Carl DeLine

the back door: an experiment or an alternative, by Carl DeLine (2001)
1) Foreword
2) Why This Book, at This Time?
3) What We Do Today
4) History: How the back door Came About
5) Belief Systems
6) Philosophical Nuances
7) Variables – The Experiment Began: “An Introduction to a Life of Variables”
8) What Others Have Said
9) In Conclusion

Street and Non-Street Cultures Exist

The philosophy of the non-street world arises out of the culture or the subcultures in which people live. Variables and dynamics dealing with such things as the acquisition of personal belongings and human relationships exist in each culture. Each culture or subculture chooses its own set of values which it will adhere to. Once a society’s belief systems are accepted they become policies and norms which ultimately lead to some form of codifying behavior and law. Societies and cultures may choose to live to the letter of its own law, or it may choose to be more flexible and live to the intent but not the letter of the law.

It is imperative to recognize how people choose to live and adapt to the communities where they live, work, and seek a quality of life. It is also important to understand how various pressures affect the decision making process. It isn’t just what people believe, but how they live because of what they believe. This is true of people in business, schools, churches, community groups, or wherever. If you are a part of a family, a clan or a neighborhood you represent one of the millions of belief systems, cultures or subcultures that exist around the world.

At the back door we must go the next step. Once the street person says they want off the street we continue to express the need of continually joining the non-street. We have to be very clear to ask which part of the non-street world the participant wants to join.

Just as the non-street has its subcultures and governing philosophies of life so does the street. The street is based on an autocratic structure. There are very clear forms of authority. There are very clear neighborhoods or turfs. When someone is new and they move to a new street corner they must take the time to understand what is already in place. For instance, when somebody is already doing street business from a particular street corner any new street person has to seek permission to be in that space. The street has its own form of market economy. It is the purest form of market anywhere. On the street everything is for sale (including a person’s body if need be).

The street is part of a dominance oriented or violence orientated culture. It tells people how they should act. It pressures people into a process that dictates what to believe and then supports the process with a lifestyle that literally destroys the people in it. A façade of freedom often lures people into a life of enslavement and oppression which allows one merely to survive on the street. Getting out of the street environment may mean moving one rapid step at a time in any direction possible. Flight from the street often means running into the non-street world and experiencing closed doors. With anxiety, compulsivity and the need to survive, the street person will move as doors are opened, in many cases stepping through the available door only to find out that it is not the right door to go through.

When someone asks to move away from the street, that person must also come to grips with why they are choosing to get off the street. Often it is not because of money, it is not because of circles of people, it is usually to get away from the violence of the street. the back door does not pretend the non-street is without violence. We do suggest however, that it has a value base which says there should be less violence. There is a tremendous amount of paranoia in the street world. The line between real fears and imagined fears has become very blurred. Street people are always looking over their shoulder, always wondering who might be there to challenge them, always wondering if someone from the law is after them, always wondering if the person they have connected with may be in trouble with the law. One never knows when authorities of some type can come breaking into your world and can challenge your space. Once a person begins to view life from this type of perspective, the next steps develop easily: a sense of arrogance, a hardening, a searing not only of their conscience, but of their attitudes and the way they treat others. Once that searing happens, there is a movement toward rebellious attitudes which are needed just to survive. “I can stand outside your world.” “I don’t need you people.” Rebellion should not always be seen as a violent response or an aggressive response. On the street, rebellion is often just a way of surviving.

We start by asking the young person to begin the process of understanding the culture they are about to move into. What does this culture believe about the length of your hair, the color of your hair, the jewelry on your face and your body, the style of clothing, the color of your clothing, how often that clothing is washed, whether it is clean, or carries an odor. How will you as a person cross the line into a different culture? Will you even understand why this new culture cares that you change? Will you understand why they care enough to create boundaries, barriers, laws, policies? How will you introduce yourself into that culture? How will you take the next step of participating in that culture? Through the contracting process a dialogue develops between the staff person and the participant. Hopefully, clarity on both sides is the result.

