Singaporean activist Gilbert Goh shared an encounter with a homeless man working as a cleaner, who earns about $1k per month and is sleeping in the streets.
Here is the story:
“Met up with this 65-year-old homeless man during our outreach last weekend.
It is the first time we saw him – initially mistaken for another man we helped out previously sleeping at around the same spot.
He is chatty and friendly so we stayed on to listen to his story.
He has been sleeping rough for the past 4 to 5 years after a tiff with his flatmate of a shared government subsidised housing who is unemployed.
There is mention of unpaid rent and utilities from his jobless co-owner and after a long struggle, he left the place – choosing personal freedom and privacy over a secured shelter torn by strife.
As for himself, he works as a cleaner earning over $1000 monthly and as he is nearing his CPF withdrawal age, he is hoping that the extra $280 monthly CPF money will come in handy for his personal expenditure.
We told him about the recent HDB scheme whereby people like him can apply for government-subsidized housing without the need to get a co-owner upon application as an NGO will help him find a suitable tenant.
He retorted that staying together with a stranger can be difficult however suitable it may look on paper – his past experiences living with someone in the same house who is a total stranger has deterred him from getting his feet wet again with subsidized housing.
“Even living with your own siblings or family members can be an issue, what about a complete total stranger?” he repeated.
He mentions the HDB’s assertion that two persons living together can fend for one another and it can also foster moral support when one is down is a fallacy as in reality there are more inherent problems with co-existing than meets the eyes.
We have been supporting rough sleepers for the past three years and more than half have a house of their own but they chose to live outside whereby freedom and privacy are preferred over a feisty roof which can sometimes be leaking with conflict and hostility.
As we left him with a new jacket and a pack of K94 masks, we realized that many rough sleepers we met with have a strong sense of privacy and personal freedom. He kept to himself most of the time and didn’t even have a word with a fellow rough sleeper lying less than ten meters from him.
Do something good for Singapore – a charity movement to alleviate our displaced elderly Singaporeans.”