All posts by James W. Breckenridge

Homeless

Jimmy’s Place

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Have you found yourself forced to stand in the wind and rain at a bus stop you could have sworn use to have a bench and shelter? Your memory may not have been playing tricks on you.

I was into Community Services and noticed as I walked by that people were standing around in the rain. I seemed to recall that when the bus routes changed and the street in front of community services became a transit exchange they had put in benches and shelters.

I was commenting about this over lunch and someone at a nearby table informed me that the city has taken to removing bus benches and shelters to prevent the homeless from seeking shelter there. I am not sure whether any one at City Hall could follow a train of thought far enough to realize it also leaves “the right type” of citizens standing in the cold winter rain.

Don’t want them sleeping on bus benches, in bus shelters, doorways, parks, woods, in neighbourhoods etc? Once we are finished with the bus benches and shelters what next? Clear cutting parks and woods? Bulldozing neighbourhoods?

Instead of wasting time, energy and money trying to drive them away from where you do not want them causing problems for citizens try rational behaviour. Decide where you do want them and put in place the facilities to draw them there.

Because we all know what happens with the best laid plans ….

My conversational kibitzer was unfazed by the city’s actions as he just relocated to one of Jimmy’s Places. Those nice shelters and benches built for advertising by Mr. Patterson. With advertising revenue at stake they are sacrosanct and untouched. So while the average citizen stands in the cold rain the homeless, with a fine eye for economics and human nature relocate to Jimmy’s.

Thank you Mr. Patterson. I do not suppose you could find time in your busy schedule to acquaint our local and provincial politicians with the reality of market forces and human behaviour?

Hmmm

James Breckenridge and The Missing Checkered Sock

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from Something Cool News

Like most people with a functioning brain, I too have wondered about the mystery of the disappearing sock. You know, the one you put in the dryer with a bunch of other socks and yet, without exception or explanation, it always goes missing. No matter where you look or what you do, the sock goes missing. Every time. Some of the greatest minds of our generation have been unable to explain the enigma of the disappearing sock.

Except, it would seem, for one James Breckenridge. Breckenridge, the subject of this week’s mini-documentary Changing Lanes, had the opportunity to espouse his wisdom to me at a Starbuck’s in Abbotsford where he had been invited to partake in a coffee with his good friend Vince Dimanno. It was within the confines of this little establishment that he explained his theory to me, also an invited guest.

“In order to understand where these socks go,” he said, “we need to conduct a study, raise some funds so we can get a bunch of dryers which we can then experiment with. Once that process is complete, we need another set of dryers to try and replicate our results. After that, we need to invest in acquiring some experts to analyze those results. And then…”

It went on like this for a little while until the search for the missing sock was costing something like three billion dollars. It was a parable of course, a metaphor for the way government works. Rather than simply solve a problem, the wisdom of our modern day politicians seems to be to first study the problem, hold a never-ending series of conferences, write a number of reports and assessments and then start all over again, costing the taxpayers innumerate sums of money yet getting no closer to an actual solution to whatever the original problem was.

Now, two things struck me as I listened to James speak on this weighty subject. Firstly, how right he was. And secondly, how he was even able to tell this story given his current situation. For those not in the know, James is homeless and has been living in his car for the past few weeks. He was laughing and making wisecracks as he spoke, and I recall wondering how a man reduced to sleeping in the front seat of his car could find anything funny. Yet there he sat, chuckling at his own joke.

See, if I were James Breckenridge I’d be a very angry, angry man. This is a guy who has championed the homeless and worked tirelessly for them during his time at the Salvation Army Shelter where he works. And when not working, he has written extensively on his blog and to local newspapers, doing everything he can to raise awareness on the issue. Even now, homeless and alone, he is working on a way to get to Kamloops to attend a housing conference there or some such thing. He’s going to class to learn how to better help other people even as he himself needs help. Who is this guy?