The new culture is the non-street world. Once a person decides to enter the non-street world there is a courting process. The need or will to survive exists just as strongly in the non-street world as on the street. Boundaries and barriers are often as rigid, if not more so, off the street as on the street. The starting point for the street person is often found in a statement, “I choose to be where I am, because I choose not to be where I was.” When young people begin to take the steps off the street, they not only walk through the back door, they walk into the non-street world where there are pre-defined behavioral expectations. The non-street world has its own authority structure to ensure that these expectations are met. Many participants fail the very minute they walk in a ‘non-street door’. The street person often walks in the wrong way, looks wrong, acts wrongly… without even knowing it. A non-street person will perceive that their values to have been violated once their space has been encroached upon. When this happens it is hard for a street person to get a fresh start. The participant who chooses to get off the street can compare his or her life to a game of bumper pool. Once the ball goes into the bumpers it begins to bump back and forth until it finally gets out. If an individual is successful, they may not get bumped around too much. If not, they will continue to hit one bumper after another.

Whose Responsibility Is It That Young People Turn To the Street?

A superficial statement can be made saying that it is the young person who is as fault. They are rebellious, they are aggressive, they run away or they just can not live at home. As mentioned previously in 1988, 1989 and 1990 data on the youth coming to the back door reveals that over 90% of the young people were placed within the child welfare system at an early age as early as three to six years of age. When placed into this system, they were removed from what is commonly called “normal” development. They are now in a state of crisis and may remain there for a very long time.

Social welfare receives a great deal of criticism when it comes to discussing the foster care system. The context must be understood. There are many good foster parents. There are many good adoption experiences, there are also those situations that don’t work. The average participant at the back door was in an experience that did not work. When the back door first began, stories were told of how the young person had been placed in a foster care home, then became a ward of the province. As they became a ward of the province they often got moved by the judicial process through the legal system.

Lets assume that the legal system really does care and that it did the best it could. The question needs to be asked, was the juvenile system put in place to replace parenting? Was the juvenile system put in place to nurture the emotional and physical well being of each child in their custody. One must ask, is that even possible? Whose responsibility is it when young people, by the time they are 14 years of age, have spent only a year or two out of the first 14 years of their life in a “normal” family situation. It is impossible to believe that when a young person is placed in and out of many homes, and then in and out of the juvenile system or social welfare system that normal human development will happen. Now consider the reality experienced by the young person placed in the custody of child welfare because their home is not normal and may be very dysfunctional. A lot of past emotions and life experiences will block the process which would typically prepare one for “normal” matriculation into the non-street world.

When young people do not participate in a supportive home situation, it is “normal” to build up attitudes, place emphases on survival skills, and nurture anger. Street youth look at things differently. They talk differently, they have different words, they have different ways of expressing themselves, they have different expectations or lack of expectations for other members of the family. If they haven’t had regular school experiences these young people will have different expectations for the roles of the teachers, principals, other students, and parents who come into the classroom.

When we begin to work with someone who chooses to get off the street, we can’t start at the same point as someone who has been raised in a “normal environment.” Normal doesn’t exist. On the contrary, normal is the totally opposite scenario. There has not been a nurturing experience. There was not likely cuddling as an infant. Often the child did not have a bed or a home to claim as their own. They may not have had the opportunity to run to a grandparent or an uncle or an aunt and be lovingly caressed or held in a way that brings wholeness to their life. That becomes the sought after situation.

When this young person goes into the non-street world and begins to relate to non-street people, it is very common for someone from the non-street world to say, “Why are you doing that? Why are you thinking that way? Grow up! Act differently. There is a harshness that comes with the non-street world. Even if the non-street person doesn’t intend any negativism, the street person has been on the bottom so long they will automatically interpret whatever is being said as ‘how wrong they are or have been’. The perceived harshness has a tendency to push a young person away from the non-street world and toward the street. It is then on the street that a street person can at least have a sense of camaraderie with other rejected people.

The human ability to survive nourishes a personal sense of power saying, “I can run away.” Many times they do. They run from situation to situation to situation, without building relationships, without being nurtured, without being part of a true community of people. Although often used, the word community is a misnomer in the context of the street. The community that is built is based on what one person can take from another. Street people survive by taking advantage of each other. “I will give to you only so long as I can survive with you as part of my life.” This is a crucial, significant statement, when looking at any sub-culture, especially the sub-culture of the street.

