Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While an of­fi­cial cal­cu­la­tion will be done in June this year, of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices are re­port­ing that the num­ber of home­less per­sons may have de­creased in re­cent years.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter a site vis­it at the Min­istry’s as­sess­ment cen­tre and tem­po­rary hous­ing fa­cil­i­ty, South Quay, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing, se­nior so­cial work spe­cial­ist Stacey Tou­s­saint said that ac­cord­ing to the most re­cent da­ta gath­ered in 2023, there were 624 home­less peo­ple na­tion­wide.

Of this fig­ure, 235 were in Port-of-Spain, St James, Wood­brook and Diego Mar­tin.

Tou­s­saint said the num­ber of home­less peo­ple na­tion­wide had re­mained rel­a­tive­ly con­sis­tent over the years but felt that the cen­sus ex­er­cise in Ju­ly may show a de­cline in the fig­ures com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

“We will find that it has re­duced be­cause of a num­ber of dif­fer­ent things. We have suc­cess­ful­ly moved some per­sons off the street with the help of our stake­hold­ers, as well as we’ve re­ferred per­sons to homes for old­er per­sons, so you’ll find the num­ber may have re­duced,” she said.

How­ev­er, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox, who led the site vis­it, said while the au­thor­i­ties would con­tin­ue to do their best in man­ag­ing in­ci­dents re­lat­ing to home­less­ness na­tion­wide, there was no leg­is­la­tion to force per­sons off of the street.

Cox there­fore called on fam­i­lies to do their part in look­ing af­ter their loved ones who were at risk of be­com­ing home­less.

“We want to plead with fam­i­lies to take care of their per­sons.

“There are peo­ple on the street; when you talk to them, we recog­nise they have been aban­doned, and the first point is to put them back in the homes, and that is what we need to hap­pen that will as­sist us.”

Cox said leg­is­la­tion re­lat­ing to the man­age­ment and the state’s ap­proach to tack­ling home­less­ness was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed be­fore the com­ple­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty this Oc­to­ber.

The fa­cil­i­ty is in­tend­ed to as­sess the needs and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of home­less peo­ple while al­so pro­vid­ing tem­po­rary hous­ing to those in need.

Cox not­ed that while ac­com­mo­da­tion would be pro­vid­ed to peo­ple on a case-by-case ba­sis, hous­ing like­ly would be avail­able for three months in the first in­stance be­fore a per­son could be as­sessed on what liv­ing arrange­ments would be best for them.

She ad­mit­ted that while there would al­ways be con­cerns over con­vinc­ing home­less peo­ple to use the fa­cil­i­ty, the as­sess­ment cen­tre would be vi­tal in tak­ing the first step to­wards in­ter­ven­tion through as­sess­ment.

Al­so at­tend­ing the tour was the Min­istry of Health’s di­rec­tor of men­tal health, Dr Hazel Oth­el­lo, who said that while the cen­tre, once com­plet­ed, would seek to ad­dress var­i­ous as­pects of home­less­ness, from their men­tal and phys­i­cal health needs to skills train­ing and recre­ation, the best out­come would be to re­unite home­less per­sons with their fam­i­lies.

“What­ev­er chal­lenges they were go­ing through that may have con­tributed to them find­ing them­selves in this sit­u­a­tion, and then, of course, hav­ing the ex­it strat­e­gy so that af­ter the eval­u­a­tion, fur­ther sub­se­quent place­ment needs are met. Hope­ful­ly, we will get many of them back in­to their fam­i­ly homes; that’s al­ways the best op­tion.”

The fa­cil­i­ty, which has a bud­get of $60 mil­lion, was orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in May this year but was de­layed due to de­lays in re­ceiv­ing ship­ments of steel and main­te­nance works on the bridge over the East Dry Riv­er, which bor­ders the west­ern edge of the com­pound.

Dur­ing the vis­it, con­struc­tion man­ag­er with Amal­ga­mat­ed En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices Di­nesh Moo­nan told Cox that most of the work­ers on site lived in Laven­tille and east Port-of-Spain, with one of their em­ploy­ees al­so be­ing home­less him­self.

Moo­nan said the man, who still works on the project, be­gan as an un­skilled labour­er be­fore mov­ing on to ba­sic main­te­nance and me­chan­ic work.

Across the street from the con­struc­tion site on an emp­ty lot, sev­er­al small struc­tures and sheds were con­struct­ed as makeshift homes for street dwellers.

One home­less man who iden­ti­fied him­self as Patrick told Guardian Me­dia that he was not op­ti­mistic that many home­less per­sons would make use of the fa­cil­i­ty.

“Most of the peo­ple out here need to get out of co­caine or what­ev­er drugs they are on first be­fore you can help them,” he said.

“I know once they open that place and they go in, they will tell them the rules and the law, and they will get vex be­cause they want to live how they want.”