In the Community

"Every woman has a story"

I remember the day those words were spoken to me. It was January 1990. I was in the dining room of Stop 86, a shelter for young women that was run by the YWCA. A new sheltermate had just arrived and had come to sit with us. The shelter had a regular influx of new women. As every new sheltermate came in, we'd greet each other with our stories.

"How did you get here?", I asked.

She was silent.

Some of the other young women started to share their stories: One told of how her parents were killed in a fire and she had nowhere to go, another girl talked about finally having the courage to leave her abusive boyfriend, another spoke of her father, who had been molesting her and her sister and how they both ran away, hitchhiking from Ottawa to Toronto to be far away from him. Many had lived on the street, or crashed at friends' places. Many had stayed in their abusive household because they thought that they had nowhere else to go. Many hadn't known that shelters existed.

Our new sheltermate shifted her food on her plate, her eyes focused downward.

"Every woman has a story", she said.

Everyone who has lived in a shelter, or on the street does have a story. Nobody winds up there for simple reasons.

Fast forward to Christmas 2006. December 28. The front page of the Toronto Star screamed the headline "Affluent Freeze Out the Homeless". The story was about some residents in a fairly well to do Beaches neighbourhood threatening to sue a church for its effort to open up a one-night-a-week shelter for 12 weeks over the winter. That was my neighborhood. It was my street.

Flyers were distributed to all of the houses, some were reasonable arguments where the residents just wanted to be better informed of the plans before the shelter opens. Others were filled with angry and fearful claims that the church was "importing the homeless", and that "the horrible facts are, that 38% of Toronto's homeless population has tuberculosis". "Could it be that Dog Walkers, Joggers, and Mothers with strollers can look forward to picking up the used hypodermic needles and condoms from the Boardwalk and Beach very soon?", it asked.

I went to the neighbourhood residents meeting: Fortunately, most of my neighbours were just looking to have more information. And then there were a few angry and vocal ones speaking of the same fears that the worst of the flyers communicated. I listened to everyone speak, and then I stood up. My heart was beating in my ears, I was so nervous. I chose my words carefully:

"I'm happy to see so many of my neighbours here tonight. We all want to understand more about this proposed shelter. Like you, I have invested a lot of money to live in this neighbourhood and I really do believe that this is the best neighbourhood in the city. I also need you to know that, when I was a teenager, I lived in a shelter, and, were it not for that shelter, I don't know if I would be alive today."

At the end of the night, several of my neighbours came up to me and thanked me for sharing my story.

"I've never known anyone who had been homeless before" several of them said.

The problem is that they probably have, and do, but it's rarely talked about.

Survivors have a thousand faces. We are everywhere. We live in every socio-economic segment, we have every job, we belong to every race and religion. For most of us, thanks to the existence of crisis intervention services and shelters, we are now living happy, healthy and productive lives. You can't see us, because we look just like you.

Unfortunately, that "integration" has resulted in invisibility. The stereotypes bear no resemblance to our majority. This needs to change, and it will only change if more of us speak up.