When looking at the philosophy of the back door, we have chosen to say that what is on the street is not part of he back door experiment. the back door represents the non-street world. We intentionally are not trying to delve into the nature of the street, but rather create a touch point of departure from the street into the non-street world.

Counseling and therapy have become a part of the expectations of the non-street world. When a person needs counseling or therapy, it is not the work of the back door. It is the mandate of the back door to help create a way for a person to have a safe place, legal income and legal entry points into survivable sub cultures of the non-street world. It cannot be ignored that the life situation of a participant on the street affects the difficulty of the participant’s experience of getting off the street.

Who Would Pay For the Work of the back door?

We started out with an understanding that we would go to the government for one third of the funding. We would go to the individuals for donations for one third of the funding. Finally we would go to the business and corporate sector for one third of the funding. The experiment was to go to these different sectors and ascertain their responses.

At the time the back door was starting, Don Getty was the Premier of the province of Alberta. Mr. Getty, a number of the ministers on cabinet, and local politicians were all professing the need for government and community to work together. Due to my work with the Food Bank I was in conversation with a number of these people over those same years. Time and again the statement was made, “We need to work together.”

In starting the back door this became as much an experiment of testing the words of non-street people as it was the testing of words of street people. An assumption was made that working together meant that a project such as the back door could approach various sources for funding and other needs or at least that there would be an avenue to be heard.

The plan was discussed with various politicians. The funding strategy of one third, one third, and one third interested those politicians that it was presented to. They sent us to the structures and the bureaucracies in place. We found out that the bureaucracy did not have a way to dialogue with politicians. Both sides, it seemed, were forced into adversarial roles. The politicians, in a number of cases, had to create their own power base to deal with the bureaucrats. Our experience was that the politicians were not in control of the government, Rather, the bureaucrats seemed to be in control of how the government worked once political mandates were set. The whole process was dysfunctional. Politicians could often be heard to say, “What you must understand is that we have discussed this with the bureaucracy. Ultimately the people who are in leadership were here before we got here, and will be here after we leave. At best we can only hope to influence and make moderate changes.”

The political system does not work well when politicians perceive themselves as having a mandate to “fix” or to change the direction of society. We found that the bureaucratic process was much like the street. It was based on a hierarchical authority structure. The individuals who are at the top of the hierarchy made the decisions and ‘sent memos’ to the people in their systems. The workers on the lower rungs were scurrying around with so much work that staff had become paranoid over losing their jobs if they didn’t jump high enough or fast enough. Staff were being burned out in the process.

Obtaining funding from community sources has its own challenges. Our experience at the Food Bank was that people would say, “We will give you money, but you can only buy food with this money. You cannot pay for staffing, you cannot pay for the trucks, you cannot pay for the delivery costs and fuel.” It took almost five years before people were willing to listen to the fact that drivers had to be paid.

The same kind of experience developed at the back door. We went to the public and asked for donations to help get young people off the street. People questioned why we were asking for money to do this, “Don’t you understand, that’s the government’s role?” We learned quickly that people were not interested in helping to cover operational costs. The first year we depended totally on the anonymous foundation. The second year we depended less on it. We finally got approval for government funding for a third of our costs which could be put towards administrative and operational costs. Our next step was to go to the corporate, business and service club sectors. We asked them to pick up the costs of the bonuses for the participants. The anonymous foundation covered the cost of the bonuses for the entirety of the second year. Service clubs began coming aboard in the third year. By the end of the third year with commitment from government for the first third, the foundation for the second third, and service clubs working towards the third part it seemed as if we were well on our way.

A redirection of government funding eventually led to major cuts in both education and health care. This sent ripples through the plan, impacting all sources of giving to the back door. By the time we got into the fourth and the fifth years there was an epidemic of donor cuts. It seemed as if everyone was saying that they were going to change their procedures. The whole thing began to unravel and funding processes were in chaos. The survival mode had hit everywhere. “Don’t you understand? We can only give so much. What we have is already allotted for.” the back door had to change or die.

Does a Safety Net Exist or Should This Concept Be Reinvented?

It was at this time that we began to raise the question of “who are we?” Are we a part of the safety net or are we only a community based charity?

