MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE HOMELESS

Many of the Kids Living on the Streets Are Intelligent High School
Grads Who Shun Drug Use

Allen and Carly have a few secret sleeping spots where they won't be
bothered by drug addicts, and by police on the lookout for runaways
and people with outstanding warrants.

They stay away from where other homeless congregate. That means they
keep as far as possible from the Downtown Eastside and the Granville
mall area, where a lot of the younger homeless sleep in doorways and
alleys.

Both are surprisingly healthy-looking, well-groomed and much
younger-looking than their age, which is why police keep mistaking
them for runaways.

The night before we met, they'd slept under their blue tarp, tucked
beneath a stairway at a school in east Vancouver. They sleep quite
soundly because of Kathy. She's a sweet-tempered pit bull, but few
people are willing to risk it.

"We always try to find hidden places away from the junkies," says
Allen. "They're always waking you up and asking for rigs. When we tell
them we don't do drugs, they say, 'What kind of homeless people are
you?'"

It seems even the homeless have misconceptions about who the homeless
are.

The pair don't want their full names used or their full faces shown,
even though they've moved on from Vancouver, heading east for the summer.

Their decision was hastened by a court order. Carly says Allen was
assaulted by two guys who beat him up. She intervened. When the police
arrived and called Allen and her "crackheads and losers," Carly swore
at them. She and Allen were arrested and charged with assault.

Among the conditions placed on them after their March 20 trial is that
they must stay away from the downtown peninsula.

It's not the first of their troubles, but they don't want to say much
about the bad things that have happened. Youth workers say that's not
unusual because kids don't seem to be able even to process the trauma
of their lives until they are in their early 20s. But by then, they
don't qualify for many of the youth programs, which end at 19.

Allen, 22, has been sleeping rough off and on for seven years. For
19-year-old Carly, it's been off and on for four years.

What's extraordinary is that both finished school while they were
homeless. It's hard to imagine doing homework with no home, but
somehow they managed.

"It was hard living on the street and trying to go to school," says
Allen. "It's stressful trying to wake up every day at the right time.
But I love reading."

Allen's parents kicked him out at 14. He spent the next couple of
years running away from a series of group homes until the Alberta
children's ministry finally closed his file when he turned 16. By
then, he'd done drugs and alcohol. But at 17, he quit. "It was a waste
of time and money," he says.

School bored him, but he made it through to Grade 12. The youngest of
five, Allen says he'd already learned the course material from his
older siblings. Since then, he's worked as a janitor in Victoria, in
construction in Fort McMurray, Alta. He's worked at a skateboard shop,
done movie work and graphic arts and worked at a magazine in Toronto.

But after a while, the jobs bore him so he keeps moving. At the end of
March, he and Carly left Vancouver, heading first to the Okanagan to
do some farm work, but with the goal of going to Ontario and maybe the
East Coast before summer ends. They plan to come back to Vancouver for
the winter.

Carly left home at 14 after she found her stepfather on the couch,
overdosed on crack, with a 26-ounce bottle of vodka in his hand. He
had hit her so often that while he was passed out, Carly started
hitting him and was still hitting him when the police and ambulance
arrived. They threatened to charge Carly with assault. She's never
lived at home since.

She still talks to her mom and it's because her mom lies to relatives
about Carly, telling them that her daughter works in retail in
Vancouver, that Carly didn't want to be identified in the paper.

"She says she's worried about me. But she could have left my
stepfather. ... I would have tried to stay there if it were just my
mom and me."

While she finished high school in Chilliwack, Carly dabbled in drugs
and alcohol and stayed mostly with friends. But sometimes she went to
shelters or slept on the streets. "I was getting sort of crazy," she
says. So a couple of years ago, she stopped taking drugs and alcohol
even though both she and Allen still smoke cigarettes.

Carly worked a call centre for a while. She wouldn't mind working in
retail (although now that she's got tattoos on her hands she says that
might be difficult). Eventually, she says she might like to work with
the homeless. But Carly admits she doesn't really like working.

"Most of my friends are homeless. Money's not that important to me.
The dog, the rabbit, Allen and my friends are important. I like having
a good time instead of being stressed out over money. When money's at
the centre of people's lives, everything else is invisible."

