What it's like to be homeless

At the University of Manitoba, four business students have been posing as homeless people sleeping out doors on campus for the week. To complete the role reversal, two RaY youth – Libby and Julie – went to visit the homeless students and interviewed them about their experiences as homeless people.

Libby & Julie: What are some of the obstacles you’ve been facing out here?

Students:
It’s cold. Our backs are getting sore. We put cardboard underneath us as cushioning while we sleep and we found cardboard to wall us off from the wind but it’s still uncomfortable. I don’t even think we appreciated the comforts we did have until now when we don’t have them anymore. Everything we have here had to be donated so we had to go scrounging for cardboard. A tarp and tape was given to us but when we were looking for dental floss to tie the tarp town a security guard gave us one of those mouth picks with about an inch of dental floss in it. We’re sleeping outside. We didn’t want to floss our teeth. We miss being able to think straight. You can’t get a solid night’s sleep out here and you can’t get rid of that chill once it sets in and without the sleep our brains just don’t work.

L & J: How have people been treating you?

Students:
People are pretty nice to us. Because we’re students. The experience out here doesn’t even begin to compare with the real thing. We are just getting the very basic experience of sleeping outside. Like you said, we have more food in this cart to eat than you have in your fridge. People are giving us a lot of donations which is great for you, but imagine if people would give out this type of stuff to genuine street people and not just to us because we are students. And we were actually surprised by the number of students here who came up to us and told us that they either had been homeless at one point or that they are homeless now. They just crash at their friends’ places or hang out around campus all the time. Apparently there are some students who have deals worked out with certain security guards where they just let them sleep in certain offices or student lounges – depending on who’s working that night. But the lives of street kids are way different. Peopl earen’t as nice, they don’t have things brought to them for food or warmth. I mean, the other day we had 16 coffees donated in 45 minutes. Of course they’re all frozen now but once they thaw we’ll just pop them in the microwave. Do you want a coffee?

L & J: What do you think are the differences between what you guys are living and the real thing?

Students:
The way people treat us for sure. And we have supportive people all around us, this will be over in a week. People know we’re not really homeless so they’re not mean to us. Some of the other schools have had people say that the students “living homeless” is insulting and a mockery to genuine homelessness. I think that’s partially the media spinning the situation out of control.

L & J: That’s stupid. If they think it’s insulting for you to pretend to be homeless, do they think it’s insulting when we pretend we’re not? Did you guys know each other before you started this?

Students:
No, but we’re getting really close. We’re entertaining each other by dancing to keep warm, running around in circles and then falling on the ice, we have so many inside jokes now. And last night I had one of those hot pockets but it was really big, it went on your back. So I put it inside my jacket before I went to bed. When I got up, he said it got too cold. I had put it on backwards and was heating him up the whole time, not myself.

L & J: What kind of a difference do you think you’re making?

Students:
I think it’s just a starting point. For us, for our families, our friends and all the other students. It’s great that we’re learning about the realities of street life and we’re hearing your stories and now we have stories we can talk about and because we’ve met you we can speak with vindiction about the issues that are out there. It’s encouraging me to help others more and I think the young people we can impact will impact others. It would be nice if we could impact more older people too because there are a lot of damaging opinions out there.

L & J: What do you miss most?

Students:
Taking a shower. That’s nice. My bed. Having nice clean clothes to wear. My comb.

L & J: What will you do first when this is all done?

Students:
I’m taking a shower, putting on clean clothes and going to bed. I’m going to skip showering, me and my bed need to be reacquainted as soon as possible.