Revenue Canada identified us as a rescue project, one that rescues people from the street such as soup kitchens, drop in centers, mission programs and so on. As such, in their eyes we were not part of the social safety net. Standing with the participants, it was as if we were on the outside looking in. We were on the fringe of the social safety net. Yet, as we look at the program of the back door, we see the many times that we have dealt with circumstances pertaining to the social safety net.

We have been defined as working on the cutting edge of the charitable programs supposedly guaranteeing the social safety net. We work daily with individuals who constantly fall through the cracks of these charitable and social programs. For instance, the Canadian Job Strategy had programs which addressed many of the things we ended up doing. Yet, they too refused to help us because we were too broad in our focus.

It seemed that each time we approached a government department, its mandate was so narrow that it was not able to work with another department, let alone with us. Such concerns as housing, education, job readiness, and health all came under different mandates. Funding was offered on a “per instance” basis. All of these programs demanded that there be what is called a “sit down” or “bums-in-seat” component. This requires that people come in, sit down in a classroom, and begin to learn. In our experience this component is unsatisfactory. It is assumed that people like our participants have some form of legal income to support themselves while they are in a program. It is assumed that they have a safe place to sleep, and supportive people to help make their lives work. They don’t. Time and again our participants were excluded from participating in various programs because no support network was in place. Even if secure structures could be put in place, many of our participants have been deemed to be “behavioral problems” within these structures. If a participant could qualify, it would be very difficult for them to actually stay in the program. This is not an excuse to justify bad behavior. Yet it must be recognized that by the time these youth get to us they have had their lives altered and redirected due to failures in the child welfare system, the criminal justice system, the educational system, and a dysfunctional home life. These words are not excuses, they are realities.

The ability of a participant to cooperate, the values and skills necessary to succeed are just not there. A learning curve has to be created by and for each of the participants. It must be remembered that unless a person is totally removed from the street (including those things which prompt street instincts), they may sit eight hours in some training environment but he/she will spend the remaining 16 hours per day back on the street. What is learned off the street will not be reinforced back on the street.

Is the concept of a social safety net even relevant to the person coming off the street? At the back door we have found the concept of a “buffer zone” more appropriate. Whenever a street person is participating in some funded project they are lifted up to the safety net. When the program is over they are often dropped back on the street. A buffer zone is necessary.

Without this buffer zone, street people will go on surviving. They will participate in an alternative economy not by choice but by necessity. Just as the non-street person finds motivation when there is personal economic security the street person turns to the same motivating forces. Drug money, prostitution, crime are all acceptable ways to gain an income on the street.

Education – Is the Approach All It’s Cracked up to Be?

Education is deemed to have value in our society. It has value because the reward has often been better jobs for those who participate. Schools supposedly create better people and stronger values. Education itself is seen as some kind of deliverer of the necessary tools to survive.

Most of the participants of the back door really never got acclimated to an educational system or an academic way of thinking. This is a learned process. Participants have been labeled as behavioral problems. They seemingly were standing outside of the education system’s processes.

How the participant fits, or does not fit, in the education system can be better understood when we begin to study some of the sparse research concerning high school drop outs. The minutes of the Canadian Senate going back into the 1940’s say that “approximately thirty percent of the young people will not fit into the educational system.” While it may not have been intentional, our society has allowed this thirty percent to consistently drop out. We have gotten used to it. This reflects not only the brokenness in the system but a flaw in the evaluative process. Individuals who do not finish school or do not fit in the education system do not get rewarded. It cannot be ignored however, that these same young people are learning outside of an “accredited” educational process. A new reality is now hitting us. Our society is increasingly failing to educate people for changing job markets. We are asking the question “what are we now going to do when we ‘educate’ a total generation of young people to unemployability?” For many the jobs are not there or jobs are there, but people are not prepared for the jobs which do exist. Unless education can coordinate with emerging markets in some fashion this problem will continue. Many people are ending up in entry level jobs just to survive. Inflexibility of both the system and people in the educational system is leading to an economic collision.

This raises another issue for the back door. The competition for the entry level jobs is getting more and more complex. Summer students who are in the school system often get the entry level work. With more and more young people being left out of the educational process there are fewer entry level jobs available for them. Therefore with less entry level jobs available there become fewer and fewer port-holes of departure from the street. A job is imperative if a person is to get off the street.

