“Rain,” said Michael Fleming when asked about what he thought the biggest challenge about living outside would be.
On the night of March 14 it poured, sending Fleming and his two friends Eric Berrigan and Jessica Karam scrambling into their makeshift cardboard hut outside the Unicentre.
It was a fitting start to the week as the three commerce students set out to get a taste of what being homeless is like.
“We actually had a pretty bad night weather-wise,” said Berrigan, a fourth-year finance major. “It was cold and rainy. . . . I can’t imagine having to go through this all the time.”
Fleming, Berrigan and Karam are part of a national campaign called Five Days for the Homeless, which aims to support youth at risk and address the issue of youth homelessness.
The initiative was started five years ago in Edmonton at the University of Alberta’s School of Business, when three students decided to take on the challenge of giving up normal comforts to spend five days out on the streets. Their reasons for doing this were twofold: they wanted to bring attention to the issue of youth homelessness in the city, and also shed the negative perception that business students don’t care about the community.
The experience consists of living in a cardboard shelter with nothing more than sleeping bags and pillows. Participants are not allowed food or drink unless it is given to them, cannot shower or use campus facilities, must avoid personal communication devices such as cellphones or laptops unless using them for campaign promotion, and are expected to attend all classes.
“We know we can’t experience what youth normally go through,” Berrigan said. “This is pretty safe version of the experience, but hopefully we can let people know that [youth homelessness] is happening.”
Since 2005 the campaign has grown exponentially, expanding to 19 university campuses nationwide. A government report on youth homelessness published in November estimates there are approximately 65,000 homeless youth on the streets of Canadian cities, which is more than a quarter of the entire homeless population.
In addition to these numbers, Raising the Roof, a charity focused on eliminating homelessness in Canada, says there are countless “hidden homeless” who don’t live on the streets but bounce from shelter to friend’s couch to hostel.
“I actually had a couple of friends back in high school who were evicted or left their home,” Fleming said, “and it breaks my heart firsthand to see these people not have a home. They don’t have a support system and they have to rely on others and it’s just really sad.”
Fleming, Berrigan and Karam were joined March 14 by Jerry Tomberlin, the dean of the Sprott School of Business, who Berrigan said stayed the night and then rushed home in the morning to shower before coming back to work.
“He’s unbelievable,” Berrigan said of Tomberlin. “He told us himself that it’s really important for staff to support these student initiatives. It shows us that they care and just motivates us to keep doing what we’re doing. If everyone told one other person . . . by the end of the fifth day, everybody would know why we’re out here and what we’re trying to accomplish.”