How many times will you just walk by?
These pictures hold so much sadness pic.twitter.com/oOaVH4lpRh
— rk (@rkkaaay) January 31, 2021
You may have seen this tweet in the past couple of days and it started quite a conversation under the tweet.
If you read through the replies there’s lots of people who are sad and understanding of the issues homeless people face, but there is one common theme.
You always hear the argument “Oh don’t give a homeless person money they’ll just use it to buy drugs, cigarettes or alcohol.” Which come on man if you’re downing 10 beers during every Canucks game who are you to judge.
Homeless people are faced with a huge stigma that they are all drug addicts, which is not entirely true. People who end up homeless in this case being in the downtown east side, can be faced with many different problems which is why they’re homeless, not because they are drug addicts.
Lots of people in the downtown east side suffer from mental illness or trauma without having the money to get help and while they struggle with that yeah, they might turn to drugs can you imagine being depressed and not having a bed to sleep in? Yeah, you would probably take a snag at whiskey too.
There’s also a handful of youth that are kicked out of their home for being transgender or attracted to the same sex. No one ever deserves to be kicked out of their home especially a youth, but you even see teens sleeping on sidewalks.
So, how much longer will these issues continue? How any more times will you walk by and look away?
According to the City of Vancouver’s annual homeless report in 2020:
- 2,095 residents identified as homeless
- 547 were living on the street
- 1,548 people were living in sheltered locations with no fixed address
All together that’s over four-thousand people without a stable home.
It’s understandable that not everyone can always have money to spare but when you can, treat them like humans, instead of people you just look away from.
When you can help, help as much as you can because these are people homeless during a pandemic.