It gets more complicated because drugs, alcohol and the behavioral problems the street person brings with them usually push them away from access to grants and training programs. Hence the route to the safety net has yet one more gaping hole.

The education system must also be looked at to see if it has elements which are deterrents to maintaining a safety net. Traditional education is the way extolled to guarantee a better and more successful life. Education has a child starting in kindergarten or in preschool. The child goes on to grade one, grade two, grade three, and grade four with an understanding that children will have automatic ‘normal’ growth patterns. Individuals who are raised in housing projects, broken homes, child welfare or other interrupted processes do not have these ‘normal’ processes to build on. In poverty, many of the ‘normal’ developmental patterns are interrupted. Therefore, it must be understood that the emotional and psychological development of young people who have ended up on the street will also be interrupted. Their life experience does not fit the patterns nurtured in the education system. An interesting parallel is now developing at various socio-economic levels. Pressures caused by work and/or lifestyle issues are creating similar interruptions for other children. At the same time the educational system is being affected by this phenomenon. The safety net continues to be stressed. As service providers have more and more credentials, the costs of keeping these providers within the system begin to jeopardize the very existence of the safety net.

It goes deeper than an economic issue. Teachers, support workers and others are increasingly faced with issues in the classroom that go beyond academics – dysfunctional home environments, attention deficit disorder and so on. Often these are beyond the teachers’ ability to manage. It is not uncommon for the teachers or other school workers to lose interest in relating to the social problems a child brings with them. Indeed, it is often written out of the school’s job descriptions. Once again the tension between education and child welfare comes to the forefront interrupting the educational process that should be available to everyone.

The ‘Buffer-Zone’: A Byproduct of Holes in the Safety-Net!

There are young people who go into the school system who do not think in what are defined as rational thought patterns. They are labeled as irrational thinkers. The street world is defined as irrational because it just does not follow the same patterns of the non-street world. It just does not behave in acceptable ways for the non-street world. On the contrary, the street is extremely rational. It is very predictable.

Another consideration is the situation of the person who is a ‘gifted person’ and bored with traditional ways of thinking. They do not fit an education system designed to work with what is defined as the ‘average student’ or the student who will adapt to the expectations of the system. Teachers, vice principals, principals, and school boards say they do not have the funds to deal with students one-on-one to accommodate such special scenarios.

Like the gifted students many of the participants of the back door have in the past needed this one on one attention. Because of this, at the back door we describe what we do as participating in a buffer zone. The participant falls through the net into this zone and then climbs out of it. This is a pattern. It is a very consistent pattern, arising out of very rational behavior.

At the back door we became aware of a conflict which ultimately created a dilemma that we did not want to accept. We really did want to believe in the role of government funding a safety net. It was our experience that as young people came to us, if they perceived we were funded by government, there was an attitude of entitlement. “You owe us that.” At one point we were asking government for help. When we got that help it was counter productive to the participant. Eventually participants learned how to care where funding and support came from. If the funds came from donations or our own funding projects the participants saw that sometimes the funds came and sometimes they did not come. The participants developed an understanding that they were not alone in this walk off the street. Instead of expecting it, they were hopeful that the money would be there. Once they began to hope the money was there they also began to take more ownership around the money that was/is available. We learned something about ourselves. The closer we were to walking the thin line of survival, the closer we were to our participants coming to understand that they, too, can survive if only for this day.

This led to further conflict. How fair is it for an agency to constantly live on survival’s edge? If we talk about asking participants to join an upwardly mobile society, how can we justify asking staff to sacrifice everything so others can survive? The answer is found in the life and work of Mother Theresa. She made the choice to work among the poor. She took a vow of poverty but still found her support in a wealthy community. She did not pay her own hospital bills, nor did she pay for her ongoing education. She received these things because she participated in a very supportive community. This illustrates for us that it has to be okay to work toward the creation of yet another sub-system which will be there not only for the participants but for the staff and volunteers as well.

