Homelessness in Bz. City: what can we do to help?
Homelessness on the streets of Belize City is nothing new, but tonight News 5’s Janelle Chanona talks to the men and women who spend their days and nights on the streets, hustling for their place in society. You might expect to hear sob stories and screams for sympathy, but what she found will surprise you.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
In abandoned lots and cars they hack out their homes…creating cardboard cabins, erecting tarpaulin tents…struggling to survive the elements and their reality.
But of these hundreds of men and women, there are those who ask for handouts, but not for pity.
Leslie Osborne
“It’s not that I need to be homeless, it’s just that I have a nasty habit, it’s expensive; that’s about it.”
Forty-eight-year-old Leslie Osborne has been living in this shack for more than two years.
Leslie Osborne
“It’s low down, it’s a low down life, it’s cold. It leads to just one thing, drugs. Sometimes you don’t have money to buy the food, but you have the money to buy the drugs, and that’s the number one priority, for us. The drugs come first.”
But security concerns are a definite second…especially for the women.
Elaine has living in the front seat of this truck for months and claims that just this week she was the victim of a sexual attack.
Elaine, Homeless
“He me wah come in yah fight me and rape me a lee bit in yah.”
Janelle Chanona
“And you fought back?”
Elaine
“I just fight back with he and I bust his head”
Janelle Chanona
“And then he went away?”
Elaine
“He gawn bout he business.”
The cab is filthy and Elaine spends most of her time in it.
Janelle Chanona
“I could ask you a question, you take drugs?”
Elaine
“Like weh kind a drugs?”
Janelle Chanona
“Bad drugs, illegal drugs, like crack.”
Elaine
“Noh, from I dah small lee gyal, I noh smoke cigarette, I noh even know weh name drugs or weed or they things deh. I no know den deh.”
By any account, it is a pitiful existence…human beings living like animals…hanging onto life by their fingernails. Statistics on how many Belizeans sleep in the streets are hard to come by but…
Marva Nicholas, Director, Mercy Care Centre
“There’s a general figure of about thirty-three percent of the general population that are living at or below the poverty level. That can be narrowed down to another thirteen percent that are indigent, that are living with the bare minimum, at the poverty level in Belize.”
Janelle Chanona
“But those figures were last calculated in 1995. Today in 2003, it is estimated that the population of Belizeans living in poverty has increased.”
According to Marva Nicholas, director of the Mercy Care Centre, homelessness in Belize City and a lack of adequate response have combined to produce a disturbing situation.
Marva Nicholas
“The reality we see today indicates that it is a growing concern and that there are very few organizations that are pooling resources together to try to alleviate these problems.
So on a daily basis we will see individuals that are coming that are below the age of fifty. They are referred either by the Human Development department or other organizations that simply don’t have any other options. These are individuals who are living on the street, young men and women who are single parents, don’t have enough to feed their children, and what we try to do it provide immediately assistance, but set them on some kind of referral programme where there can be some changes, some systematic change in their life, whether it’s leading towards and employment opportunity or leading towards some kind of self reform.”
Leslie Osborne
“I don’t have food or nothing like that here. The only thing I would have is crabs and things like that. But beside that, no rodents, rats, roach, no. This is what I do for a living, all this junk that you see here is all fan parts and that’s what I do as a side job.”
Janelle Chanona
“Mr. Osborne, if you could go somewhere else and get help for your habit, would you do it, or would you stay?”
Leslie Osborne
“I would do it. I would make that choice and go somewhere else, because I need a change.”
Marva Nicholas
“The outlook is very sad, it’s growing, never a day goes by when we don’t ask ourselves, what more can we do? And I know that there are quite a few things that are happening at the government level and at the private sector level with organizations such as ourselves. What we need to do is have more enhanced coordination among ourselves to make these things happen, so make services more accessible to our people. But what will need to happen too, is people need to get up and try to make a difference for themselves with whatever little options or resources made available to them. I do encourage that people need to get up and try to get out and make a go for it, because it’s growing, it’s a growing concern.”
The experts agree that education plays a crucial role in the reduction of poverty, but like the addicts say, it’s tough to break the habit, and out here on the streets it’s survival of the lucky. Reporting for News 5, I am Janelle Chanona.
