Society's Unspoken Dysfunction

What does a modern society do about its unfortunate component of human failures? That group of people that has somehow succumbed to a tragic, hopeless rejection of life. People who find solace in the world that has somehow rejected them, through the use of drugs and alcohol. Whose sober moments are an affliction of pain and remorse over a life unlived. Sunk in the abyss of meaningless existence, bleak beyond endurance and the imagination of most other, normal-living people.

Every city seems to be plagued with them, and hasn't been able to formulate a protocol to deal with them. From runaway teens to mind-addled drug addicts, alcohol-addicted wanderers to people afflicted with mental disorders and left to drift about on their own. There is scant societal support for this flotsam of society. People are so busy, so engaged in living their complex and often frustrating lives they give scant regard to the presence of the homeless.

They exist, and nothing more. An unfortunate by-product of an imperfect world. They've somehow dropped through the familial and social and community net of caring for one another. For reasons of their own, and reasons not their own, they have opted to drop out, become social outcasts, live hard and miserable lives on the streets of our cities and towns. Society's values no longer reflected in their lifestyles.

The street is their home, other street people their extended family. How to cope with the hours that follow sleep is their major preoccupation. They beg for hand-outs on downtown streets, and set up their sleeping arrangements in places wherever they can; under bridges, over heating vents, wherever they can manage, once the streets settle down to night, absent the public.

There are churches whose basements have been outfitted with temporary sleeping arrangements, brought into use throughout the long hard wintry months. Soup kitchens that offer hot meals for the homeless. Panhandlers will stand close by their temporary harbours, always located in the downtown areas, cadging for donations to their drug or liquor-sopped existence.

There are storefront operations for young people where volunteers attempt to re-connect them with their families, encourage them to go back home, return to school. There are other helping centres for abused women, and yet others to promise slight hope for long-time street residents who recall no other life, and would trade theirs for no others - so they claim.

How to help these people? Re institute the use of long-term institutional care for the mentally deranged, where they can live safely and relatively healthily, rather than turning them back to the streets. Society can't legislate responsible and loving family relationships, but we can offer housing and assisted social re-adjustment.

We can set up medical clinics staffed by health professionals and concerned volunteers to ensure that people addicted to drugs and alcohol can find help in overcoming their mind- and body-destroying habits. Yes, it will be costly. But think of the public funding wasted in so many other areas. It would mean a redistribution of wealth, a re-structuring and expansion of civic concerns.

Federally, provincially, municipally, there must be an integrated approach to handling this intractable problem that should fundamentally concern all of us. What is taking us so long to come around to the need for action?