Concepts Too Easily Taken for Granted: Traditional Thinking Needs to Be Challenged

More and more young people are ending up on the streets. Ten years ago when we first began to talk about the crisis, many refused to acknowledge its existence. Today major cities all across Canada are speaking of the thousands of young people on Canadian streets. This is very serious scenario. The bottom of the bottom. Just as people would respond to a natural disaster or military intervention, society should also respond to this crisis.

Societal shifts happen. Economic shifts happen. Decisions are taken or made by government, corporations, highway departments, school administrators, and religious leaders. When they do, the decision makers are like the wheels of a clock. They move ponderously slow. The big wheels often forget how much faster the small wheels have to work just to survive. The street person is often that tiny wheel that has so often gone unnoticed. In light of this, traditional roles need to be questioned.

Traditional Understanding Needs to Be Challenged: The Poor You Will Have With You Always

As technological shifts continue, people unable to participate in the shift drop out of the job market. People will be out of work. The economy has shifted away from non-skilled employment. When this happens, young people are the first to run. Parents often say to their kids, “go where the jobs are.” When young people leave home, they go looking for jobs. Cities like Calgary boast of economic growth in jobs. Politicians travel the countryside extolling the virtues of economic growth and opportunity. These same politicians’ words broadcast around the world. Young people who are poor watch television. They hear these words and come running hoping to find the proverbial land of milk and honey.

Calgary, like other cities, did not and does not plan ahead when it concerns the poor. Entry level housing, health care facilities, community based schools with social support systems did not exist for youth ten years ago when the back door started. In fact, very little has changed. It is true we have more programs in Calgary for street youth now than ever before, but it is also true these programs exist on the street and for the most part turn people back to the street after having offered some form of service.

While social planning councils talk about preparing for bringing in new jobs or bringing in new industry, there is an absence of planning for the bottom or entry level rungs of society. Therefore, when money is invested into highly paid and skilled jobs, those people who don’t have a higher education, or those who don’t fit into the high end circles do not have services built for them. Most longer term planning does not cover the full spectrum of society. Short term plans have brought long term fallout. Health, education, court, police, jailing and imprisonment costs, as well as deterioration of community are often ignored. Someone will eventually have to pick up the pieces.

When we first started the back door there were those in the Calgary Police Department who said that if a young person came to Calgary without having a social support network to tie into, it would take 30 days or less for that young person to end up on the street. They will connect with the street because the street becomes its own form of alternative support system. Why are young people on the street? Not just because of brokenness in their own lives but because the society they are entering into is also broken. Entry level ports are perceived as being inaccessible.

Young people’s lives are broken. Young people do end up on the street. It isn’t just the failure of the smaller rural communities to cope with our industrial developments which is at issue. Families often move into cities without a support base. Their young people often end up on the street. They become a cost to the system.

In Calgary, we will graduate thousands of young people from high school each year. We do not have entry level housing for them when they leave home. Even if we ignore the question of street youth, young people find themselves having to double up, triple up, quadruple up in apartments where landlords don’t want them. They end up being kicked out. There is not enough entry level housing available for the non-street, let alone the street.

Most of the young people on the streets of Calgary are not Calgarians, just as most of the young people in Toronto or any other city are not native to the city where they are. Youth are transient. They live as part of an alternative culture. This culture has been with us since the beginning of time. It only makes sense that it be recognized for what it is. To know it is there, and will probably always be there, does not give permission to ignore it. In fact if it is possible to learn from it, ways can be created so that it doesn’t have to keep on getting worse. To have the poor with you, is an invitation for society to respond to this crisis, not to ‘baptize’ it as acceptable.

Money Really Isn’t the Only Issue

When the back door began, we started with a perspective that money was not the only issue. If the issue of young people getting off the street, in fact never going on the street, is to be addressed, it will take the total participation of the whole community. A dialogue including all parts of society needs to recognize not only the presence of an overall culture but the presence of many subcultures.

We began the back door with a goal to help young people get off the street. The second part of our mandate was to help non-street people to understand just how they can help, how they can participate in the process of getting a young person off the street. That is why the initial proposal to develop the back door was developed in such a way that the board of education, the social welfare people, the various representatives of government, social clubs, service clubs, churches, community people, and all of the people who were involved in the matter were invited into the original discussion. What we discovered along the way was that people were quite interested in discussing the issue. They did not seem to be interested in getting behind the matter to the point of doing something about it. There were just so many agendas that it was hard to get anything accomplished.

