Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has made tack­ling va­grancy a flag­ship com­mit­ment of his ad­min­is­tra­tion, so it was not sur­pris­ing he took the op­por­tu­ni­ty dur­ing City Day cel­e­bra­tions this week to make a strong call for com­pas­sion and co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion on home­less­ness.

Along­side crime, traf­fic con­ges­tion and il­le­gal vend­ing, va­grancy is a per­sis­tent prob­lem in the 111-year-old cap­i­tal city. May­or Al­leyne is just the lat­est mu­nic­i­pal leader to take on Port-of-Spain’s home­less pop­u­la­tion.

At the last count in March 2021, there were rough­ly 219 in­di­vid­u­als liv­ing on city streets, many of whom were strug­gling with men­tal ill­ness, sub­stance use and chron­ic pover­ty.

But as many for­mer city may­ors learned the hard way, get­ting them in­to shel­ters and pro­vid­ing them with re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive sup­port is com­pli­cat­ed. There is no le­gal au­thor­i­ty to in­vol­un­tar­i­ly re­move the home­less from the streets and they can refuse as­sis­tance.

May­or Al­leyne’s plan for re­solv­ing the city’s decades-long street-dwelling is­sues cen­tres around the five-storey as­sess­ment cen­tre cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion at South Quay, which will pro­vide tem­po­rary beds, show­ers, re­strooms, men­tal health coun­selling and re­fer­rals for hous­ing and em­ploy­ment.

Dur­ing the tenure of for­mer So­cial De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Don­na Cox, the min­istry for­mal­ly broke ground on the fa­cil­i­ty, which is in­tend­ed to re­place the woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons, in Sep­tem­ber 2023.

The plan is for it to op­er­ate on a rights-based, vol­un­tary in­take mod­el, which is a wel­come de­par­ture from the ad hoc roundups that were tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly be­fore.

The dif­fer­ence with this lat­est ef­fort is that May­or Al­leyne is push­ing for new lo­cal gov­ern­ment or­di­nances that clear­ly de­fine mu­nic­i­pal pow­ers to reg­is­ter, mon­i­tor and—in part­ner­ship with the po­lice and Min­istry of Health — safe­ly trans­port in­di­vid­u­als in­to man­dat­ed care un­der the Men­tal Health Act.

Rather than a stand-alone ex­er­cise, this will be part of broad­er city-im­prove­ment dri­ves, in­clud­ing co­or­di­nat­ed mo­bile out­reach squads of so­cial work­ers and nurs­es do­ing dai­ly street vis­its and up­grad­ed pub­lic spaces, with light­ing, san­i­ta­tion, and bench­es to de­ter street dwellers.

There are al­so plans for re­vamped san­i­ta­tion en­force­ment, ac­cel­er­at­ed road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and oth­er projects, all part of an over­all re­new­al agen­da.

Com­bin­ing the ser­vices of the as­sess­ment cen­tre with on­go­ing street-lev­el out­reach­es is a de­par­ture from tried and failed dis­place­ment sweeps that did not de­liv­er long-term re­sults.

This time around, the plan is for a con­tin­u­um of care that ad­dress­es im­me­di­ate needs and the root caus­es of home­less­ness.

This is what was lack­ing in pre­vi­ous ef­forts, such as the well-pub­li­cised plan spear­head­ed by then Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh in late 2012, to erad­i­cate street dwelling in Port-of-Spain. The aim was to re­lo­cate some 1,418 va­grants — in­clud­ing over 400 in Port-of-Spain—to the Trans­form Life Min­istry, Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre and the Cen­tre for the So­cial­ly Dis­placed. How­ev­er, there was very lit­tle fol­low up and many of the peo­ple tar­get­ed in that mass round-up were soon back on the streets. There have been many sim­i­lar ex­er­cis­es, dat­ing as far back as the 1970s, that suf­fered sim­i­lar fates.

Over the years, NGOs, faith groups and cit­i­zen ad­vo­cates have re­peat­ed­ly called for low-cost shel­ters com­plete with on-site sup­port ser­vices.

May­or Al­leyne’s plan is close to that mod­el. Hope­ful­ly, it will suc­ceed.