And what result has James garnered for all this virtuous work? A giant goosegg, that’s what. He wrote a letter to local newspapers – a letter that was actually published – but not one of his friends/acquaintances stepped forward to offer him a place to live. These are the same people James tries to help when he can and defends when someone speaks ill of them. Even though some of them have a couch or a spare room they could lend, they remain silent and allow James to sleep in his 1987 Plymouth Duster.

The media hasn’t been any more accommodating. How do they repay him for all his insightful writing that he does for free? They also ignore his plight. The newspapers know he is homeless and living in his car – they published the letter that he wrote telling them so. Did they dispatch a single reporter to cover this development? Did they try and raise awareness about what he was going through? No – instead they remained silent, leaving it to SomethingCool News to tell the story.

Which, of course, we were more than happy to do. The point of it all is that we really shouldn’t have to, just as James really shouldn’t have to call a Rest Area along the freeway home. In a community that bills itself as caring and “Christian”, this kind of thing really should not be allowed.

It’s a point James understands well. “You know that thing that really pisses me off?” James said to me, taking a sip of his coveted coffee. “If I went into a local church, raised my hands and said, ‘Hallelujah, Praise the Lord!’, all of sudden everyone would come forward to help me. But because I don’t do that, I end up sleeping in my car. How’s that for a caring community?”

It reminds me something I read recently – a story in the newspaper about a church that was luring kids into church by allowing them to play the ultra-violent video game Halo 3. In justifying this, one of the pastors said, “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell. If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it. My own take is that we can do much better than that.”

So….lure the kids into the church, let them play a violent video game and then tell them that doing so is wrong? It’s the kind of blatant hypocrisy James knows well. Once the “sin” of being homelessness is forgiven, then all is good. Then people can help. But until the homeless beg for forgiveness, they’re ears, eyes and mouth are closed.

The pastor at the Halo Church said that God wants ministers to be “fishers of men.” Elaborating further (and using a more disturbing tone), he said, “Teens are our fish. So we’ve become creative in baiting our hooks.”

Evidently, it’s not just the teens that are the fish, but the homeless as well. And until they start tugging on the bait, well, they’re just going to have to get used to sleeping outside, or as it is in James’ case, in their cars.

But James isn’t angry about that and instead makes a joke about it. I don’t understand how this man is able to turn so many negatives into such positives, but he does. For him, being a fish is an alright life, not one that he necessarily wanted or chose, but then why be depressed about it? Whether he’s angry or sad, he’s still going to be homeless, so I guess in his mind, he’s better off thinking about disappearing socks. I mean, if no one else seems to have any emotion on the subject, why should he?

Fred Johns

Homeless, Municipal

Nice to read someone was paying attention.

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I was sent the link http://www.james-strocel.com/2007/10/21/homeless-in-abbotsford/

As you can tell I liked the comments – it was very nice to see someone was paying attention as they read.

It’s been said that in many ways Abbotsford is a big city that thinks it’s a small town. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way that it deals with its big city problems. Ironically, it may be a sense of civic pride that keeps us from addressing these issues properly. Homelessness? Prostitution? Drug problems? Not in our fair city. Such problems become even harder to talk about when you’re caught between two extremes of rhetoric on the problem. Either you’re a heartless monster for not wanting to support poor decision making, or you’re a bleeding heart communist for displaying common compassion.

Somewhere in between is James Breckenridge, the writer and maintainer of Homeless in Abbotsford. If there is a face to the homeless problem in Abbotsford, or anywhere else in North America, this man is it. He has to deal directly with the problem of expensive housing, mental illness, and an intractable city hall. He offers us not only rhetoric against homelessness, but innovative hands-on solutions to a complex problem. The post titled “Who is/Who are the homeless” outlines exactly how complex and intractable homelessness can be. I was particularly fond of his proposals to allow the homeless free access to showers and bathrooms at our public recreation centers. It seems to be cost effective, and the ID card system would provide access to services that would help get people off the streets for good. These and other posts outline how magic bullets are impossible, but small scale solutions can do so much.