When thinking about who the potential volunteers are and who wants to help, one must look at the concept of volunteering. Why is it that people volunteer? In a number of cases, people volunteer to feel better, so they can commit themselves to a better and healthier lifestyle. There is a tension between doing volunteer work for personal gratification and/or actually being a servant to society. This was true at the back door as well. If the back door is going to ask people to volunteer, are these volunteer hours set up to the benefit of the volunteer or to the benefit of the street person?

the back door’s history with volunteers started out somewhat speckled. At first we felt manipulated by volunteer demands. In time this changed. With the introduction of a volunteer contract it could be clarified not only why a volunteer was coming, but very specifically, for what task. The volunteer understood for him/herself why they had come. An unexpected surprise developed. We now see individuals coming with a clear understanding of what we are about. We also see businesses, service clubs, social groups, church groups putting aside their agendas and just being helpful.

For the back door to be really successful, funds need to be channeled into diverse activities that support the whole person including recreation, sports, hobbies, and many areas familiar to the lifestyles of persons not on the street. young people need things to do in a creative learning participatory environment to displace unproductive down time. These things, however, cannot replace the need to find a safe place to live, a way to feed oneself and a way for a person to learn how to care for him or herself. The non-street person will need to use their ability to make the market work for others as well as themselves.

The volunteer needs to remember the tremendous economic differences between themselves and the street. The change for someone coming from the street is no different than for someone coming from a foreign country and settling in Canada. In fact, it may even be more difficult because the average street person now dresses better, has more soup kitchens to go to and is often looked at as not needing help in the support structures.

Getting off the Street None-the-Less Still Costs Money

Learning how to survive economically is a part of the process of getting off the street. How does a person pay for rent? How does a person pay for food? How does a person pay for utilities or clean clothing so they can actually fit into the non-street world? These are all crucial issues when thinking about the role of the community.

Economically, society traditionally looks at three classes of people: the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class. At the back door, we had to emphasize ten classes of people. This reflects multiple layers in each class with attention needing to be paid to specific transitional issues. The upper upper class, the middle upper class, the lower upper class, the upper middle class, the middle middle class, the lower middle class, the upper lower class, the middle lower class, and finally the lower class. There is another category, the people who find themselves outside of connecting points with the non-street world. They are the class-less society. They create their own alternative society. Often this society is based on a power base rather than on economics. The street itself reflects this alternative society.

Many in the non-street world want to think that the street world does not exist. It does exist. Just as in the Soviet Block countries, an alternative economic community had developed. The street exists with its own economy. It has its own structure. It has its own economic policies. It has its own police department. It has its own educational institutions. It has its own health care. It has all of these things. Unfortunately, they do not exist for the betterment of the street person. The street is an alternative society based on violence and survival first.

If a person is going to leave that world, they will need to have a way to enter into employment and educational options which will allow them to afford the non-street world. If this does not happen then there is no reason for the street person to leave the street behind.

Getting off the Street Is an Immigration Process

We recognize the street as its own culture. If a person who has been raised in that culture moves to the non-street world they are entering a new culture. It can be paralleled to an immigration process.

It should not be ignored that when someone moves from the east coast to the west coast of Canada they are going through significant cultural change. In fact, the number one highway is the main conduit for Canadian immigration. Thousands of young people every day traverse from city to city. These changes should be recognized as immigration patterns.

When we first started the back door, Alberta Career Development & Employment had a program for new immigrants, people coming from other countries. When we assessed that program, we found it to be a very good program if it could be adapted to the street world. The questions needing to be answered were all included. The government people who created that program had done a very good job of listing the needs, the requirements for human development, the mental health questions, and all of the other concerns which needed to be addressed for a new immigrant to integrate into this new Canadian culture.

At the back door, we attempted to go to the government with this question: “Would you be willing to recognize the street as an alternative culture?” Because the young person on the street is considered a Canadian, the government could not make that crossover. We attempted to argue for the indigenous nature of each of the communities across Canada. We attempted to recognize the multiple cultures in Calgary. Each of these cultures bring with them various aspects of surviving. Therefore, there needed to be a multi-cultural dialogue which included the subculture of the street. This was not being heard.

