VIGNETTE1

As a person who has experienced different degrees of 'homelessness' in several countries the question of money and other material and nonmaterial resources
has been a chronic pre-occupation and source of continuing grief for me; or, rather it is really the problem of consistently securing such resources that plagues me.

Since returning to Canada more than 7 months ago my primary issue has been the maintenance of my basic needs which include such 'things' as shelter, food, security, health care, 'peace of mind' and different kinds of social support, which range from friendship, to solidarity with others and on to spiritual needs.

The majority of my time during these past 7 months, thus, began and remains with a serious pre-occupation with securing a flow of money that serves my basic needs; that is, nothing less and nothing more.

For the first six months since returning to Canada, I was gratefully supported by government monies, which covered my rental and my incidental expenses while living at the shelter facility.

Quite recently, moreover, I was very fortunate to acquire a new place to live whose housing quality is so drastically different from my earlier months when I was living in the shelter facility. My new apartment is very comfortable for me and allows for a greater level of independence in my lifestyle and everyday decisions.

Commonly, the kind of basic or subsistence level support I was receiving while living in the Shelter facility usually continues even if the client moves to a new place of residence; provided all other conditions remain normal or properly addressed under the terms of the individual client assistance framework.

Once the relevant housing authority accepted my application for housing, the government funder was then formally notified, in advance, by the new apartment manager in the form of a 'rent request’ in my name, which stated the start-date of my tenancy. The rental costs, in question, were remarkably lower than those of my first home at the Shelter facility.

As it turned out, the government department mysteriously ignored the 'advance rental request' sent to them from the new apartment manager and continued to send my rental monies, 3rd party method, to my original residence at the Shelter. Remember, too, that I no longer lived at the Shelter and so sending 'full rental assistance' to that former location was redundant and unnecessary.

Meanwhile, through the necessity of signing my residential lease, I was required to make rental payment for my new apartment out of my own very meager ‘pocket’ /pool of funds. So, despite having almost no money or resources for meeting other basic needs, I paid for my first month of rent, leaving me essentially with no cash to apply to other basic needs, including food expenses.

Of course, in my mind, fixing such a matter seemed to be a relatively straightforward one with which to deal. I could not have been more misguided in failing to appreciate the journey required to retrieve this rental money. To date, I have still not recovered the portion of monies I paid for my new apartment; a serious situation that I can ill afford to ignore.

It is rather unusual to note that the management of my new apartment understands and acknowledges the 'bind' in which I find myself, but the shelter facility service staff find it difficult to understand nor seem able to empathize with my situation and plight.

The Shelter facility is the place that received my full rental monies, in error, and is the site whose staff refuse to problematize my need to recover these monies. It is these very same workers who now seem to be 'mystifying' the fate of these rental monies. One shelter staff member, acting as the 'accountant', consistently assured me that the original government rental assistance cheque had indeed been returned to the government department by 'return post'. Yet, over the course of a longer 30 day period, no formal trace could be made of this returned cheque within the government tracking and information system, at either the regional or local office locations.

Quite recently, the provincial government department in charge of administering and distributing this assistance money has, in fact, identified some of the facts related to the fate of my rental assistance that was sent to the Shelter, as a third-party disbursement.

It appears that the particular rental cheque, in question, was cashed by the Shelter facility’s regional accounting centre on a particular date in early March, 2010. It is also reasonably clear, from available details and exchanges with staff, that the Shelter seemed to deduct nothing from this cheque based on an assumption and acceptance of the fact that I had no debts outstanding with the Centre.

I would like to make clear that I don’t believe that the shelter facility is actually malevolent and calculating in their dealings with clients, but clearly something is wrong with the overall management structure and operation when this kind of a basic and systematically unjust practice remains undetected and ‘unvoiced’ by relevant staff.

As of the date of this writing, this writer struggles to retrieve these assistance monies from the Shelter, which are resources belonging to the provincial government and to himself, as a former client. Several more senior staff members at the Shelter, who have knowledge of this matter, have conceded that a shelter facility accepting and withholding ‘assistance monies’ in this manner for over one month are acting in a fraudulent manner, and the organization itself and certain members of its staff could be subject to serious legal action.

The writer, himself, will continue to pursue this search for and retrieval of these rental assistance monies properly belonging to the provincial government and to himself. As a person whose status until very recently was ‘homeless’, the ‘silence’ and blatant lack of action to return these monies by the Shelter, as a humanitarian organization, is both disgraceful and amoral in scope and practice.

Written by Viscount



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