THE EDITOR: Recent reports indicate a rise in homelessness globally. The Borgen project is a non-profit organisation founded in 1999 and operates out of the US, UK and Canada. The project recognised the need to focus political attention on extreme poverty.
Sophie Young, based in Manchester, UK, who focuses on good news and global health for the Borgen Project, completed a study on “addressing homelessness in Trinidad and Tobago” earlier this year. Her research showed that 20 per cent of our population is classified below the poverty line, with more than one-seventh living in 313 informal settlements or slums.
A total of 676 people are socially displaced across the country, according to Donna Cox, Social Development and Family Affairs Minister.
While I personally question the figure, I am fairly certain that it is not far off and as such it begs the question: Why, as a country, can’t we solve/alleviate the problem of homelessness?
Young identified the barriers to tackling homelessness in TT. To begin with, we do not seem to have a legal definition of homelessness, nor fixed criteria in law set out to determine eligibility for programmes and services. The homeless (formally referred to as “street dwellers”) are defined as “people found sleeping or preparing to sleep on the sidewalk or pavements of streets or on the ground of open plots of land adjoining a street.”
Homeless individuals are seemingly regarded as public nuisances, often being criminalised rather than offered relief and rehabilitation. Young referenced the case of a teenager (highlighted in the media) who was living in a bus shed in the Tacarigua area in June 2024 and where all efforts to contact the Ministry of Social Development for aid failed, and with no immediate solution in sight there were suggestions that this was a police matter.
Six years ago our small church (Jubilee Memorial Presbyterian Church) in Frederick Settlement, Caroni, started a "Feed the Need" programme targeting the poor and homeless people, primarily along the Eastern Main Road from Constantine Park in Tunapuna to the Croisee in San Juan. Members cook and we deliver 90 lunches every Sunday, doing so for the past six years, even during covid. Whatever we eat on a Sunday, they eat was well.
During that period more than 28,000 meals were delivered, generally to the same people every week. So this cadre of people knows for sure they will get one meal, and a very good one at that, every week.
Our experience on the streets is that these homeless people are far from having criminalistic behaviour, as proven when we took along ten children from our Sunday school, as well as 13 members of our church, on the Feed the Need programme to mark our sixth anniversary last Sunday. All that could be heard was "thank you" and “God bless,” with one even saying, “The angels must be dancing on the clouds.”
Young stated that the solution goes beyond basic clothes and meals. What is needed is a more multi-disciplinary approach that addresses the complexities of the socially displaced.
