Transitioning off the P.A. streets

Seven months later, Ballantyne has a room at the YWCA Our House, which provides rooms for P.A.’s homeless to help them get back on their feet. He said he’s also been sober for four months.

Though he now has a warm place to stay night after night, he said he still feels the stress of being homeless and not having a place to call his own.

“You feel lost, you have nowhere. It’s unbearable. I’m just trying to live, basically,” he said.

He spends much of his day walking around, and said it’s tough seeing people he remembers from his days, weeks, months and years on the street.

“I feel compassion for them,” he said. “Nobody should be homeless. I still respect those people, those kind of people are my people. I accept who they are.”

Staying sober in P.A. is tough for Ballantyne, since he said he’s tempted every time he walks downtown.

“Everywhere you go man, there’s people drinking,” he said.

Alcohol rates in P.A. have been a hot-button issue, as the community works to create an alcohol strategy and the P.A. Police Service works to reduce public intoxication.

Shannon Jobb knows how difficult it is to avoid relapsing. For years she couch and bed-surfed from Saskatoon to P.A. and back after alcoholism destroyed her life. She found herself in Pine Grove Correctional Centre for assault and breaching probation after losing control.

“I was always out drinking rather than going to report and doing my responsibilities. I was hopelessly defeated. I didn’t care anymore,” she said.

Jobb fluctuated between having her life together, complete with an apartment and job, to having nothing and being homeless once again numerous times.

She hit rock-bottom the last time she relapsed, when crystal meth became part of her substance abuse.

“I put myself in really dangerous situations,” she said. “I went with two random guys to (outside Lloydminster)…These two guys beat me up fairly bad. They left me out there but then came back for me and planned to kill me. That night I literally thought I was going to die.”

Thankfully she did not, and has now been sober for two-and-a-half months.

She currently lives in an apartment through YMCA’s Homeward Bound program, which provides apartments and shelters for those on their way to permanent housing.

Of all the shame she said she felt while being homeless, what she and friends used to do before she was homeless causes her more anguish.

“We would literally record homeless people, throw p—s on them, push them over…and I feel so bad for that,” she said. “I used to be such a mean person. I never had a heart.”

Now she works hard to help others in dire situations, volunteering and working with Homeward Bound. She’s also enrolled at SIAST in a cooking program.

Loretta Ballantyne, who has worked at the YWCA Our House since approximately 2008, said it’s rewarding to work at Our House and provide support for P.A.’s homeless.

“They always want somebody to talk to and somebody to listen to them,” she said.

Seeing positive change in people coming and going from the building is also what keeps her with a smile on her face.

She said the most satisfying questions to answer from homeless people are questions about life-skills many people take for granted, such as how to do laundry or how to keep proper hygiene.

When she receives questions like these, Ballantyne said she knows the people she works to help are actually on a path to a better future.

ssterritt@panow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit

by Spencer Sterritt

Transitioning off the P.A. streets

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