{"id":240106,"date":"2022-10-14T18:48:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T16:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna\/"},"modified":"2022-10-14T18:48:23","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T16:48:23","slug":"no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"No shelter for homeless people in Knysna, but that may change soon"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/siphokazi_mnyobe\/garfield_and_his_friend.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Wayne Garfield, 54, and Allister Mart, 38, stand outside a tiny room where Mart sleeps. The two homeless men have started temporary jobs at the municipality\u2019s waste management in Knysna. Photos: Siphokazi Mnyobe<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is currently no state funded shelter for homeless people in Knysna, Western Cape. According to the Knysna Municipality, about 200 homeless people live on the streets.<\/li>\n<li>The last temporary shelter was established at Loerie Park in a bid to mitigate the impact of the Covid pandemic. It was closed when regulations were eased.<\/li>\n<li>The municipality says it is currently trying to reopen a temporary shelter. It has budgeted R200,000 but still needs more for the maintenance and upkeep.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When the country went into the Covid lockdown in 2020, 54-year-old Wayne Garfield from Knysna in the Western Cape\u2019s Garden Route lost his job as a home-based medical caregiver.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy life was going very well. I was able to take care of my family until the pandemic hit. The [caregiver] agencies were no longer calling us to look after the old people in town,\u201d he says. He said he hit a downward spiral after his brother died.<\/p>\n<p>Unable to find a steady job for months and no longer able to support his elderly mother and daughter, Garfield says he was overcome with feelings of hopelessness and loss which resulted in him ending up on the streets. He has been homeless for over two years. \u201cI started bugging people for money but movement was restricted so not many people could help me. I then made friends with other homeless people in town. On days when I didn\u2019t make money, I would sleep by them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore I knew it, I was staying here fulltime and too embarrassed to go home. I learnt to eat from the bin and be a car guard to survive. I made R20 to R50 a day and would spend the money on bread and milk,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Garfield said his family searched for him when he was staying in the streets and asked him to come back home. \u201cSometimes they would even send people to look for me, I would then hide from them because they reminded me of my daughter and how much of a failure I thought I was,\u201d said Garfield.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/siphokazi_mnyobe\/homeless_in_knysna.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">A group of people have built makeshift structures from discarded sheets, wooden planks and sails. They live behind the Knysna Municipality\u2019s waste management site in Clyde Street.<\/p>\n<p>Garfield has just signed a three-month contract, ending in December, to work as a refuse collector for the municipality. His employment is part of the municipality\u2019s Homeless Empowerment Program. He says since starting work, he has also begun reconciling with his family who live in Concordia.<\/p>\n<p>Garfield is among about 200 homeless people who sleep on the streets of Knysna. This is largely because there are no formal shelters to accommodate people who have little to no income in the town.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Knysna Municipality says plans are underway to set up a permanent shelter but there are challenges. As an interim measure, ward 10 councillor Peter Bester said the council has budgeted R200,000 for a temporary shelter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are hoping to open the temporary shelter before the start of tourism season. Unfortunately one of our investors only wants to fund a permanent homeless shelter. We are trying to reason with them because a permanent shelter will take us three years to establish,\u201d said Bester.<\/p>\n<p>During the hard lockdown in early 2020, the Knysna Municipality set up a temporary shelter at Loerie Park but it was closed between May and June 2021 when regulations were eased. This meant many people returned to the streets.<\/p>\n<p>We met Angel Janties, 22, who was part of the group who were moved into Loerie Park during lockdown. He has been homeless for five years and currently sleeps behind the municipal refuse offices. He survives by guarding cars and asking for donations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLoerie Park was far better and many homeless people were doing good there. Now they are back to their old ways,\u201d said Janties. \u201cI was the youngest person at the Loerie Park shelter and used to be bullied. When I reported this to the municipality officials, nothing was done. So I stood up for myself and fought with someone. I was then chased out and went back to the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Janties told GroundUp that life on the street is dangerous. He said he knew of at least four people who had died this year. One, he said, died a month ago due to freezing temperatures outside. But GroundUp was unable to verify these deaths.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/siphokazi_mnyobe\/knysna_homeless.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon-2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Godfree Watson, 31, and Joey Quine, 40, say they have been homeless for more than 10 years. The pair collect and sell recycling material to survive.<\/p>\n<p>Councillor Bester said,\u201cWe have been approached by members of the Homeless Forum to erect tents again at Loerie Park, but the municipality is not in the position to do so at the moment. When we had homeless people [during lockdown], there was no supervision and this led to vandalism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lizel Blaaitjies, Social Development officer at Knysna Municipality, runs upskilling workshops with homeless citizens. This project is supported by several people and organisations. A forum was also started to work with the municipality on ways to assist homeless people.<\/p>\n<p>Waleed Grootboom, Mayco Member for Community Services, said through their current projects, at least ten homeless people have been assisted to apply for IDs and are waiting for them to arrive. Thereafter, they will be added to the City\u2019s employment database.<\/p>\n<p>When asked how the temporary shelter will operate, Municipal spokesperson, Nwabisa Pondoyi, said details will only be shared as the project develops.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wayne Garfield, 54, and Allister Mart, 38, stand outside a tiny room where Mart sleeps. The two homeless men have started temporary jobs at the municipality\u2019s waste management in Knysna. Photos: Siphokazi Mnyobe There is currently no state funded shelter for homeless people in Knysna, Western Cape. According to the Knysna Municipality, about 200 homeless [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":240107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-240106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/no-shelter-for-homeless-people-in-knysna-but-that-may-change-soon.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}