E072 Ross Earnshaw Homeless Has Many Faces
Let’s Be Well Together Podcast - Episode 72
Date: June 13, 2023
Participants: Elise Seifert, Sheila Webster, John Webster and Julie Wilson
Guest: Ross Earnshaw
Start times and Segments:
[0:00:35] What’s On Your Mind: Part of the Elise travel series. She and Sheila reminisce about hiking in the Himalayas on a trip to India. They went from New Delhi to Srinagar to the mountains. Lots of memories - altitude sickness, riding a donkey, hoarding toilet paper, being surrounded by sheep, cougar warnings, flying eggs and more. Who knew Canadians could feel so cold in India? It was a once in a lifetime experience.
[0:12:51] Expanding Minds Interview: [Social Wellness] We start a discussion on the many elements and moving parts associated with homelessness. On this episode, we ask Cambridge City Councillor Ross Earnshaw about the types of people who find themselves homeless and the challenges they face. Ross has been educating himself on the issues. How people become homeless depends on circumstances, and no two stories are the same. There is a continuum of housing: shelter, supportive housing, affordable housing and fully integrated into society housing. People who are homeless need to work their way through those levels of housing if they wish to integrate back into society. Many of them don’t necessarily follow a progression. People who have friends or family affected by addiction are more open to the possibility of helping the homeless.
Hamilton Spectator article on encampments includes facts and data: The root causes of encampments
[0:28:37] The Retired Artist: Sheila tried new activities after selling her dance studio. She recently met Cameron unexpectedly at a wedding.
[033:08] Move That Body: What is NEAT? How can you increase your NEAT? It’s Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. It includes any kind of physical activity you do throughout the day that’s not labelled exercise, e.g., walking the dog, carrying groceries, using the stairs, etc.
[0:37:33] Running Popup: John finds running outside mentally easier and physically harder, with running on a treadmill the opposite.
[0:40:45] Flipside of the Coin: Communicating with each other and then adapting can help a relationship. We see this for example with sex and cooking.
Quotes and Take-Aways:
Ross – Homeless people could be almost anybody. It could be your neighbour, your friend or the person next door. It depends a great deal on the circumstances and what I’ve found is that no two stories are the same. Every homeless person has a story.
Ross – Unfortunately, when people say homelessness they generally think of the worst element of homelessness: the people who are addicted, who are mentally ill, who are problems in society. But what I’ve found is that there are all kinds of people in a homeless situation.
Ross – There is a continuum of housing, all the way from homelessness to McMansion palaces and everything in between. There’s shelter, supportive housing, affordable housing and fully integrated into society housing. People who are homeless, whatever background they have, will need to work their way through those levels of housing if they wish to integrate back into society.
Ross – I’m afraid being pretty general here in saying homeless people don’t necessarily move forward in the way that you or I might think of as moving forward. They may move from a homeless situation into some kind of shelter and then move back to homelessness. They may move out of a shelter and into some kind of supportive housing and then slide back to a shelter. They don’t necessarily follow a progression.
Ross – There is a tendency to think of the homeless as those who are addicted or have mental health issues and not realize that there is a considerable segment of the homeless population that has none of those issues. That is an eye opener to most people.
Ross – What I found most telling was that the people who objected most strongly to harm reduction initiatives were people who had never had anyone in their family or close to them ever involved with drug addiction. I spoke people who had friends or family who were somehow addicted and found them most open to the possibility of rendering assistance to people who are in a homeless situation.
Ross – There’s not a municipality anywhere in this country that’s not suffering with difficulty in addressing the homeless issue, at some level. It’s shocking to me. It’s pervasive. It’s everywhere.
Ross – There are many shelters that won’t take couples. Many shelters won’t take someone with a pet. Oftentimes there are drug users actively using in the shelters, where some people in homeless encampments want nothing to do with drugs, so they don’t want to be in that environment. There are mental health issues where, for example, some people don’t want to be inside. Many of the homeless are fearful that if they are in a shelter situation they will be robbed or beaten. They don’t feel it’s a safe space. These shelters are not viewed as truly accessible or low barrier.
Ross – There’s no truly accessible low barrier housing. If homeless people are removed from an encampment there’s no place for them to go, so they move from one street corner to another. They move from one park bench to another.
Bulletin Board Quote brought to you by Sheila: Toilet paper started rolling down the mountain.
Guest Information: Cambridge City Councillor Ross Earnshaw studied Music, Science and Law, before an exemplary career as a litigation lawyer in Waterloo Region. I worked with Ross. He was and is a mentor to me. He held executive positions with the Waterloo Region Law Association, the Law Society of Ontario, and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. He was a board member with the Law Foundation of Ontario, an organization devoted to increasing access to justice for vulnerable and marginalized elements of society. After 40 years, he retired from the practice of law. He ran for and was elected as a Councillor in 2022. He’s passionate about his community and the people living in it. In his spare time, he enjoys biking and hiking the trails in and around Cambridge with his life partner, Suzanne. He has two adult sons, including our very own Starving Artist, Cameron.
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Thanks for joining us,
(-(-_(-_-)_-)-) Your wellness check-in team
John, Sammy, Cameron, Sheila, Elise, Isabelle and Julie