One of the crucial things we attempted to address was the role of mental health as a supportive part of identifying the need to nurture the individual. The average person who goes to school has his or her schooling subsidized by the tax system. The average person who goes for a medical examination has his or her medical care subsidized by the tax system. The average person entering into a therapeutic process has this subsidized by taxes. If a person goes to jail, they have their survival subsidized by taxes. If they are in jail and enrolled in an education course, it is subsidized by a taxes. Any mental health or personal training component within the incarceration process is also subsidized by a taxes.

Once a person is taken out of that tax-based support system, as when coming out of the jail system, he or she may be put on the street at 6:00 am on a Sunday morning. The support stops. They could be told to show up for court dates, therapy, this or that and make sure to stay out of trouble. They have just been put on the street. How are they going to stay out of trouble? If there is not a single connection to a support system how is that person going to survive? How is a person going to make that transition back into society?

At the back door, we simply start by asking the young person “So what is the most imminent crisis you are facing at this moment?” That becomes step one. “What is the next most imminent crisis you are facing?” That becomes step two. At the back door, we acknowledge the need to address crisis as a state of being. It is not only surviving, it is also an all encompassing way of thinking. The non-street world requires long term planning, whereas the street world operates from a crisis mentality which says that in any given hour of any given day there will be a new variable introduced because the street world is in a constant state of conflict. The non-street world is the dominant culture. In Canada the street world is a minority subculture within the overall culture. Before asking a young person to leave the street world, the back door’s role is to facilitate an understanding of how many roadblocks there are in the way of entering that world. Non-street expectations become powerful barriers to the street person. The street person has to ask: Do they even want to join the non-street?

This is no longer only a social question. It is an economic question as well. If the street culture is allowed to continue, it will grow as an alternative culture. There eventually will be, as there are in third world countries all around the world, a clashing of the cultures, which moves the non-street world to say that it needs a more powerful police force. A police force to police a society costs money. But more than that, it costs freedom. When a society gives permission for a police society to develop, personal freedom is ultimately at risk. The very things which non-street people work hard to maintain and develop, (i.e., that which is perceived to be a high standard in everything for a better quality of life) are also lost. It is the perception of the back door that the back door process represents venture capital. It represents a way to invest in one person at a time. As these persons get off the street, history tells us that they assume very traditional non-street lives. They have become butchers, cooks, dry-wallers, cribbers, security guards, painters, janitors, carpet cleaners, and the occasional scholar!

The message of the back door is that it’s okay to want to have good educational services. It is okay to want to have good medical services. It is okay to want to have good employment services. However, while all of these things are okay, it’s important that the non-street world understands that options are to be guaranteed so that all people can access the services that would be potentially provided.

the back door would not lobby for a guaranteed income. the back door argues for a guaranteed way for people to access the services that are being offered. These services enable an individual to obtain a fair income. the back door does not lobby for low income housing. the back door argues for a way for all people to enter the housing market so that eventually all people can make their own choices in housing. the back door does not lobby for specialized educational systems. the back door argues that the educational system allows for people, whoever they are, to get an education. the back door argues that an integrative process be created in the system so that all peoples have entry points to access those processes necessary to human survival.

In December 1989 these words were written for The Canadian Institute of Planners’ Journal:

“If there are to be changes in social planning, street people will need to feel ownership in matters affecting their own lives. Street people must see alternatives which include them as participants in the planning process, not just clients to be considered. Street people must be able to envision how attempting to move into mainline society is of benefit to them.”

Planning needs to include the transition time necessary for the planners and street culture to understand each other. To only move people from one part of the city to another part of the city is not a solution. One must look at the welfare of the whole community. Social planning includes the intentional design by a community of people to seek the welfare of the whole community. Issues which were once identified as only street concerns are now becoming topics of conversation everywhere. A solution which does not include the street will only be sabotaged because the source of social problems will go ignored and will only reoccur in another setting. If the reasons for people being on the street and what happens to people when changes to the community are made are not considered, social planning will continue to be a cyclical event. Planners will continue to address the same issues over and over again. The solution must include those who will be affected by the decision making process.