by Pete McMartin

At 11AM on a rainy Wednesday morning, a small dark-haired woman enters the sanctuary of the First United Church and, in front of the alter, begins to change her clothes.

She is carrying a towel. She looks like she has just had a shower. She slips out of the sweatpants she is wearing and puts on a new pair, and then she slips off her sweatshirt. She has a thin bare-shouldered chemise on underneath. she is thin herself. There is a small tattoo beneath her right shoulder. Her hair looks wet and she begins to comb it slowly, which, given the location, is an oddly affecting display of vanity. She takes the towel, and a quilt she has, and carefully rolls both of them up. Then she puts the wet towel in a plastic bag and places the places the towel and quilt in one of two cardboard boxes she has with her. She unearths a roll of masking tape and tapes up the box. the tearing sound of the tape echoes through the sanctuary. Then she applies underarm deodorant.

While she does this, a man sleeping near her on the alter platform wakes up and watches her. He looks to be in his 30’s and appears to be fairly well-dressed, and he wakes up groggy. He has kicked his shoes off to sleep. He doesn’t move, but stays lying where he is, and with no particular look on his face regards the woman with mild curiosity. Then he closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

All around her there are men sleeping and women, too. They are sleeping on every one of the church’s pews and on the hard linoleum floor of the sanctuary and on the steps of the alter. The sanctuary is filled with a stifling, overpowering smell of body odour and stinking feet. One man is in a pew eating a cheeseburger and another is rolling a cigarette from the butt ends he has collected. Some people are sleeping in the pews sitting up, and some are sprawled in a nest of clothing and blankets. Some have backpacks and some have boxes and plastic bags and some have nothing at all. One man is sleeping at the foot of the church organ. A man and woman are sleeping together just off to the side, he, bare-chested and on his back, she lying on her side and curled up under the crook of his arm. She has pulled her quilt tight up against her chin as if to keep the world out.

Meanwhile, the world outside hums along. The housing market has gone mad and so has the economy, and the government bribes unions with a billion tax dollars to sign fat contracts.

First United, on the other hand is enjoying a boom of a different kind. For years, the mission a block east of the corner of East Hastings and Main has opened its sanctuary to street people so that they might sleep there and be safe during the day. They are allowed in at 8:30 a.m. and asked to leave at 4 p.m. – the longest the church can afford to keep the sanctuary open.

“For years” said Rev. Ruth Wright, the church’s executive director, “if we had 15 people sleeping in the pews we thought that we were really busy. But now, 80 or 90 people sleeping in the sanctuary is not uncommon at all and more and more of them are not the kind of people we would see before. Now we’re seeing the unemployed looking for work; a lot of forestry people, for example, whose jobs don’t exist anymore and have lost their jobs to mechanization; people who have low-level paying jobs who can’t afford rent in a city like Vancouver and are sleeping here while they try to get on their two feet; people who come to Vancouver thinking there’s lots of work but can’t get their tickets. And we’re seeing more women.”

But, Wright was asked, why aren’t these people landing jobs in this hot economy? Why aren’t the sanctuary’s numbers shrinking instead of growing?
“For some people(in the public), there’s that mentality of, ‘Why can’t these people pull themselves up by the bootstraps?’ But a lot of these people don’t have boots to pull up. Some don’t have the qualifications. And, of course, mental illness is a huge problem down here.”

The growing numbers have put a strain on First United. Last year, the church recorded a $260,000 deficit, and is predicting a similar deficit for 2006. This is a dire situation for a church that has been at that location for 120 years. Its regular congregation – most of whom travel from outside the area to worship there – has shrunk to 30 people. Its traditional sources of revenue – bequeathals and donations from people who admire the churches activism – are not what they use to be. The situation has got to the point where the church, to raise donations, is hoping to recruit 100 people to run on its behalf in this years Vancouver International Half Marathon. (To register for the run or to make a donation to First United, go to www.firstunited.ca or call 604-681-8365.)

It is money First United is going to need. On Wednesday morning, there are 85 people sleeping in its sanctuary. Business is booming.