Tim Harris goes to Dubai and asks around, and yes, no other country represented at the INSP compares to the situation here
I’m writing from a motel room in Dubai, where I’ve just finished a three-day meeting with my colleagues from the International Network of Street Papers (INSP). The INSP is a global network of papers like Real Change, and it has 114 member organizations across 35 countries.
Real Change is hosting the 2015 INSP conference in Seattle this June, and I’ve recently joined its five-member board of directors to help lead the international street paper movement into its third decade.
So, in recent days, I’ve had the opportunity to ask leaders around the world how homelessness in their city compares to Seattle. But first, let me frame the question that is no doubt on your mind.
“Dubai? Really?”
We thought that, too. And yet, as an international hub where inexpensive accommodations combine with direct flights, it made strange sense. And so, here I am, in this very unlikely place, where a center of global capitalism has materialized in the middle of a desert in just over a half-century’s time.
Were it not for the palm trees and the calls to prayer heard five times a day out my window, I could be in any three-star hotel somewhere along SeaTac’s International Boulevard. Post-industrial capitalism produces corporate monoculture, and wherever you go, the malls look pretty much the same, and a Starbucks or a McDonald’s is close at hand.
Globalization creates other similarities as well. I’ve spoken with people from England, Canada, Scotland, Switzerland and Australia about homelessness in their own countries, and the stories are remarkably similar. None compare, however, to the situation here, where 3,722 people in King County were recently found outside living in cars, tents and doorways.
Paula Gallo, from the street paper Surprise in Switzerland, said they know exactly how many residents in her city of Basel lack an address. It’s around 200. The relative effectiveness of the social services system there, however, is threatened by recent trends toward austerity. A new wind is blowing, she says, and it feels mean.
In England, the unsheltered count is even lower. According to Fay Selvan, director of Manchester’s The Big Issue, there are officially 10 homeless people on the streets in her city of two million people. The true count, she said, is many times higher. Like 50. “People have to be bedded down for the night to be officially counted,” she explained. I guess governments the world over like to minimize their failures, however small.
But the gains of the past are coming undone. While programs that emphasize housing over shelter had nearly eradicated homelessness in England, recent austerity measures have led to a loss of about a third of federal funds and a similar round of cuts is on the way. “Everything,” Selvan said with great sadness, “is being reduced to bare crisis response.”
Serge Lareault, a founder of Montreal’s L’Itinteraire, said his city approaches homelessness comprehensively, and it does well in getting people inside when the weather is extreme — but there are still maybe 1,000 folks they don’t serve as well. Recent cuts have created new gaps in services, and the number of homeless people with mental illness and substance abuse issues is climbing as available resources head south.
INSP Director Maree Aldam sees similar issues in Glasgow. While they don’t have people camping in public or sleeping in cars like we do, poverty is rising. “Until recently,” she said, “people in Scotland didn’t know what food banks were. Now, the ones that have opened can barely keep up with demand.” A bright spot there is a new coalition of left parties that have formed to challenge austerity and “force the Labor Party back to their roots.”
Steven Persson, CEO of The Big Issue Australia, said his country of 23 million has maybe 10,000 unsheltered people, not counting Aborigines. He views their condition as Australia’s national shame and becomes visibly angry when he talks about it. And yet, like the others, he sees something in our country that scares him more.
“The United States,” he observed, “is a first-world country with thirdworld conditions.” While things are getting worse for homeless people around the world, the levels of abandonment here, by international standards, is shocking. The future of the world is written on our streets, and it’s not a pretty sight.