Both the provincial government and the City of Cape Town fund organisations to provide accommodation and support to homeless people.
Many homeless people I have spoken to over the past few months offered a scathing critique of service providers (NPOs and NGOs).
“Most of these NGOs that say they are helping the homeless are doing nothing. Absolute nothing … I’ll tell you what your headline should be: ‘NGOs make money out of homeless misery.’ That’s what it is,” said Ronald (not his real name), a man living on the streets in Goodwood.
“They actually make our situation worse,” Xolile (not his real name) added.
Xolile believes that by doing so, the Province and the City are simply ridding themselves of the responsibility and passing it on to the NGOs and NPOs that weren’t actually helping.
These discussions got me thinking of my own discomfort with how the organisations tasked with providing services to the homeless on behalf of the City and the Province carry out this mandate.
I also find it strange that it seems so difficult for people and organisations in the homeless sector to give credit where credit is due.
And this happens not only among themselves – where their behaviour would have anyone convinced that they are competing against each other, rather than supporting each other, but especially when credit must be given to a homeless or previously homeless person for innovative ideas.
This is the one sector where service providers should be bending over backwards to not only recognise these individuals publicly, but also professionally and privately, by employing them at good salaries and with suitable job descriptions.
But instead, they bind them in chains earning stipends that are funded by the government from one funded project to the next and most remain no better off than lowly paid casual labourers with no prospect of sustaining themselves outside of these funded projects.
Community Chest and I opened the first truly supportive transitional accommodation for homeless people by homeless people in 2020 at a venue in Gardens which we called “Our House”. It was hugely successful.
Rainbow House in Observatory, which was modelled as a “wet” supportive transitional accommodation venue for homeless people too, was extremely successful.
Unfortunately, due to a lack of funding, the one has closed and the other is at risk of closing.
Those in the sector who had shown no interest or belief in those models are now the same organisations that are suddenly opening up precisely this model of accommodation venue and promoting them as their own concepts. And why?
We as people who lived on the street for two years worked darn hard to open up these two houses, provide upliftment and empowerment projects as well as access to employment opportunities, social services and harm reduction for its residents.
But in order for it to become sustainable, it needed funding. We as people living on the streets could not obtain such funding despite all the positive media exposure and focus.
We, the previously homeless people, were also the ones who had the guts to tell the City to include transitional supportive housing and conceptualised and advocated for a ladder of accommodation for those living on the streets to be added to the existing emergency shelter option preferred by the City that has now been proven ineffective.
And guess what? The City with its new grant in aids, for the first time makes provision for this type of accommodation.
Were the organisations in the sector willing to save the two houses that set the scene and paved the way for them to be granted funds to open transitional accommodation spaces?
Were they prepared to unconditionally support the “houses that the homeless had built”?
NO! THEY DID WHAT THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN GOOD AT – DIVIDE AND CONQUER!
When organisations meant to assist those living on the streets do not support opportunities beneficial for those living on the streets by virtue of the fact that it has been suggested or created by people living on the streets, then those organisations are in dereliction of their duties.
And when they work, but they see to it that those opportunities fail in order for them to a little while later create that same opportunity by virtue of Grant in Aid funding, they expose themselves as the opportunists they are!
I am a member of an international group of people with lived experience. We are referred to by international service providers as “experts by experience”.
We lead most of the international discussions currently facilitated and being held by the DePaul Institute, yet here in my own city, province and country, I, and others with the lived experience they so wish to possess are treated as possessions that they can mould and manipulate to serve their purpose.
I say it’s time for the City and the Province to take a long hard look at those service providers being paid to offer services to the homeless and have the homeless evaluate the impact of these organisations on their upliftment, empowerment and well-being.
It’s easy to have an organisation to write eloquent and professional reports and quote great results for their programmes at ward council meetings and sub council meetings.
Yet, on the street I see new faces added to the old familiar faces every single day of my life.
All is not well in the state of homelessness!
Thanking you and have a great week and festive season and stay safe.
* Carlos Mesquita.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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