Street dwelling: no easy fix

The PM gave a directive to his new mayor to address with urgency the issues of street dwelling or vagrancy.

The PM also issued another directive to give life to the management of city parking through the introduction of parking meters.

Both issues have been with the city for a lifetime and to the credit of some mayors (not all mayors) efforts were made to relieve the city of Port-of-Spain of the burden of street dwelling.

The facts of my own efforts to end street dwelling and equally to introduce organised managed vehicular parking are well documented in a text researched and written by me and aptly titled “Local Government in Trinidad, Conspiracy Against the People”.

As I found out back then, the issue of street dwelling has been passed from generations of mayors to new generations of mayors for good reason — the mayor simply under the present laws is powerless! Back then as one who believed and accepted the responsibility to leave PoS better than I met it, I bravely undertook the challenge to bring street dwelling to an end.

This self-imposed mandate required convincing the central government to accept both its role and responsibilities in support of any plan to make street dwelling disappear.

In this regard the new mayor is far better off than I was as both he and the central government share the same bed and eat from the same plate.

He is also fortunate that he has the PM and his party behind him. Then, as I served and sought to revolutionise the way business was conducted at City Hall I never once was blessed with the presence of party officials nor did I have the support of the PNM nor its political leader.

Yet the new mayor will find out in short time that the removal of street dwelling is not as flippant an exercise as his boss the PM suggested in issuing his mandate.

In this matter the PM must become busy about the people’s business, taking time to fully understand the intricacies of the removal of street dwellers. Did he the PM not grasp anything from the experiences of his last mayor as he sought, and rightfully so, to close the gates on street dwellers at Tamarind Square and is he the PM not aware of the directives of the court in response to actions brought by street dwellers? This is very current and the court’s directives to the city, if he was aware, must have suggested to the PM that the matter of street dwelling requires a much more strategic and planned solution, which is not beyond the republic. This is not a PoS matter — this is a national issue that ought to be treated with the appropriate due diligence.

For the records, it must be noted that following four street dwelling exercises by the 2010-2013 City Council during which street dwellers were brought before the courts, we found that there were four distinct groups of street dwellers.

The largest group of the street dwelling population are drug addicts; this group is followed by mentally ill people, which is followed by deportees, with the last group being people who have fallen on very hard times.

Given that the majority of the street dwelling population are drug addicts, the evidence suggests it is reasonable to believe if the city were to bring street dwellers before the courts on four occasions for loitering, ie, sleeping on the streets, appropriate laws which provide for mandatory rehabilitation can be imposed by the courts.

During the four exercises noted above, the council ensured that a competent medical team comprised part of the exercise. Medical practitioners present could identify street dwellers by name, and such people known were administered the applicable mental health medication.

These people, upon being treated, returned to their homes within a short period.

What the evidence suggests is that public mental health services must change its approach from one which demands a visit by the patient to a clinic to one in which the clinic goes to the patient. There must be aggressive outreach programmes to cater to mentally ill people who have a track record of becoming street dwellers.

The third category of deportees merely requires the State to work closely with agencies such as Vision and Mission, providing the appropriate funds with the caveat that there be strict accounting for the responsibility given.

Finally, we must demand increased improvement in the quality and volume of service provided to people who have fallen through the cracks by the republic’s vast social service.

Given the aforementioned, the PM must now know his mandate has been wrongly placed.

The reality is that unless the central government led by the PM moves together to give life to appropriate laws required to effect the management of street dwelling, the new mayor will remain like Alice in Wonderland.

In treating with the second public directive to fix parking, I encourage the new mayor to review the files of the work of the 2010-2013 council.

In these files you will find all you require to initiate a modern city-parking programme. In this matter, you also require your PM to move the laws, before you can implement.

* Louis Lee Sing is a former mayor of Port-of-Spain.