I often get asked, “What is the answer to this?” in terms of the current homelessness and opioid crisis. Not because people expect me to have a simple solution, but because they’re trying to make sense of something that often feels impossible to understand. My answer usually disappoints people because there isn’t one answer that I can fit into the five-minute conversation we’re having.
As humans, we’re wired to think in terms of cause and effect. If A happens, we fix it by doing B. It would certainly make life easier if the world worked that way, but the older I get and the more people I meet, the more I realize that the biggest problems we face rarely have simple solutions. Homelessness and addiction didn’t appear overnight, and they certainly aren’t the result of one poor decision. They are the outcome of decades of changes involving housing, trauma, mental health, poverty, healthcare, family dynamics, public policy, the toxic drug supply, and countless other factors that all influence one another.
Over the years, I’ve cared for people who became homeless for reasons that couldn’t be more different. Some were living with untreated schizophrenia that slowly dismantled their lives. Some were injured at work, developed chronic pain, and eventually became dependent on opioids before the drug supply changed around them. Others were trying to escape abusive relationships or simply couldn’t afford rent anymore. I’ve met people whose childhoods were so full of trauma that survival became their full-time job long before they ever reached adulthood. Today, many of those same people might be sleeping in the same encampment or standing in the same meal line, but they didn’t arrive there by the same road. So why would we expect the solution to be the same for everyone?
The longer I do this work, the less interested I become in people who claim to have the answer. Instead, I’ve become much more interested in people who ask better questions. What happened to this person? What barriers are they facing today? What strengths are they still holding onto? What is one thing that might help them move forward? Those questions don’t produce quick fixes, but they often produce better conversations.
Just the other day, a client came into the clinic and told me that they were worried about and upcoming housing opportunity. I’ve known this client for the better part of a decade, and they have been unhoused that entire time and were convinced they were going to “mess it up.” We sat together and I simply reminded them that they deserved the opportunity just as much as anyone else and that it was going to take time to adjust and that was normal. When they left my office, they looked at me and said, “This meeting was exactly what I needed, thank you for advocating for me.”
Did that solve homelessness? Of course not. But in that moment, it removed one barrier that was standing between one person and a chance at stable housing.
I think that’s where we’ve gone wrong when we ask, “What’s the answer?” We’re looking for one thing that fixes everything, when in reality change usually happens one barrier at a time. A nurse changes a dressing. A housing worker helps complete an application. A physician treats an infection. A peer worker builds trust. A counsellor keeps showing up. A neighbour chooses kindness over judgment. None of those things solve homelessness on their own, but together they create something much bigger than any one intervention ever could. That’s what gives me hope.
Not because I believe one person or one policy is going to solve this incredibly complex issue, but because every single day I get to watch ordinary people quietly become part of the answer. Most of them will never make the news. No one will know about the extra phone call they made, the conversation they took the time to have, or the small act of kindness that helped someone believe they were worth trying again.
Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of asking, “What is the answer?” maybe we should be asking, “What part of the answer can I be?”
I don’t think any one of us is going to solve homelessness or the opioid crisis on our own. But I do believe communities are built one interaction at a time, and if enough people commit to removing barriers instead of simply pointing them out, we might be surprised by how much progress is possible.
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