(A post in conjunction with SharkBoy)
She’s been outside our window for over two years now. Originally two years ago she use to do a sing song “Cha cha chaaange please!” in a weird high pitched screech. These days she’s move on to wordless rants. I think she’s unable to control herself and because of the attention she gets from the yelling, she gets more money/food. Which just makes her stick around.
In the winter and cooler days we don’t hear her with our shut windows. Our apartment doesn’t have AC so we’re forced to keep them open and we can hear her as if she was in our living room, waking up the dead. You can see that in the video she gets pretty loud. That’s tame compared to some nights.
One night in May she started at 5pm and didn’t finish until I went out onto the street to tell her to move on at 3am. She was horse and could barely say “Ok. Sorry.”
We’ve asked her to be quiet. We’ve asked her to move on, even just down the street. We’ve lied to her and asked her to stay quiet because she wakes up “the baby”. Every time, she’s good for about 15 minutes and then she starts up again. Recently I’ve emailed Pam McConnell, counselor for Cabbagetown with regards to helping us deal with her. No response.
Lately we’ve started to call the police. One night we discovered through Toronto Police Dispatch that our neighbors have been calling police for some time about her too. The police for the most part didn’t come or missed her completely because she moves up and down the street a lot. However, she was taken away one night last week and then back again 2 days later.
Once, she told SharkBoy that she lives in Parkdale but likes Cabbagetown because the begging money is better. She has had on a different outfit every day this week, so I hardly think she’s homeless.
I feel bad for calling the police but after more than two years we’re at the end of our rope.
11 thoughts on “Outside My Windows”
You seriously weren’t expecting McConnell to actually do something were you? Those useless baboons at city hall don’t do anything until the media is chasing them down with a camera running (voice of experience!).
A friend of mine recently observed that it’s a self-perpetuating industry, the homeless “consultants”. They don’t want to actually solve the problem, or they would all be out of work.
And one of your other posters brought up the woman that a few papers and tv stations followed around, I remember the story, with the new car, condo, new furniture, etc. It puts the rest of us off, when we see someone who actually could use a few bits of change to help them out.
Instead of having another study, maybe those useless hypotwits at city hall could actually get these folks some housing and medical care? (I know, my own little Utopia where politicians actually did work).
So that’s what Yoko Ono is doing now.
Split
institutionalization is required
prolly not gonna happen, but…
___
I’m so proud to live in a country where we turf people out of psychiatric hospitals in the interests of balancing the budget, and protecting individual freedom.
i think i’ll giveher a computer so she can comment on your blog.
March outside right now and tell her to shut the fuck up and if she doesn’t, throw a pot of hot grease on her. Or just do the latter.
Maybe you can use that rope (that you’re in the end of) and make a noose out of it for her.
While living in Center City Philadelphia, I had a third floor apartment right on the border block from the dead zone….I was halfway down a block which on one side was tree lined streets and familys and the other had burnt out boarded up buildings. Every morning at 6am a “GUY”….homeless, drunk, mentally unstable..not sure…would show up at the corner and BANG on the Stop sign with his cane for hours on end….Shouting things at people and cars that were not understandable….then disapear into the day only to return the next morning….Still not sure what motivated him….
In Boston the panhandling was everywhere as again I was on the fringe…the same lady would give me the same story every morning on my way to classes that her and her family (who were in the car) just needed a little cash to get gas in the car to get them to their destination. Finally, I asked to be taken to the car so that I could help push it to the gas station and I would fill the tank….She never bothered me again…
I’ve never been sure where “Cabbagetown” is, but I’m pretty sure I recognize her scream from when I was living near St. Clair and Bathurst.
Remember that elderly woman who panhandled downtown — I think it was close to Yonge and Bloor, regardless — it was 2000 or 2001 and a newspaper followed her home. New car, great apartment, lots of tax-free cash. It happens more often than people think. It’s the elderly equivilent of suburban kids coming downtown and living the homeless life for a few days.
Honestly, the laws she’s breaking aren’t enough to keep her in a mental ward for more than 48 hours, if someone can find a spot for someone who doesn’t seem to want to take her pills or to get better. She hasn’t harmed anyone physically, and people keep handing her money. Maybe making some posters asking people not to subsidize her might make more sense than calling the police.
I don’t think she wants the help andrew speaks of, why should she? When we see her she’s got money and food, generously given to her by passers by. You can’t see it in the video but she had a large container of fresh delicious strawberries at her feet, plus other donated (?) goodies like milk.
In our anger, late at night, we thought of the supersoakers and water balloon option. I can’t bring myself to do it, though. Now I just go out and yell back at her in her own language.
Just run out with supersoakers filled with icewater and nuke her every evening at 10 pm. She’ll get the hint then.
where to start….
well, mike harris (and mel lastman, to a degree) is to blame for her not having access to the services she needs, if that’s what her trouble is. i know she’s much more aware and functional than she appears (she asks only the people who haven’t refused her money before for change and varies her appeal with others), but she’s still not quite all there. what does she need to get off the street? i can’t assess that, but i think i’ll call pam mcconnell’s office, too.
sorry she keeps you up at night, but resolving your problem means resolving her problems, not just relocating her. that’s the compassionate person in me. the real me thinks all humans are just rancid meat, and if you decide to feed her a bag of warfarin, i claim her skull.
oh, nice job on the recording. for all the doubters, those are her dulcet tunes immortalised perfectly.