I had the opportunity to join a "Seeing is Believing" tour of the downtown East-side of Vancouver on June 30, 2009. “Seeing is Believing” tours started in England and have been very successful at providing a way for people to understand more about life in places like the downtown East-side.As most folks know, I have previously participated in two street retreats (one in the DTES). I figured that this tour would provide a different view into a world I had briefly experienced previously. On the street retreat, we only used a few services (like for food) and the Seeing is Believing tour gave me the opportunity to learn more about services that I had not experienced.
We started off at the Potluck Café. This is a social enterprise. It is a business which makes meaning in the world through training staff, providing meals to those who need them as well as running a restaurant and providing catering to business functions.
At the restaurant, there was an overview of the tour, the Street to Home foundation and the Potluck Cafe. The information was very well put together and the presentation was very professional.
Next we went to RainCity Housing which provides long-term and transitional housing. We got an overview by the Executive Director. The comment he made that stuck out in my mind was when he said, "Initially we would try to tell people how best they should proceed in their lives. That didn't work. When we realized that each of the people we were working with were experts in their own lives, then we could be much more helpful. These people had survived through some horrible situations and the fact that they are alive is an accomplishment to be proud of. We needed to understand that they are the experts. We are the most helpful when we ask them what they would like to achieve next and work with them to that goal."
We then divided into two groups (depending on whether you had a "1" or a "2" on your name badge). My group went for a tour of the housing first. They showed us a room. It was reasonably clean and very small. There were hotplates in the room and a shared kitchen down the hall.
They explained that their policy was to allow most things to happen as long as it didn't bother other people and it wasn't selling drugs.
Then my group went to chat with some of the folks that were staying in the place. We divided into smaller groups and 3-5 people each chatted with one tenant. My group spoke with an aboriginal man. He had been placed in the foster care system when he was a baby and had spent his entire childhood in that system. He didn't like it. When he was 16, he committed some crime (he didn't say what) and he went to jail. He had just gotten out a few months ago.He was about the same age as me and he had never been outside of a rigidly structured system (foster care and then prison). It was striking.
Next we went to Covenant House. They provide service to street youth including a drop in centre, addictions counseling and housing. The Executive Director was very eloquent in her comments. For her it all boiled down to providing three things: support, structure and love.
She talked about how important it was to have clear structure for these kids. She was also the only person who mentioned the importance of emotions (in particular, love) in providing services.
After her talk, we once again divided into two groups. My group stayed and broke into smaller groups to chat with folks who work at Covenant House. At our table was a woman who had been working there for several years. One thing that she said really struck me: Every single kid who she has worked with at Covenant House was abused before arriving, regardless of their gender. Sometimes the abuse is recent (for example, "you can have free rent if you…") and sometimes not, but all the kids have been abused.Next my group went and chatted with some of the kids who had gone through Covenant House. There were four kids who were all on their early twenties. One had turned his life around and was now working at Starbucks. Another had fought with the structure of Covenant House and talked about realizing that the structure was there to help her.
Another kid talked about needing money and working as a stripper to earn cash. Now she was on a path that she preferred.
The one kid who stood out in my mind the most was the oldest one. She was in her mid-twenties. Her mother was a sex worker and she was raised in the foster care system. She said that she had been through twenty six different Elementary schools.
Twenty-six schools!
Assuming that the Elementary school system went to grade 7 when she was attending (unlike now, when it goes to grade 5), then she would have averaged about four different schools a year for seven years!
She was obviously a bright woman, but she talked about how she hadn't been able to learn anything because her schooling had been so broken up. If my memory is correct, she only learned to read after turning eighteen.
She talked about how hard it was to grow up with everyone around you thinking that you would grow up to work in the sex trade.
She talked about how the foster care system paid for her bills until she turned eighteen. She turned eighteen in the middle of the month and the system wouldn't even pay for her last two weeks of rent. She was out on the street. Luckily, several kids said that the folks at Covenant House were good people. She went there and they provide what she needed: support, structure and love. She learned the skills that she needed, finished school and now is hoping to go to university to study to be a teacher.
I was really touched by her story.
The next location was the Coast Mental Health Resource Centre. Once again we had the overview briefing by the ED. We then talked to some residents and finally went on a tour.
What struck me about this final stop was seeing this one guy who looked a lot like one of my friends from university. It wasn't my friend, but he looked so much like him. It reminded me of my connection to everyone there.Afterwards, the tour group gathered to discuss the experience and provide feedback. A few people commented that they felt the tour had been somewhat sanitized. The organizers agreed with this point. They felt it would be too dangerous to bring such a large group (30
people) to some of the more dangerous locations. However they indicated that they would be happy to arrange a tour with a plain clothes police officer.
Two of us indicated our interest in participating. Subsequently, we arranged confirmed a date with the police officer for late August.
All in all, I am very glad that I had the opportunity to attend the Seeing is Believing tour. The tour validated a lot of impressions I had from my street retreat (such as the importance of emotional connection). It also helped me to learn new things (such as the role of the foster care system in homelessness).
I look forward to seeing where this knowledge will take me.
Hi Sei-in,
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting. Your experiences of trying to engage around homelessness and poverty are always interesting.
How did you feel about the organizers saying they felt it would be dangerous to experience areas of Vancouver without the attendance of a plainclothes police officer? I witnessed a lot of violence downtown when I worked there but it was, without exception, police beating people up. I did feel a lot of fear sometimes in the DTES when I had to go to meetings with government officials wearing a suit, but that that was because I had internalized stereotypes and the reality was that I was treated far more respectfully in the DTES than I have been in any other area of Vancouver. No doubt there is a lot of stuff that is painful to witness but is it really unsafe, or is it just uncomfortable? What was your experience around safety when you did the street retreats in the DTES? (This is not to say violence isn't real -- I broke up a few fights when I worked at the needle exchange, and sometimes people would come in having had the shit kicked out of them by a friend -- people who I know in the street community are jerks just like everywhere else. But I never felt at risk of random unprovoked violence, and I never saw that happen either in the DTES or here.)
I am also curious about your perspective on tours like this as I know that you have sought to build authentic relationships with people who are homeless outside of tours such as this one. Working with the street community for several years in Victoria I was struck by how open people were to sharing their experiences even when there was no relationship. Several times we had students or photographers or media come to our organization to take photos or record people's stories -- they would get what they wanted and then leave. I often felt that however well intentioned, at root these kinds of interactions were voyeuristic at best and exploitive at worst -- taking someone's story without offering them anything other than a vague "chance to be heard". You have talked before about your relationships with a couple local people who are intermittently homeless. Being in relationship requires mutuality and also takes time. It is powerful to hear how strong people have been -- the human capacity to survive is tremendous. But the things I learned most from working with people living on the street didn't come through their stories, but rather in small moments of sharing our lives together -- manifestations of dana/generosity like giving someone your last cigarette. Those moments only come in relationship. I wonder a lot about what happens when the engagement is more one-way, what the taker ends up walking away having learned, and what the person who told their story feels too. My experience of that as a transgender person who shares my story as a form of educating other people is that it often feels kind of gross, it's a lot about ego and not much about human interaction or real connection. Am curious about your perspective.
Best wishes,
Joshua
Thank you Sei-in for sharing this awesome tour. And thank you Joshua for your perspective. It makes me feel very grateful for my cushy life! I will carry your thoughts in my heart today (at least one day!) and see where it leads...
ReplyDeleteThank you both,
Soshin