On Homelessness and a Guy named Ernie
I heard on the radio the other day that a church had to fight off an appeal from neighbouring businesses in order to open an emergency shelter for the homeless. I listened to this while driving to work in 40 below weather. It was snowing and the forecast was for another 24 hours of flurries and bitter cold.
Fortunately the church won the appeal, but as I walked from my car to my office – wind blasting against my face – I recalled my years spent working in the inner city as a community worker and, later, as the executive director of a skid row social service agency. I recalled that some of the finest people I ever met were the so-called “bums” of 96th Street. Certainly, they bore responsibility for many of their challenges and situations. But more often than not they were trapped by the attitudes of others, by folks who had jobs, nice homes, a decent income, by folks who, it often seemed, wished that the homeless and otherwise disadvantaged would keep a low profile.
A friend of mine – now ex-friend – used to rant about all the homeless people who went to the public library to keep warm. He couldn’t understand why the City would allow such people to sit around and, as he put it, “stink up the place.” It didn’t matter to him that the library is a public service. The homeless were not part of his public. His solution was to round them all up and put out cots in a warehouse and make them pick up litter along the highway for a square meal. In other words, just another form of the mission mentality: sing for your supper or pick up litter.
The homeless problem here is not that of Toronto or other huge cities, but there is danger in making such comparisons. Knowing it is worse in other cities does not make things better for a homeless person in Edmonton or anywhere else for that matter. Then there is the use of the word, “problem.” For a homeless person, the problem is clearly that he or she is homeless. But I am concerned that too many of us really believe the homeless problem is about where the indigent congregate, how they affect property values, or business. No one wants to shop for camera phones, garden gargoyles, or satin sheets and have to walk past an outstretched hand to spend their hard earned money. Those who protested the church’s desire to shelter the homeless in 40 below weather are, in a sense, protesting the location of the problem rather than being duly concerned about the problem itself.
We forget sometimes that the panhandler or the bottle collector or the old woman in tattered clothing jabbering to herself were not born that way. When I worked in the inner city, I learned that the people there had been nurses, farmers, engineers, chiefs of Aboriginal bands, policemen, railroad workers, not to mention fathers and mothers. Something happened in their lives. They lost their job, suffered a tragedy, became mentally ill. Some took to drugs or drinking. Young people abused at home escaped to the streets and fell into prostitution. These are the people that the church was trying to help.
Of course sheltering someone from the cold for night will not solve homelessness, just like food banks will not overcome poverty in our community. Shelters and food banks are temporary answers to complex social problems. But solving these problems is possible, especially in a city the size of Edmonton, which is located in the richest province in Canada. Affordable housing is the answer along with decent paying jobs for those who can work.
It begins with attitude, understanding, and empathy. Things go wrong in people’s lives and they can go wrong in your life or in the life of your neighbor. Living in a society means that all of us need to nurture that society, protect it, and strengthen it. By doing so, all of us benefit. Higher income for the poor means more economic activity. People with homes cost society less than people without homes. People with decent paying jobs do not have to rely on tax revenue for support. Helping others does result in tangible benefits to those helping. But you know what? These aren’t the best reasons. Some times the greatest benefit is in knowing you are doing the right thing. It might sound corny to you in this day and age of profit margins and the myth of individualism (remember that old bootstrap theory?). And maybe I am corny, but I can’t help but think it is right for a church to give shelter to a homeless person in 40 below weather. How can anyone reasonably argue otherwise?
One more thing. Like you, I am frequently approached for a hand-out by someone on the street. Sometimes I hand over some change. Sometimes I don’t. When I don’t is when I find myself rationalizing that I don’t want to support someone’s drinking habit. Giving them a sandwich would be more appropriate, I tell myself. But of course, I don’t get them a sandwich. I just walk away with my self-congratulatory rationale.