As I read Mr. Breckenridge’s posts, I wondered how many people knew about the solutions he was writing about. It turns out, many of his ideas come from successful programs in other municipalities. I believe that the reason people hold back on doing more for the homeless is that they are afraid that their time and money will be wasted on short-term solutions. If there is more information and more options for people to direct their funds and their compassion, maybe we can provide an environment where advocates for the homeless can have less frustration and more success.

Consider, Homeless

No showers for you!

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In its continuing quest to attract a better class of clientele, the right sort of people to bestow charity on, the pancake breakfast discontinued showers and had very little in the way of men’s clothing Saturday October 13 while continuing the policy of no longer sending the bus around to give a ride to those in need of a big hot breakfast.

I suppose I could cite scripture and verse about how Christ would feel about this judgment of who is worthy of charity and about denying charity to those in need, but what is the point? It is clear from their actions that the institution that has put on this pancake breakfast for the needy over the past years has become an institution about religion and not about spirituality.

Be clear I have no quarrel with them wanting to reach out to another group of people in need. But my spirituality cries out that this should have been done by adding another pancake breakfast, not denying an established relationship with another group of people, undeniably in need of showers, haircuts, clean presentable clothing and a hearty pancake breakfast.

Anyone in need is “the right sort” to deliver charity to.

Addiction

Just an addict.

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He/she is “just an addict” is an attitude far to prevalent in our society because so often underneath the addict lies a whole other world or person.

Based on my experiences and observations I have come to the conclusion that if we want to be efficient and effective in dealing with addiction and homelessness we need to move away from current practices and towards the best practices in the field of mental health. This will require adopting a much longer view of treatment and recovery; in many ways adopting a much more holistic view of what constituted recovery and being healthy.

I knew someone while he was in his addiction, saw him off to treatment, back from treatment and as he struggled with sobriety and dealing with his mental illness sober and without the use of illegal drugs. It is and was an incredibly painful struggle for him, and in some ways for me.

I know just what a mess his head is in because my head was in just such a mess not that many years ago and I have to admire his tenacity in staying sober and not using drugs to escape what is going on in his mind. I am thankful that the way my head works would not permit me to seek escape through mind-altering substances. Perhaps even more thankful that experiences in my youth had taught me that for me, unlike most, there was no escape into oblivion via drugs.

This is the struggle almost all of the homeless and addicts face in getting their lives back on track and why we need to begin using a long term mental health recovery model to be effective and efficient.

Experience had lead me to the conclusion that we had to change the way we think about, plan and deliver services to the homeless. Still I was blown away by the personal store told by a new friend, who when I asked if I could relate her story in my writing said if it would help someone I was welcome to post it on billboards around the lower mainland.

She was a heroin addict, one of those viewed as “just an addict”. The first time she cleaned up she fell back into addiction. The second time she cleaned up she stayed clean and thus had to face her inner demons sober and without heroin.

Obsessive/compulsive disorder and agoraphobia, can I ever relate. Maybe it was hearing in her story of the struggle we shared with these mental illnesses that struck such a cord with me. Once again I could only be thankful that mind-altering drugs was not a route that promised me escape from my mental demons and so I had avoided addiction.

Listening to her story was wrenching, illuminating and life affirming. But it left me more convinced than ever that we need to change our way of thinking, planning and focusing on addiction recovery. It was supporting to find in conversation that she too felt that we needed a much longer term, more mental illness recovery model in haw we approach and deal with addiction.

Perhaps the most telling and thought provoking statement she made in reference to addiction was “…its less painful”. Heroin addiction, being a heroin addict was less painful than dealing with her mental illness. I wonder how many of those who would have judged her “just an addict” would have the intestinal fortitude to deal with those mental demons that come with mental illness without escaping into addiction?

We need to change. We know our old and current approaches are not resulting in attaining effective and efficient outcomes for the homeless, the addicted. To just mindlessly continue doing what we have done in the past is insane behaviour, even more insane is to do more of what is not working.

It is time for leadership willing to embrace change, risk and new ideas to be applied to helping those suffering the blight of homelessness and/or addiction.