The increasingly murderous life on the streets of London
Homeless for the past 10 years, Brittany has reached out to The London Free Press to talk about the increasingly murderous life on the streets of London and what she thinks needs to change.
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Everyone around her is dying.
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About half a dozen in November, six more so far in December already.
Just a few weeks ago, four people died in two days.
“I lost way too many people. My circle of friends is getting smaller and smaller, â€Brittany says.
Homeless for the past 10 years, Brittany has reached out to The London Free Press to talk about the increasingly murderous life on the streets of London and what she thinks needs to change.
A month ago, The Free Press published an article on the number of homeless people who had died until the end of October 2021 – 46. In 2020, the number was around 30.
The issue’s publication turned into a controversy. The London Homeless Coalition objected and reminded its member organizations that the number should not be shared with the media or the public, citing the privacy of those who died, concerns over the accuracy of the count and the use potential numbers for organizations to push their own agendas to the detriment of others.
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Since the story was published, at least a dozen more people have died, according to activists and people living on the streets.
“The new normal is that things are getting worse quickly,†says Dan Oudshoorn, London Shrine community outreach worker.
“A combination of factors has kind of reached a critical tipping point. Enduring poverty, enduring pandemic, criminalization of the drug supply to people in poverty, all of these things combine and people are dying in droves.
People need to be notified of deaths, Brittany says.
“Definitely. For a lot of people, we’re just a statistic, another dead drug addict that they can just bury and forget. And it’s not like that. Everyone deserves some kind of recognition.
Respect, housing and a safe drug supply – these are the things Brittany identifies during an interview as essential to preventing deaths.
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Respect is the first step. Respect for agencies that help the homeless and respect for the rest of London, she said.
“People need to know when they are speaking, they are being heard. And they need to know that they are understood, â€she says.
” I am like everybody else. I may not have a house and furniture. I might sleep in a doorway every night. But I’m still a person with feelings. When people look down on me, I don’t care where I’m going or what I’m doing. Why should I if they don’t? “
Brittany is not her real name, but the one she chose to tell her story. Her story is corroborated by her mother and a frontline agency supporting Brittany.
She shared an abbreviated version of her past: a good home with good parents, but falling with the wrong people at 11 and drinking, trying hard drugs, forming bad relationships, making bad decisions, enduring violence and losing. his accommodation.
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Approaching middle age, Brittany works in the sex trade to afford the essential fentanyl and crystal meth to ease the traumas of the past – rape, abuse, assault, living in crack houses – and the harshness of the present.
“I cry every night. Every time I leave a client, I throw up, I cry. It’s a danger every time I go out, but it’s a chance I take, okay, I have to go and put up with my habit, â€she said.
She left the meds every now and then, but it takes days and days of horrible withdrawal – “the creepy critters, the cold tremors, the vomiting” – and it’s impossible to do while sleeping in the doors and cages. staircase.
Housing would be a start for getting help, a place to rest as she first goes through withdrawal and then begins the long road to working on her mental health, Brittany says.
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But she will still have to rely on her meds, just as others depend on coffee, alcohol, marijuana, and prescribed medications to get by.
“I was never able to stay sober for very long. I have come to accept that I will always be an addict. I want to have a good life and always be able to use it. Some days I try to tell myself I’m going to cut back, but who am I kidding? It’s the only thing that keeps me normal now.
Brittany knows that a lot of people still think it’s a fantasy to be able to take street drugs and have a good life.
“The fantasy is that everyone thinks that there will be no drugs in the world and that everyone is going to live a happy life,” she retorts.
London has a safe consumption site and a safe supply program with around 300 customers, both of which help keep people healthier while using illicit drugs.
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Across Canada, calls are being made to expand both programs and decriminalize small amounts of illicit drugs, which the Middlesex-London Health Unit will be examining in more detail in the new year.
When asked how to prevent deaths on the streets, Oudshoorn lists the same three methods as Brittany.
Large-scale, secure supply programs for people who do not have a family doctor would make an immediate and dramatic difference, he says.
Second, truly affordable housing.
Third, listen to Brittany and others living on the streets. The concept of harm reduction, the foundation of secure supplies, safe consumption, and some housing and accommodation policies, grew out of listening to the homeless, Oudshoorn says.
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“People have a good idea of ​​what they need. The lingering problem with many solutions offered is as though many disregard the wisdom, dignity, and experience of the people to whom the solution is offered.
It’s not as if the deaths are reducing the homeless population, he adds.
The pandemic, precarious work, lack of services and lack of housing are adding more and more people to the homeless population, says Oudshoorn.
“I’ve been around for a while and see more and more new people all the time. “
The deaths in the streets also weigh on the mind of Brittany’s mother.
“It scares me so much,†her mother said in a separate interview.
“Every morning I open my blinds and look downtown and I’m like, ‘Where is she, how is she? “”
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Her mother regularly brings food and supplies to Brittany and Brittany talks about her love for her mother.
“I never gave up on her,†her mother said. “She was a really good girl. I just want my baby girl back.
Brittany could go to her mother’s house for Christmas and see her sons and the rest of the family. But she probably won’t, because her mom won’t let her use drugs around the house.
“I know I won’t be able to do it, which breaks my heart because I know how much Christmas means to my parents,†Brittany says.
What is she going to do for Christmas?
“Go out with my friends, get high. Just like my birthday, every year, you know, nothing special.
She will try to be safe, with a few people she can trust, buy fentanyl from someone she can trust, keep an eye on people around her so that no one else dies .
“Overdoses, sometimes there are very few and sometimes there are more than we can handle. I just can’t bear to lose another person I know.
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