Denyse Renne

Home­less­ness is an ex­treme­ly com­plex so­cial is­sue that af­fects the qual­i­ty of life in any coun­try.And there are no easy so­lu­tions to the prob­lem, which Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh is cur­rent­ly try­ing to erad­i­cate in the main city hubs across T&T, says Dr Ed­mund Chame­ly, chair­man and founder of Court Sham­rock in San Fer­nan­do.

Chame­ly, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, said the al­lot­ted three-month pe­ri­od cur­rent­ly used to re­ha­bil­i­tate the home­less/va­grants bare­ly scratch­es the sur­face and could do more harm than good if those in­di­vid­u­als were re­turned to so­ci­ety be­fore they were in fact ready for rein­te­gra­tion.

"The ac­tion of just tak­ing the home­less off the streets and plac­ing them in men­tal in­sti­tu­tions is un­rea­son­able, es­pe­cial­ly with­out know­ing what is wrong with them," said Chame­ly, whose or­gan­i­sa­tion hous­es and re­ha­bil­i­tate home­less males. He ex­plained that peo­ple were of­ten home­less ow­ing to sev­er­al fac­tors oth­er than men­tal ill­ness, in­clud­ing HIV/Aids or abuse.

Say­ing each case was dif­fer­ent and some re­quired more at­ten­tion than oth­ers, Chame­ly said it took at least three yearsto ful­ly re­ha­bil­i­tate an in­di­vid­ual who may be home­less, men­tal­ly ill or both. He added: "We are dif­fer­ent. We as­sist in mould­ing the home­less and giv­ing them hope for life."

"Our aim is dif­fer­ent. When we have com­plet­ed the process, our aim is not to have them back on the streets. We try to sta­bilise them by get­ting them jobs and al­low­ing them to see and ex­pe­ri­ence life in­de­pen­dent­ly."

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, he said, need­ed to be part of the change in ad­dress­ing the home­less/va­grancy is­sue. Chame­ly said it amazed him that busi­ness­es out­side the San Fer­nan­do area had in the past as­sist­ed Court Sham­rock by pro­vid­ing beds and oth­er ma­te­ri­als, while busi­ness­es in San Fer­nan­do have ne­glect­ed to do so.

Home­less­ness and va­grancy could be cur­tailed if bet­ter and more strin­gent leg­is­la­tion were put in place, he be­lieves. "There are laws which deal with va­grancy and I be­lieve if the laws are more ex­ces­sive and im­ple­ment­ed, then there will be a de­cline in home­less­ness and va­grancy," he added.

He said the home­less and va­grants thrived on hav­ing their in­de­pen­dence and this was part of the rea­son why they chose to re­main on the streets, as op­posed to seek­ing shel­ter at in­sti­tu­tions.

Help the city

A cam­paign aimed at re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing the home­less in San Fer­nan­do is in the works, San Fer­nan­do may­or Dr Navi Mu­radali told the T&T Guardian. In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Mu­radali said the project, themed "Help the City, Help the Home­less," will see busi­ness­es in San Fer­nan­do ask­ing their cus­tomers to make fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions which would then be giv­en to shel­ters in San Fer­nan­do, like Court Sham­rock, to help with the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the home­less and va­grants.

"We are hop­ing that the pub­lic would come for­ward and re­al­ly make their do­na­tions at these out­lets and once that is done the city would have mon­ey to re­al­ly try to re­ha­bil­i­tate the home­less from the streets, from Court Sham­rock and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions," he said. Ex­plain­ing that the plan was still in its ear­ly stages, the may­or said he was fi­nal­is­ing his plans be­fore ap­proach­ing busi­ness­es with the ini­tia­tive.