By Annie Wang
In an ideal city, everyone has a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs, clothes on their backs and shoes on their feet. This is not the case in Calgary. Every year, more than 4,500 Calgarians, the equivalent of a small town, experience homelessness. They wander around city streets — not knowing where they will sleep, when they will eat or when they will have their next shower.
The city held its 14th Annual Homeless Awareness Week with the theme “A Roof is Not Enough,” this past week. Aimed at educating Calgarians about the realities of homelessness, the awareness week featured events around the city designed to highlight the complexities of homelessness and expose its many myths.
On campus, the Centre for Community-Engaged Learning promoted Homeless Awareness Week by inviting Susan Scott, author of All Our Sisters: Stories of Homeless Women in Canada and No Fixed Address, Tales from the Street, to talk to students about what homelessness is like for women.
Scott was also the keynote speaker at a national conference on homelessness held 18 months ago at the University of Calgary.
Before beginning the discussion on homelessness, Scott questioned what it really means to have a home.
“Home is where we can be ourselves, where we don’t need to wear a dressing gown to go to the bathroom at night,” said Scott. “Home gives us choices — what to eat and when, who to invite and who to exclude . . . Home should be safe.”
Scott pointed out many people have roofs but not homes. These include those living in shelters, “couch-surfing,” going from one friend’s place to the next or living in unsafe conditions. These individuals, who are often women, are excluded annually from the homeless population count because they are impossible to locate.
Scott shared many stories from the streets to bring to light what it is like for a woman to be homeless. She spoke of one woman who could not ask the men at the shelters for sanitary pads out of embarrassment, and another who could not shower at the Mustard Seed because she did not feel safe one thin wall away from the men.
“When I did the interviews, at the end, I always asked one question,” said Scott, ” ‘If you had your way, if you had one wish, what would it be?’ No one asked for a knight in shiny armor or to win the lottery, everyone wanted a home.”
“I really enjoyed hearing Susan because she puts a gendered perspective on the matters associated with homelessness,” said Erin Kaipainen, director of the Centre for Community-Engaged Learning. “She has done an exceptional job prioritizing the voices and personal stories of the women.”
Kaipainen found the issues Scott discussed accessible to students and relevant in Canada because most current literature on homelessness speaks about men’s experience with homelessness, which can be considerably different from women’s.
“I often have students read the different chapters of the book,” said Kaipainen. “Susan really emphasizes that homelessness is not a choice. There are many contributing factors such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, growing up in foster care, mental illness and abuse.”
Events hosted by other organizations around the city for Homeless Awareness Week include charity concerts, street-survivor talks and night tours of the streets.