Andi has pitched her tent just to the right of this photo.
It’s 6 am and dark. I’ll get a photo of her later.
People are responding – with suggestions, making calls to local shelters, and sending donations. We are going to nail this one. I have a list of places to call and will be doing so this afternoon.
I have an emergency in the Vancouver area.
Andi Stewart (not her real name), a native woman from the Edmonton area (up north), has fled a situation of domestic violence and come to Vancouver for shelter. She has parked herself in the park in front of me in a tent.
She’s around 21, very pleasant, has arthritis, and walks (ably) with a cane (I had arthritis). She has a pitbull for a pet, who is very friendly unless you get violent with her (I assume). I became his friend the first day I met him.
She has a tent and a sleeping bag, a chair and other items that we in the neighborhood or her rescue team have donated to her. It isn’t that someone in a place to help may not help. It’s that it’s so cold and organizations can move so slowly. She could die out there in the cold.
And going to the press now might antagonize her only organizational friends.
I took in a homeless person before in the past. She lived with me for ten years and was a great blessing. (Nothing inappropriate ever happened.) (1)
I asked the building owner about taking in Andi, but he will not allow her dog in the building and it’s her pet and only companion (and protector) so she won’t part from it.
I am furnishing her with whatever I have, including money. To be without money in this situation must multiply its effect beyond belief. Homelessness is bad enough but not having money to boot must be next to a life not worth living.
If there is anyone in the Vancouver area who can take a person in her situation in, I’d be eternally grateful. I know they will be rewarded as I have been when I sheltered someone in her situation. We became lifelong friends.
The situation would be ideal for an older person who wants companionship or who needs assistance or supervision.
I’d have to ask Andi, but she might accept shelter on Vancouver Island or outlying Greater Vancouver areas.
Being abandoned in the cold overnight must be the ultimate sobering experience. Facing that as a future is too much to ask of anybody.
I can’t sleep with this situation happening on my doorstep and having nothing I can do about it. And not knowing who to turn to who will act immediately.
If I’m not writing copiously at this moment, it’s because I’m sitting outside a tent across the street for an hour, without Internet service, while Andi shops, washes, etc.
Or weeping in my apartment, remembering how me, Paul, and my Mother were in exactly Andi’s situation when Mom fled Dad’s violence in 1963.
And someone took us in.
If you can help, please email me at the blog: [email protected].
Footnotes
(1) We made it our business to demonstrate that a man and a woman could live together without sexually preying on each other. And we succeeded.