As pre­vi­ous ef­forts at clear­ing the home­less from the na­tion's streets have proved time and again, the eas­i­est thing to do is to ar­rest peo­ple for va­grancy. What's been con­sis­tent­ly miss­ing is the kind of so­cial ser­vices sup­port and hu­mane ad­min­is­tra­tion that makes sense of dozens of dif­fer­ent life sto­ries and at­tempts to chart a course that com­pas­sion­ate­ly sorts them out. To hear him talk about the de­ci­sion to round up va­grants in Port-of-Spain, May­or Louis Lee Sing is ar­guably pas­sion­ate and con­cerned about his city and safe­ty on the streets. The cleanup ac­tion, por­trayed as be­ing in the pub­lic's in­ter­est, was said to have cap­tured il­lic­it drugs and an in­tim­i­dat­ing ar­ray of crude weapons which were of­fered to the me­dia as vi­su­al ev­i­dence of the loom­ing threat that un­washed, dazed cit­i­zens posed to their bet­ter off fel­low men on the city streets. Since then, the new­ly elect­ed May­or has cho­sen oth­er wind­mills to tilt at, ar­gu­ing that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of mas camps in Port-of-Spain need­ed re­view and that an im­me­di­ate halt should to be called to the is­su­ing of bar li­cens­es in Wood­brook and St James.

May­or Lee Sing ev­i­dent­ly feels that these free en­ter­prise ini­tia­tives in the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor pose a grave threat to the dri­ve­ways of the el­der­ly, while the loom­ing threat of weak blad­ders and bow­els in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing af­ter these busi­ness­es close their doors is so grave that it needs to be ur­gent­ly mon­i­tored and con­trolled. As the ar­chi­tects of any cleanup dri­ve will at­test, gath­er­ing de­tri­tus, whether mankind or man-made, brings to the fore the is­sue of what is to be done with what's col­lect­ed. A re­al ini­tia­tive to change a liv­ing en­vi­ron­ment must ac­knowl­edge that mov­ing the home­less from one site to an­oth­er al­most nev­er makes a re­al dif­fer­ence. The 2009 Pi­paro project to re­lo­cate va­grants from city streets to the New Hori­zons Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre quick­ly came to an end when the peo­ple of Pi­paro ar­gued that they did not want to forcibly in­her­it the prob­lems of the na­tion's city cen­tres.

There needs to be a com­pre­hen­sive and sen­si­ble ap­proach to the prob­lems with va­grancy that plague this coun­try's city cen­tres. This is not a prob­lem on­ly for Port-of-Spain, and the so­lu­tions can­not on­ly be dri­ven by the ef­forts and en­thu­si­asm of a sin­gle May­or. In­deed, the prob­lem would seem to right­ly rest in the realm of Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, who has clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed his in­ter­est in step­ping for­ward to put the re­sources of the state be­hind the so­lu­tion of press­ing so­cial prob­lems. At least part of the on­go­ing prob­lem with the earnest hand wring­ing over the home­less in Trinidad and To­ba­go is the per­sis­tent mis­un­der­stand­ing that there is one so­lu­tion to peo­ple who have end­ed up on the streets from var­i­ous paths in life. In the most re­cent sweep of va­grants on Thurs­day night, one man ar­gued that he was a pineap­ple farmer from Mor­vant who was ar­rest­ed by po­lice­men while shel­ter­ing from the rain. Oth­ers have been aban­doned by their fam­i­lies or sim­ply run out of sup­port or rel­a­tives ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing them. There are drug ad­dicts on the streets as well as the men­tal­ly ill and lump­ing all these peo­ple to­geth­er un­der one rubric and at­tempt­ing to im­ple­ment a sin­gle ac­tion to "process" them is a cru­el mis­take.

There are laws on the books which al­low po­lice of­fi­cers to ar­rest peo­ple for ex­tend­ed loi­ter­ing and to re­move them from the street, but this has, his­tor­i­cal­ly, proven to be a very tem­po­rary so­lu­tion to a long term prob­lem.As pre­vi­ous ef­forts at clear­ing the home­less from the na­tion's streets have proved time and again, the eas­i­est thing to do is to ar­rest peo­ple for va­grancy. What's been con­sis­tent­ly miss­ing is the kind of so­cial ser­vices sup­port and hu­mane ad­min­is­tra­tion that makes sense of dozens of dif­fer­ent life sto­ries and at­tempts to chart a course that com­pas­sion­ate­ly sorts them out.It is a sim­ple truth of our progress as a na­tion that the way we deal with the least among us is the clear­est mea­sure of our ca­pac­i­ty for com­pas­sion as a so­ci­ety. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the ac­tions tak­en over the last week against the home­less pop­u­lat­ing Port-of-Spain's side­walks fail that test with de­press­ing thor­ough­ness.