November 8, 2024
Homelessness Unfiltered by Invisible People
This isn’t just another podcast; it’s a call to re-imagine how we value human life.
Dr. Andrew Boozary, primary care physician and Executive Director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine, shares a raw and profound perspective on life, death, empathy, and the urgent need for social housing.
1:54 Invisible People: A month in a hospital—$30,000. A month in a prison—$12,000. A month in a shelter—$6,000. A month in supportive housing—$4,000.
16:56 Somebody wrote about you, an interview—“housing is healthcare” and where you work—you created housing in a parking lot? You are a medical facility?
You are a doctor, a physician, and you are housing developers. That’s wild, we need more of you!
Dr. Boozary: I think we definitely need more housing. When I went to medical school in this city I never would have thought I’d be in development and architecture and real estate.
They had nowhere else to go, and the challenge for the organization is to say if we are going to really be based in evidence and data as being a health network, not just a healthcare network, we need to be able to try to address these root causes.
And so we looked at the space—there’s a parking lot.
We partnered with the city of Toronto and community and working with Fred Victor in terms of having the nonprofit operator. Some element of housing is healthcare, but you never want the hospital as your landlord.
The reality is you need this coalition to push for these kind of options for people.
In the coming weeks 51 people are moving in.
Many of them have had terrible healthcare trajectories. They’ve been really shut out of the health system, shut out of the social system in many ways. It’s just the fundamental start for them to be able to redefine health and well-being.
30:01 Invisible People: In Los Angeles, if nobody claims the body, they’re all buried together in an unmarked grave . . .
Dr. Bozary: The hard part when we have these unmarked graves, these no-name memorials or unnamed memorials, and it goes back to how many people we’re losing every day.
That is avoidable and preventable . . . you feel the weight.
Invisible People: A nurse practitioner friend of mine discovered many of the amputations being performed are actually unnecessary. That medical professionals are—hey, let’s push them through the system. Hey, we’re just gonna cut it off.
There’s stigma and everything else, so you have 23-year-old kids losing a limb that could have been avoidable.
Xylazine, fentanyl, we have to stop the inflow . . .
Totally unacceptable that horse tranquilizer is growing across the country as a drug that people use to escape pain.
We need to treat the person’s pain. The problem is what they’re trying to escape from . . .
36:49 Dr. Boozary: I always wanted to do human rights law which my my mother wasn’t able to do raising my sister and I.
There was a quote from one of the original social medicine physicians that impacted one of my mentors, Paul Farmer, but this now goes back hundreds of years, what Robert Virchow said,
“The physician is the natural attorney for the poor.”
This conversation about the economic realities to the human cost of homelessness challenges views on health, dignity and what it takes to truly support our most vulnerable.
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About Invisible People
There is a direct correlation between what the general public perceives about homelessness and how it affects policy change.
Most people blame homelessness on the person experiencing it instead of the increasing shortage of affordable housing, lack of employment, childhood trauma, lack of a living wage, or the countless reasons that put a person at risk.
This lack of understanding creates a dangerous cycle of misperception that leads to the inability to effectively address the root causes of homelessness.
We imagine a world where everyone has a place to call home. Each day, we work to fight homelessness by giving it a face while educating individuals about the systemic issues that contribute to its existence.
Through storytelling, education, news, and activism, we are changing the narrative on homelessness.
This isn’t just talk.
Our groundbreaking educational content reaches millions of people every month.
Our real and unfiltered stories of homelessness shatter stereotypes, demand attention and deliver a call-to-action that is being answered by governments, major brands, nonprofit organizations, and everyday citizens just like you.
However, there is more work to be done on the road ahead.
Homelessness is undoubtedly one of our biggest societal issues today and will only continue to grow if we don’t take action now.
Invisible People is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about homelessness through innovative storytelling, news, and advocacy.
Since our launch in 2008, Invisible People has become a pioneer and trusted resource for inspiring action and raising awareness in support of advocacy, policy change and thoughtful dialogue around poverty in North America and the United Kingdom.