On giving and giving up

I was asked for spare change seven times today.

Homeless men and women in smelly old clothes and hard, staring faces begged for coins at their usual haunts. I didn't give them anything. I never do, anymore.

A few readers of this blog have already wondered at me as to why I write from time to time about the seedier side of Vancouver - the drug epidemic and it's associated ills (The Traditional Holiday Toke, SkyTrain Cops with Guns).

It's not like I live right in the middle of it. At the end of the day, I can always go home to my safe green neighborhood on the edge of Kitsilano and pretend that parts of this city (which in other ways is becoming somewhat of a model city for other municipalities to emulate) haven't become a disgusting embarrassment.

But I do work downtown, right at Granville and Hastings. It may not be Main and Hastings, but the area has gotten bad enough. I pass at least a dozen or so just on my way over from my usual cafe on Granville and Smythe as they're rolling up their sleeping bags while commuters pass by on the steady convoy of buses.

I've become deadened to it, mostly. But some days, it's just too in your face to ignore.

I was waiting for the director of studies with the keys to the school to show up. In the meantime, I chatted with some students, trying to pass the time. A beggar eyed us from a bench, but he was too dopey from a bad night of no sleep or a hangover to bother us.

A pusher walked by, ignoring the students and focusing in on me. "Rock, weed." It incensed me - I was with my students, just metres from the entrance to our school. But, as always, I let it pass.

And again, when I had to walk the one-and-a-half blocks to the other campus for my afternoon classes, I weaved around the zombies who begged with their dead eyes and their ulcerous lips.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. After six years of this, it's all I can force myself to mutter.

It was turning out to be a very ordinary day when my bright Japanese ESL student showed up a few minutes early looking upset. "A beggar lady spoke to me on the street. She called me a... yellow bastard. I think I know what it means - but could you tell me?"

This wasn't the first time something like this had happened to one of my students. I wasn't at all surprised when he diplomatically confessed to me later, "I am getting a bad impression of Canadians in my last few weeks here."

The situation has gotten so bad here but most Vancouverites are essentially blind to it. But the people who visit here notice it.

And they ask questions. "There are so many homeless here. Why is that?"

The root causes of homelessness are well known - as is the difficulty in dealing with them. But I'm not concerned with that here.

If people would just stop giving spare change to homeless people along the Granville strip, they would go away. There would be no reason for them to remain there.

There are those that would say, "you're just moving the problem somewhere else - it doesn't get actually help a single homeless person." That's true enough. But all I want is for the neighborhood where I work to become a place where I'm not horrified at the sight of abject misery or embarrassment when I show visitors around. Vancouver's downtown eastside is simply the worst area in any Canadian city - but it's not necessary to allow the rest of our city centre to be like that, or anything close to it.

The people who purchase drugs from the pushers in my neighborhood are presumably addicted or simply of low intelligence and ethical standing. I expect no change from them.

But for those ethical but misguided people who give coins in the hopes that their donation will give that one homeless person a chance to buy something to eat, I have a reality check for you: It is far, far more likely that your money will help support the purchase of meth or crack.

For those who feel guilty for refusing to help a fellow human being in need, give your support in another way. Donate to the Greater Vancouver Food Banks Society (which now feeds over 9,000 people across the GVRD each week).

Please stop giving away your change to those you pass on the street. You're only making the problem worse.

tags: downtown eastside, Greater Vancouver Food Banks Society, soup kitchen, desperate