Quint Parker's possessions cover almost every inch of his small room. A stuffed monkey sits on a clock, surrounded by stacked soup cans. Shirts hang from a bare rack above his single bed and in the back a small TV peeks from its shelf. By the door, a painting rests on top of the clutter.
On his armchair, his table and his desk, small mementos - feathers and sticks and rocks and ribbon - fill the spaces.
Before Parker joined Prince George's Housing First program, he didn't have many things. Living in downtown shelters didn't leave much opportunity for him to collect and keep the objects he now treasures.
For two and a half years, the 43-year-old was homeless, but workers at the Association Advocating for Women and Children have helped change that for him and 15 others.
"It's nice to have the spot now to put my stuff and put it out on display when my friends come over. It's like there's a piece of them all here. I like to hold on to that because I'm proud of who we all are. And I think we are all good people," Parker says, pausing in thought. "And we deserve just as much as anyone else.
"We deserve to live a proper life and we're sometimes misguided, misled because I don't know, we're just not... We're just not a part of society the way we should be."
He shares a bathroom and shower with others at the Northern Breeze Inn, which opened earlier this year in the former Ketso Yoh shelter on Quebec Street.
Having his own space means more freedom. The rooming house has some rules - no visitors after 10 p.m. or smoking inside - but it's still home.
"It's sort of like a family in here," he says.
Parker has been on disability since 1997, he says, ever since he was diagnosed with schizophrenia bipolar. It can be difficult to find a place to rent and he's been kicked out many times.
"They frown upon me because of my screaming. When I get frustrated I yell. I don't mean to but that's the way I get it off my chest," says Parker, who also struggles with addiction and says marijuana and methamphetamine help keep him calm and catch the thoughts.
"Sometimes my bark is worse than my bite. I mean well."
"At Housing First we're extremely client-centred so we really meet the clients where they're at. So if that means taking Quint outside and letting him rant for five minutes that's what we're going to do," says Housing First's team lead Amie Foster, as Parker nods.
Parker is comfortable in her company and speaks fondly of Foster's smile and their meetings over coffee or during walks along the river when he dunks his head in the frigid flow.
"They calm me down, they talk to me and get me to think about things," Parker says. "They encourage me to do better and to help others."
Part of AWAC's approach, says Foster, is helping people understand why their clients exhibit certain behaviours and how to navigate those actions. AWAC is also on-call 24 hours for support to both its clients and the landlord it works with.
"A lot of it is a lot of education around mental health because people that don't work in mental health quite often don't have experience with it or know how to respond to certain behaviours," says Foster, whose priority is building more relationships with rental companies to increase access to affordable housing.
More than 100 people, many chronically homeless, still wait to be pulled off the Housing First list.
Once a person is housed, the support doesn't stop. Like Parker, who's been in the program since January, the first home doesn't always work out for clients.
Parker's learned how to budget and earlier this month moved into a bigger room for $25 more a month. After that $400 is gone, he's left with $500 to live. Some goes to cigarettes, some to drugs, and every month is a struggle. But ever since he moved to his new home four months ago he's paid his rent on time every month.
"It's sure been memorable" says Parker of his year with Housing First. "All the frustrations, all the anxiety, all the temptations and all the... things to look forward to."
Prince George, as one of 61 designated communities by the federal government, gets annual funding through the Homelessness Partnering Strategy. Some of those funds support Housing First, and were also used to fund the homelessness point-in-time count. From 2014 to 2019, Prince George gets an annual allotment of $335,158 and over two years - 2016 and 2017 - the community will get an added $167,579 each year.
This fall, additional funding meant AWAC could hire another housing outreach worker. Parker says the program does what it can, but Prince George doesn't have enough programs or supports for people like him.
"We need more hands-on now, not later type of thing."
Parker says he's proud of who he is and who his friends are, but too often he feels judged by the rest of society as riff-raff.
If people knew him, he says, they would see something more: "I am intelligent, I'm a good person. I believe in honesty, truth and I believe we all need to be part of something."
Everyone deserves the right to live properly and affordably, he says, but it's hard to climb out of a hole with no hope and a society that doesn't believe in you.
"Home is ... supposed to be like your castle and you're supposed to feel secure and sometimes we're not feeling so secure because we don't have the space that we need to grow and we're just left to suffer," he says, his voice catching.
"I believe if you have faith, you'll get there, one step at a time but the more we step together, the more steps we can make."
Parker's learned how to budget and earlier this month moved into a bigger room for $25 more a month. After that $400 is gone, he's left with $500 to live. Some goes to cigarettes, some to drugs, and every month is a struggle. But ever since he moved to his new home four months ago he's paid his rent on time every month.
"It's sure been memorable" says Parker of his year with Housing First. "All the frustrations, all the anxiety, all the temptations and all the... things to look forward to."
Prince George, as one of 61 designated communities by the federal government, gets annual funding through the Homelessness Partnering Strategy. Some of those funds support Housing First, and were also used to fund the homelessness point-in-time count. From 2014 to 2019, Prince George gets an annual allotment of $335,158 and over two years - 2016 and 2017 - the community will get an added $167,579 each year.
This fall, additional funding meant AWAC could hire another housing outreach worker. Parker says the program does what it can, but Prince George doesn't have enough programs or supports for people like him.
"We need more hands-on now, not later type of thing."
Parker says he's proud of who he is and who his friends are, but too often he feels judged by the rest of society as riff-raff.
If people knew him, he says, they would see something more: "I am intelligent, I'm a good person. I believe in honesty, truth and I believe we all need to be part of something."
Everyone deserves the right to live properly and affordably, he says, but it's hard to climb out of a hole with no hope and a society that doesn't believe in you.
"Home is... supposed to be like your castle and you're supposed to feel secure and sometimes we're not feeling so secure because we don't have the space that we need to grow and we're just left to suffer," he says, his voice catching.
"I believe if you have faith, you'll get there, one step at a time but the more we step together, the more steps we can make."
