
Across the Richter Street pavement border, the smoke pit was quieter.
Tireder.
The band played.
Craft beer flowed.
Friends gathered.
A few metres away, conversations were about housing applications, disability payments, lost identification, overdose responses, jobs that might happen, jobs that didn’t happen, and simply surviving until tomorrow.
One man told me he had helped care for a friend because he needed to remind himself who he was.
Not because anybody told him to.
Not because there was a reward.
Because somewhere in the act of helping another person, he found a piece of himself.
Another resident carried hot soup for me when numb hands and a wheelchair made dropping it a real possibility.
Someone shared a smoke.
Someone shared a granola bar.
Someone shared a cup of coffee.
Someone got a door.
Someone checked on someone else.
Tiny acts.
Almost invisible acts.
Human acts.
Some are grieving.
Some are addicted.
Some are mentally ill.
Some are disabled.
Some are traumatized.
Some are trying to find housing.
Some are trying to find work.
Some are trying to get sober.
Some are trying to survive another day.
And some are all of those things at the same time.
While trying to remain human.
Or become human again.
And maybe, when they are able, find a way to give back in a more meaningful way than a cigarette, a smoke, or a cup of coffee.
Not because those things don’t matter.
They do.
In places like this they matter more than many people realize.
But because everyone wants to believe they still have something of value to contribute.
I sleep in a warehouse because of a legal mistake.
I shower on rough concrete.
I eat soup from an orange bowl.
I drink coffee beside bananas, yogurt, and donated bread.
I have listened to overdose responses.
I have watched people struggle.
I have watched people help.
And somehow I find myself grateful, not hateful.
Not because this is acceptable.
Not because people should be living this way.
Not because the housing crisis is solved.
Not because the shower floor isn’t rough.
Not because the food is perfect.
Not because accessibility challenges disappear.
People deserve better than this.
But gratitude and criticism can occupy the same space.
I can be grateful for a bed and still believe people deserve housing.
I can be grateful for food and still believe people deserve healthy food.
I can be grateful for shelter and still believe people deserve homes.
The people are not the stereotype.
They are not the caricature.
They are not the stigma.
They are people.
Profoundly human people.
Trying.
Failing.
Helping.
Hurting.
Recovering.
Relapsing.
Grieving.
Laughing.
Surviving.
Carrying each other through another day.
A few metres from live music.
A few metres from craft beer.
A few metres from another version of the same city.
Not another world.
The same world.
Just a different razor-edged angel feather drifting through it.
And perhaps that’s what surprised me most.
I expected to find homelessness.
I found people.
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