They're both vegetarians, too. While you might think that makes it
more difficult to get food, Directions and some of the other shelters
cater to vegetarians. Otherwise, Carly and Allen survive on Belgian
fries and poutine.

Both are articulate and better informed than many people their ages.
That week, Carly had read the news coverage of the provincial budget
and had strong opinions about what was and wasn't in it. For example,
she thinks that rather than increasing the number of transit cops, it
should have provided more money for parks.

Allen is a newspaper junkie, who's mad about Sudoku, crossword puzzles
and writing letters to the editor. He started writing letters to
newspaper editors when he was 14. He says the typos and errors drive
him crazy.

Carly and Allen go into near-rapture when they talk about public
libraries and all the books they read there. Both love animals and
most of the money they make panhandling usually goes for pet food
because as Carly says, "there are lots of places handing out
people-food."

As we talked in the boardroom of Directions -- a 24-hour youth drop-in
centre on Burrard Street -- Kathy, the pit bull, howled in the kennel
where street kids can leave their pets while they shower, eat, do
laundry, get some counselling or just relax. Allen found Kathy and
rescued her from a life of surviving on garbage.

The rabbit, Pilsener, nibbled on my notebook while Carly told how she
rescued the bunny after she'd heard about "some dudes and crackheads
who were doing weird things to bunnies in the park."

Carly only recently started getting welfare.

With the extra money, they splurged and bought the blue tarp. Another
time, they decided to go to the Vancouver Aquarium. But by the time
they'd found friends willing to look after Kathy and their backpack --
which holds almost everything they own -- and trudged to Stanley Park,
the aquarium was closed.

Allen still doesn't get welfare because he doesn't have any
identification. It's not the first thing a kid thinks of when leaving
home. Even if they do, it's one of the first things that get stolen.
Allen's was stolen and Carly has had hers taken as well.

With only Carly's welfare cheque and what they earn panhandling, they
can't afford a place in a single-room-occupancy hotel. Even if they
could, SROs don't take couples or pets.

If Allen got welfare, they'd have $750 between them. And there's not
much available at that price.

Yet, while some housing advocates blame the Olympics for the increased
homelessness, Allen thinks it's great that Vancouver is hosting the
2010 Winter Games.

The bigger problems, according to Carly and Allen, were the closure of
mental institutions and the increasing number of foreign students and
foreign construction workers flooding into the downtown and renting
rooms in the better SRO hotels.

(According to Wendy Pedersen of the Carnegie Community Action Project,
900 rooms have been lost to conversions to students-only rental and
the rates are beyond what people on income assistance can afford at
$425 and up per month, or $300-plus on a daily or weekly basis.)

While Carly and Allen were in Vancouver, they spent their days on the
street with a cup in front of them. They didn't ask for money, so
technically they're not panhandling and can't be charged under the
city's new bylaw.

They've been verbally abused on the streets -- more by yuppies than
crackheads. Some yelled at them to get a job, others called them
crackheads. But the most abusive were the animal lovers. They'd rant
at them, accusing them of mistreating their pets, telling them that
that it's inhumane for the dog and the rabbit to be homeless.

"I calmly tell them to go ahead and call Kim at the SPCA. She knows
how well we take care of our animals," says Carly. "That always stops
them. They expect us to be ignorant and mad."

Rarely does anyone stop and to say that they think it's inhumane that
two young people like Carly and Allen can't afford a roof over their
heads.

[sidebar]

RUNAWAYS

In 2006, 46,728 Canadian children were reported to have run away
from home.

Runaways account for 77 per cent of the children who are reported
missing each year.

Girls account for 57 per cent of all the runaways.

Fifty-three per cent of the runaway girls were 14 or 15; 31 per cent
were 16 or 17.

Forty-five per cent of the boys were 14 or 15; 36 per cent were 16
or 17.

More than 80 per cent of the runaways are deemed by police to be
chronic runaways.

Three out of 10 were reported missing from their family homes; one
in five was reported missing by foster parents.

Of the 46,728 reported runaways in 2006, Ontario (15,724), Alberta
(11,198) and British Columbia (9,054) had the highest numbers.

Law enforcement agencies cited alcohol or drug dependency as a
problem in nearly one of every five missing-children reports.

Source - RCMP National Missing Children Services 2006 Missing
Children Reference Report.