surplus population: who gets to decide who matters?
Yesterday, I was thinking about money, homelessness, family, grief, and a question that has followed me for much of my life.
What happens when people need help, but the people who could help decide they are not worth the trouble?
I keep coming back to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol.
When Ebenezer Scrooge is asked to donate money to help the poor, he asks whether the workhouses and poor laws are still operating. When told that some people would rather die than go there, he replies:
“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Read that again.
Decrease the surplus population.
Imagine looking at another human being and deciding they are surplus. Unnecessary. An expense. Someone the world could manage without.
Dickens was exposing the cruelty of that attitude. Yet here we are, more than 180 years after the story was first published, still arguing about who deserves help.
The price of being poor
We live in expensive times. Cars cost thousands. Phones cost hundreds or thousands. People go on cruises, travel to New York for Christmas, attend big weddings, and enjoy lives they have worked hard to build.
There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying your money.
But what happens when someone in your own family cannot afford a safe place to sleep?
I have been trying to find a way out of my housing situation. I asked two financially comfortable people if they could lend me $4,000 to help me get to Mexico, where I have connections and possible accommodation. Neither answered.
I told my sister I had asked for help. She said that was too much money and nobody had that kind of money.
I have three siblings, as well as nieces and nephews who appear to have comfortable lives. I found myself wondering whether, collectively, they could help me get through this difficult period.
I am not saying anyone owes me their savings. I am saying that when you are frightened about where you will live, watching other people spend money on holidays and celebrations can make you wonder where you fit into their priorities.
My sister asked whether my room was ready. I thought perhaps she was going to offer to help me.
Instead, she said that if I could get the $4,000, I could live there and apply for income assistance and BC Housing.
I deleted the chat.
I was angry. I wanted to shout, “Fuck you!”
Not because I believe someone else should solve my entire life, but because I wanted someone to say, Let's figure this out together.
Sometimes the money is only part of the story.
Sometimes what you really want is to know that somebody has your back.
When home disappears
My parents are gone.
My dad died when we were children. He struggled with alcoholism, and there were frightening times growing up. He was building a business, lost the money, and died by suicide.
When he died, the fear stopped. That is a difficult thing to admit, but it is true. I lost my father, and I also no longer had to live with the same fear.
My mom became the person who held our family together. She was often sick, had heart problems, and worried about money. I worried about her, too.
After she died, I grieved for years. I remember sitting on a couch with my brother, crying. I knew something fundamental had changed.
My mom was the glue.
After she passed away, the family relationships deteriorated. People fought. I fought with family members. Grief does strange things to people, and sometimes we hurt one another when we are already hurting ourselves.
I also felt relief that I no longer had to worry about my mom being sick.
That does not mean I didn't love her.
We can grieve someone terribly and still feel relief when years of worry come to an end. Human emotions are complicated. We can love someone, have arguments with them, stop speaking for a while, miss them desperately, and wish things had been different.
When my mom's housing situation changed, I lost the security of having a place I could call home. I had been grandfathered into a condo arrangement, but it came with restrictions on how I could live. I couldn't simply build the life I wanted there.
Later, I lost housing several times. My daughter couldn't come home to me. My sister wouldn't let her stay at her place. Over time, my relationship with my daughter became estranged, and other family relationships fractured, too.
My daughter and I are no longer close. I have wondered how much of that is my fault, how much comes from circumstances, and how much comes from the things that happened between us.
I know I have sometimes blocked people when I was hurt or angry. I know I have made mistakes.
But I am still a human being who needs a home.
I miss my mother. I miss the home I thought I would always have. I miss the idea of a family that could come together when somebody needed help.
Those are different losses, but they are connected.
When family feels like strangers
What hurts is watching family members spend large amounts of money on holidays, cruises, weddings and other celebrations while I struggle to find somewhere safe to live.
I remember being sent to Disneyland with my daughter. There have been moments of generosity in my family's history. I don't want to erase those.
But I haven't been invited to family gatherings for years. I wasn't invited to a big wedding. My niece goes to New York every Christmas.
I watch the family carry on together, and I feel left behind.
I don't know what everyone thinks of me. I cannot read their minds. Perhaps they think I have made poor decisions. Perhaps they believe they have helped enough. Perhaps they simply don't understand how desperate my situation has become.
