A place to call home.

It was a busy Saturday morning. C.C. and I were off to visit friends in the mountains and I wanted to get some chores done before we left. After taking a load of newspapers and cardboard to the recycling depot, I loaded my car with bottles and headed downtown. I knew I was early for the bottle depot and looked on the streets for someone with a cart who might want to take my bottles off my hands. When nobody appeared, I did the next best thing. I went to the homeless shelter where I work and asked a couple of guys I know if they knew anyone interested in a load of bottles. One of the guys, Jack* replied, "I used to collect bottles. It would be nice to have some cash in my pocket."

"I'll drop you off at the Depot with them," I told him.

"You would?" he exclaimed. "Let's go." He tucked his bag under his chair and asked his tablemate to watch his stuff. "No problem," said his friend, Doug*. "It's not like I've got anywhere to go."

I drove Jack to the depot and on the way he told me about his hip surgery the previous year after a fall brought him down. "I had to have a hip replacement, but they left all sorts of bone fragments in. The pain is awful. I can't work. I've applied for government assistance but that's really slow."

I asked him how he ended up at the shelter. "My apartment building got sold and turned into condos. I couldn't find anyplace I could afford so here I am. It's okay. But I'd sure like to get a place of my own."

A place of my own.

It is a common refrain amongst the people we serve. 'I just want a place of my own.' But, in a city of skyrocketing rents and a dearth of rental units, finding that place of your own, a place you can afford is tough.

Before leaving the city on Saturday for the mountains, my eldest daughter and I went looking at apartments for her and her friend to rent. They've checked out the areas of the city they want to live in. They know how much it will take for them to be able to 'make it' every month. Like Jack, they have decided to get a place of their own. A place they can claim as their little space in the world. A place with a door with a key that locks it. A place that is safe and clean and allows them to start building their lives together as they separate physically from the families that have supported them for over twenty years.

It is a natural yearning. To have a place of your own.

And yet, for thousands of people in this city, a place of your own is not a reality. Sure, for some of our clients, it is their addiction that keeps them from meeting their need. For many, however, it is a series of events, of circumstances both personal and societal that have put up roadblocks to their attaining their goal.

Doug, Jack's tablemate, had a place of his own in a senior's building we own. It's subsidized rent and provides minimum support to help individuals maintain their position in the building. But for Doug, his lifeskills, or lack of them, got him into too much trouble. After months of missing the rent, he ended up back at the main shelter. He's been there now for over a year and has lost the belief that he will ever find that place of his own again. "Someday," he tells me whenever we chat. "Someday."

When does someday come? Waiting for someday is like waiting to win the lottery. You can't plan your life around it and if you do, you're not living your life in reality.

It is what I find most tragic about the cycle of homelessness. The ebbing away of initiative. The drying up of the drive to get someplace else other than where you're at.

As Doug said, "It's not like I've got anywhere else to go."

As a shelter, we don't have the capacity, the programs nor the staff to help someone like Doug develop the longterm life skills to make a difference in his own life. At sixty, after a lifetime of flirting in and out of homelessness, Doug's inertia becomes a force to be reckoned with. He sits every day at a table at the front of the room, laughing and reading the paper. Most days, he doesn't leave the building. Most days, he holds onto the table he's at, claiming his one little space in the world as if it is the only space that gives him meaning.

In a place where everyone gets a second and a third and a fourth chance, Doug has lost the will to take a chance on himself. To give himself the chance to make a difference in his own life.

My daughter and her friend are about to take a chance on life. They're about to give themselves a chance to journey into the world, to spread their wings and see how high they can fly free of the nests that have held them safe for so long. It is an awesome journey, an exciting adventure. A step worth taking. A leap worth jumping into. They are looking at their future through open eyes, planning the steps they must take to create the life of their dreams. They're going after what they want, living large. Living life filled with possibility.

Former British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George said, "Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."

For Doug and Jack and those who sit at tables day after day in the hopes that the world will somehow change, that answers will somehow appear, the ties that bind them to their pasts keep them from taking a step into the world beyond the doors of the shelter. They keep them fixed on believing baby steps will create the story of their futures.

Every night at the shelter we sleep up to 1100 adult men and women. It's a busy place. A place filled with stories of lives in despair, of lives in turmoil, of lives of people who sit day after day at a table in the corner because they believe they have 'nowhere to go.'

The question is: Where are you sitting? In the possibility of someday arriving with the answers? Or, are you creating your answers as you live in the limitless possibilities of living life beyond your comfort zone? Are you leaping into the void armed with the knowledge that whatever happens, you're prepared for what life offers up because you are a human being doing what it takes to live the life of your dreams?