Home for The Homeless

Broaden Definitions To Help More People

I have heard it said that our idea of home is a "socially constructed" one. So home could be a doorway in Hume Street with a few companions whose position in life is similar to one's own?

It does not require a lot of imagination to see how difficult life can be for a mental patient. Drugs (prescribed), isolation, unemployment, low motivation, lack of sympathy from family (sometimes) and from the community. It is difficult to get on one's feet and even if one succeeds in getting on one's feet it is well-nigh impossible to stay on them.

It seems to me that mentally ill people - and mental patients in particular - need support in creating home for themselves. The relevance of "hospital" and "hostel" accommodation should not be overlooked and should be neither under-resourced nor underused.

Of course the whole system of treatment of the mentally ill requires urgent review. The system we have now may regulate the mentally ill but it is creating artificially a whole cohort of extremely vulnerable and very dependent people. And the people I am talking about are not necessarily middle-aged alcoholics and drug-addicts and down-and-outs.

It is time to give thought to ways of rescuing people from homelessness and also to consider how homelessness is arising in the first place. Homelessness is not the result of "sins of the father" nor is it universally deserved by those that are homeless.