But the experience of being excluded, especially when you need help, can leave you feeling as though you matter less than everyone else.
I don't expect to be invited to every holiday or to have someone pay all my bills.
I want to feel that I still belong somewhere.
I want someone to ask how I am doing and listen to the answer. I want someone to recognize that a person can have made mistakes and still deserve a helping hand.
I want home to mean something again.
The people we lose, and the people we leave behind
My dad died by suicide. Because of that, death is not an abstract subject in my life.
I think about mortality. At 64, I sometimes wonder what comes next, whether there is another level, and why so many of us are frightened of death after being taught that it is sinful or something to fear.
Sometimes, when life becomes overwhelming, death can appear in thought as an escape from pain. I can acknowledge that thought without saying I intend to act on it.
I am sad. I am exhausted by the uncertainty. I worry about what happens if I cannot find housing.
And I know there are many other people living with these same fears.
People are sleeping outside. People are losing their homes. People are struggling with illness, addiction, grief, isolation and poverty. Some die before they get the help they need.
Their families grieve. Sometimes their families feel relief that the suffering is over. Sometimes relationships were complicated long before the person died.
None of that means those people were surplus.
We need to be able to talk honestly about death, grief and the feelings we don't always like to admit. Silence doesn't make these experiences disappear.
And we need to stop treating the suffering of others as evidence that they have failed at life.
Who gets to decide who deserves help?
We have charities asking for donations. We have thrift stores selling donated goods to fund charitable programs. We have governments providing funding for social services.
We have people volunteering, cooking meals, donating clothing and trying to help their neighbours.
There are people who care.
But there is a difference between providing emergency assistance and ensuring that people have somewhere safe and permanent to live.
There is a difference between raising money for a cause and measuring whether that money actually changes someone's circumstances.
And there is a difference between saying we care about the poor and treating a person in poverty with dignity when they ask for help.
I want to know how we can have so many resources in this country and still leave people wondering where they will sleep tonight.
I want to know why asking for help so often becomes an interrogation about the choices someone made years ago.
Why must people explain their entire lives before they are allowed to be struggling?
Why does having a child without a husband, losing a job, experiencing grief, or making a financial mistake become a reason to judge someone rather than help them?
We cannot undo every mistake people make. We cannot promise everyone the life they imagined.
But we can decide whether our response to human suffering will be compassion or contempt.
We can decide whether the measure of a society is how comfortable its wealthiest citizens are, or whether the most vulnerable can find safety and dignity.
We can decide whether someone without a home is a problem to be managed or a human being who needs a home.
Hang on until tomorrow
Today, despite everything, I still have hope.
Not necessarily the hope of a great big miracle. I am not expecting someone to suddenly arrive with all the answers.
But I have this feeling that my parents and ancestors are somewhere behind me, waving me forward, saying, Hang on, kid.
Maybe tomorrow something will happen. Maybe someone will offer a room, make a phone call, answer a message, or know someone who can help.
Maybe it will be a small thing rather than a miracle.
Maybe things will get worse before they get better. I cannot promise myself a happy ending.
But I can leave room for the possibility that something good is still ahead.
That is what I am trying to do: hang on until tomorrow.
And I want other people who are struggling to know that they are not the only ones who feel this way. You are not required to pretend that everything is fine. You are allowed to be angry, frightened, disappointed, grieving and uncertain.
You are allowed to ask for help.
You are allowed to be a complicated human being.
You do not have to earn the right to exist by being rich, healthy, productive, cheerful or convenient to your family.
Scrooge's words were meant to expose a terrible way of thinking. They should remind us to question every system and attitude that treats people as disposable.
Nobody should be considered surplus population. Nobody should have to prove they are worthy of a home. And nobody should have to reach the edge of despair before someone notices they need help.
Perhaps the miracle we need is not one person arriving to save us.
Perhaps it is a world in which we stop leaving people to face everything alone.
Hang on until tomorrow. Sometimes tomorrow is where the possibility begins.
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or feel you may be in danger:
In Canada, call or text 988 for suicide crisis support, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
You do not have to wait until things become unbearable to reach out.
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