Where Has All The Funding Gone?

I’d like to talk about why a lot of homeless men and women are having a tough time trying to get out of the shelter. I personally think it’s because we are given lots of resources to find employment, but when we find prospective employers we don’t have the funds available to make it to job interviews. We also don’t have the resources to have clean laundry for our potential employers.

Basically, as it stands, most of the shelters don’t have funding in place in order to give the homeless bus fare to get to more than one job interview. For example, the Salvation Army only allows individuals staying there to receive only two bus tickets per month for work-related activities only. I believe the Mustard Seed Foothills Shelter never gives out bus tickets due to lack of funding. However, they will give a person a bus ticket to get back downtown if they have not been granted service to their shelter. The Drop Inn Center is very difficult as well to get a bus ticket out of. There are very few agencies these days that actually give bus tickets out at all anymore because the demand is just too great.

Let’s just say I line up an interview with a possible employer for tomorrow, if I go to this interview and find out that they want me back for a second interview, I then need to find my own way there. I don’t know of anyone in recent history that goes to one interview and automatically gets a job. Generally I have found that you end up doing at least three or four interviews before actually finding a good job, or any job for that matter. Then even after you do get confirmation that you have been hired on, you then need to worry about getting to work every day.

This is where Social Services come into play. However, you would first have to have a letter signed by your potential employer before receiving assistance from Social Services. That of course depends on whether or not you have already received a work allowance from Social Services in the last year. Social Services only allows this once a year, so if I already got this work allowance six months ago, I couldn’t even apply and I would be stuck trying to find some other way of commuting to work and back every day until I received that first pay cheque. By the way, the shelter doesn’t have the funding to help you to get to work.

On another note, let’s say that I did get this job interview and I was hired on. Now I need to make sure that I can have clean clothes everyday for work. Depending on what type of job I have, I could probably get away a few days with the same clothes. The problem is this: At the Salvation Army they only give you tokens once a month, which covers one load of laundry. At the Mustard See Foothills Shelter, you would have to volunteer to clean the bathrooms in order for staff to do a load of laundry for you, but for the most part there is no laundry done for anyone. By the way, there are only two spots available each day for men and women in this shelter, so good luck. The only option we have left is to go to the Drop-In Center, and I personally stay as far away from there as possible. I don’t like being scared for my life, and that’s how I personally feel going anywhere near there. Even if I did want to do my laundry there it would have to be after work, and they close the washers at seven o’clock. Not to mention, you need to book an appointment time in the morning, so unless you get lucky you aren’t getting your clothes washed.

On a final note, I would like to point out that if we think that we are unable to commute to work every day or are unable to show up with clean clothes, we tend to think less of ourselves. I know from personal experience that I felt like a no-body and didn’t care much about the worry of trying to get to work and be dressed nicely to make a good impression on my employer, not to mention other employees. If you think about it, trying to go to a job in construction you are more likely to get away with wearing the same clothes to work every day, but I am sure after a while a boss may wonder what’s up and this puts your job in jeopardy. Now if I was working in a customer service position I would definitely need to have clean clothes on a daily basis. Otherwise, I know if I was a boss seeing someone with the same clothes day after day I would have to find someone more representing for the company.

We need to find a way to keep the homeless focused on a future for themselves, and to keep them clothed in clean clothes. More funding needs to be allocated to helping the homeless think better of themselves.

Are those government and/or agency bodies whom are in a position to allocate funds aware that in Toronto, if you are in a shelter, for every night you spend there you receive 4$ for a personal needs allowance? Maybe it’s about time we did the same here in Calgary. Just think, with that extra 28$ a week the homeless could not only do their own laundry but could also cover bus fare to get to work. Basically you could get a book of bus tickets and do one load of laundry every week with that money. In my opinion, even if they gave us the book of bus tickets and laundry tokens, it would make a big impact a lot of people. I am not saying this is going to work for everyone, but hey! Why not just give it a try and see how many people we could make a little happier? Let’s start treating the homeless like people with basic needs like everyone else. Please lets all think about where we want to go in the future, because right now while the homeless population continues to grow so does the need for a reassessment of how money is allocated to and within the shelters.


Written by Tim Barber
Homeless but not without Hope