I bet most of us do that more often than not. Yes, I know. Handing over a dollar won’t solve anything. What difference will I make? Maybe I will cause more harm than good. Who knows? Then I remember a fellow I knew years ago. His name was Ernie. He had been on the streets for twenty years – a heavy drinker, the personification of a “bum.” All of my colleagues figured he would die on the streets. Ernie comes to mind for a couple reasons. First, because he was always willing to share what he had – which wasn’t much – with anyone who asked. He was just that way, an all around nice guy, even when drunk on Lysol or cheap wine. Second – and this is really why Ernie comes to mind today – one day Ernie just quit drinking and never started again -- at least for as long as I kept track of him anyway, which was for several years. One day I asked why he just stopped drinking.
He gave me a big smile and shook his head. “I don’t really know,” he said. “I just woke up one morning and said that’s it. I’m done. I threw out what little booze I had in my room, took the empties to the depot and headed to the Gold Nugget for breakfast.”
I guess I was looking for more of a watershed moment from Ernie, some kind of spiritual turning point – anything other than “I don’t really know.”
“Something troubling you, son?”
I shook my head. “I just thought you would know the reason.”
Ernie laughed. “I can think of them now, looking back. Like I didn’t want to die yet. But at the time, the honest truth is I didn’t know. I just quit.” He paused for a moment. Ernie had always been a thoughtful man and had an uncanny sense of other people. “You,” he said. “You were good to me – and the others at the drop-in, you know, the workers there.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I wasn’t fishing though…”
“Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t,” Ernie said. “But it’s true anyways. It wasn’t that you were social workers. You were just people, good people. You gave me change, bummed me smokes, gave me rides when my arthritis was bad. You just hung out and talked. I never got the feeling you were trying to save me. I hated that – people trying to save me.”
I didn’t know quite what to say, so I shifted gears. “So did you enjoy your breakfast that first day – you know, at the Gold Nugget.”
“Nope,” Ernie said. “I gave all my change to Stanley – you know him, right?”
I nodded.
“He was in a bad way and needed a fix.”
“I see,” I said. And for the first time I actually did see.
I don’t know where Ernie is today, but I have a feeling he is alive and sober. He’s still poor and living day to day on his disability checks. He’s off the streets living in a small room on 96th Street or somewhere along 118th Avenue. But one thing I know for sure. When Ernie comes across an outstretched hand, he stops and gives them what he can. Knowing him, he likely has a chat as well. And when he finally does move along, he’s not wondering if he should have bought them a sandwich. Maybe he understands these things better than we do because he was there and then one day things just changed. I figure that if that can happen to an old alcoholic bum named Ernie, maybe it can happen to folks like you and me.
The very last time I saw Ernie was a couple years after I left my job in the inner city. I was walking along Whyte Avenue on my way to Greenwoods to buy a book. He was headed the other way, moving slowly with his wooden cane.
“Hey, Ernie,” I said. “Long time.”
Ernie looked up at me and smiled. It took him a moment to recognize me. “Mark,” he said. “How’s things?”
“Good,” I said. “Real good. You?”
“Same as usual. My leg hurts a bit more lately than usual, but can’t complain really.”
We stood there for a few minutes, talking about other folks we knew, those who had died, others who had left town, the few who were still walking 96th Street each day. People streamed by us, oblivious to our reunion, except for a young man in a business suit who gave us a dirty look for being in his way.
Ernie smiled at the man. “To have old friends, son, you got to make a few first.”
I laughed. The young man didn’t, but he went away.
And then it was time. “Mark,” Ernie said. “I should be getting on.”
We said our goodbyes and then continued on our separate ways. A few steps later, I turned around. “Ernie,” I yelled.
Ernie turned half way toward me
“Good to see you,” I said.
Ernie nodded and gave me a little wave with his cane and then shuffled off through the crowd.
I looked at my hand, closed it, and crossed the street and walked into the bookstore a better man than minutes before, thanks to an old man with a bum leg who had quit drinking years ago for reasons he didn’t understand at the time.
Like most people, I wish for a lot of things in my life. I hope my children will be happy. I would like more money. I hope I won’t die lonely. I also wish I could be more like Ernie. And on that day in the middle of summer, I wished for that more than anything.




