Malixole Sikhungo
Cape Town - It costs twice as much to make sobriety a pre-condition to receiving shelter for a homeless person than housing them right away.
From lived experience, making a homeless person sweat their substance addiction out is unrealistic and costly. It’s like putting the cart before the horse.
Frankly, that approach is not working and solutions that provide accommodation first, linked to personal development that creates long-term pathways out of homelessness, need to be prioritised.
A homeless person currently has only two accommodation options:
(i) sleeping rough on the street or
(ii) overcome addiction and gain temporary accommodation in the oversubscribed shelter system.
These options are either inadequate, unavailable, or at best, stop-gap measures that have proven to slash your pocket, deeply.
According to the Cost of Homelessness: Cape Town study, the current approach costs over R744m – per year addressing homelessness in the Cape Town area alone.
That’s taxpayers’ money, your money, which could have been better channelled towards sustainable pathways out of homelessness.
The question remains, why government authorities aren’t diverting their energy and resources to better and long- term solutions linked to getting people off the street?
It all boils down to political will and we as residents can guide the way and do our bit given that we are the ones bearing the brunt.
In line with their main goal – an effective life-change pathway accessible to every homeless person, U-turn is currently rolling out a different approach – night-time Safe Space accommodation linked to day-time therapeutic services.
For the sake of completeness, a Safe Space is basic accommodation with minimal to no conditions, relating particularly to abstinence and mental illness.
U-turn’s skills programme keeps each individual homeless person occupied throughout the day while the safe space protects them at night.
This model overcomes the initial barrier posed by active substance use while creating a conducive environment to overcome the addiction.
U-turn is currently implementing the first tranche of its Safe Space rollout and needs your involvement to enable them to continue effectively equipping homeless individuals with skills to overcome homelessness.
The most pressing being: to raise funds for renovations of their local service centres to turn them into Safe Spaces which will accommodate up to 70 homeless folks.
I believe U-turn have solutions – all they need is your concerted buy-in to change the status quo for good.
They are calling for residents to come on board in fundraising for their Safe Spaces initiative, starting with the Southern Suburbs in Cape Town.
They need to raise only R200 000 for the renovations and R800 000 for operational costs to run the Safe Space for 12 months.
Let’s face it, housed-residents have two clear choices:
(i) supporting safe spaces, where homeless folks are accommodated, rehabilitated and subsequently step out of the streets permanently, or
(ii) having the same (and exponentially increasing) number of homeless individuals roaming the streets with literally no prospects of being assisted out of homelessness.
It is time to support an affordable and realistic accommodation first solution and get people off the streets.
Sikhungo is a spokesperson for U-turn.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.