Down and Out in Rome and Montreal etc.

Years ago it may have been fashion to describe the needy in London and Paris but I don’t need those cities to know what is happening in other large cities around the world. It is about the homeless. I would see them in their cardboard boxes at the station, and the station was in Rome. I could not imagine that the same thing would happen in my own town, but when I returned to Montreal the number of homeless people seemed to have gone up. And what the attitude towards them?

It was after seeing the Roman misery that I may have been more aware of the lady that lived in the ground below the sewer main hole and made her bed near a heated water pipe. The country was not Canada. The shanty towns that were reported in Naples made of black Nigerian residents who did not get integrated into the town, stood out. One could imagine numerous groups of exiles and unwanted immigrants that would be given less than human conditions aside their more affluent neighbours.

Well let me say that occasionally I do give some change hear and there, not to the ones that sing for money on the metro cars and admit to drinking along their way but to the silent ones, or the less boisterous ones. That’s my choice. Not about to take one to greasy spoon for a hot meal, the city provides that and my taxes go to their upkeep of some soup kitchens and the like. When the cold increases the number of needy people also seems to rise but when I travel to Europe, residents there would think that poverty doesn’t exist here. I guess that is because of what we advertise to attract immigrants and we are not about advertising poverty on the streets. Poverty is everywhere I think and the level at which it occurs differs in various nations.

There are cases of people living on the streets all year round, it is worse in the winter with sub zero temperatures. I remember seeing one middle aged person lying over the ventilation grill between the metro and street level near the downtown. He eyed me and I did too thinking about the strangeness of the setting but at least the person kept warm for a little.

The Old Brewery Mission has been providing needed meals for years and there is always that additional fuss around New Year time. Now that that time is over people can still find themselves under freezing conditions including native Canadians that have migrated to the city and lie forgotten near metro exits on occasion. It does not print a pretty picture and my understanding is that there is an additional crop that come to the city for medical assistance and then their money is used up, they cannot leave and so they would have to live on the streets.

I used to be disgusted to see smelly drunkards on the metro benches in the early morning hours when people have to commute to work; they are having to deal with their hangovers or just have no where else to go. Their appearances is so commonplace today. Sometimes they get marched out and other times they look as if they are ready to roll onto the ground.

The woman in her fur coat asking for a handout looked odd and I regret not having given then, but even the wealthy lose their rentals so they say in the eternal capital. So it is possible for an elderly person can be pushed over the top because of increased costs or in cases like the Earl Jones fiasco where their life savings are stolen and they are in enormous debts.

Rome in the eighties and nineties  never had any homeless people lying in a metro station overnight. One has the attitude to just allow them to lie there while everyone else goes about their business and I wonder if people ever gave it a thought at how easy it would be for anybody to lose control of their ambitions and just live a reckless live of liquor and homelessness. I wonder too at what other misfortunes people have which carry them to the streets.