Veranda to be Built at Mcdonalds will keep Shopping Carts of Homeless away from Front Door

Above photo: a homeless man sleeps in the sun this morning in front of Mcdonald's restaurant at Main & Terminal.


Mcdonald's restaurant deserves a humanitarian award for the tolerance they have shown for the homeless.

At one point an older manager, a Chinese guy with his head shaved bald, did start insisting that the homeless move their shopping carts away from the front door. "We can't have this," I heard him tell them, asking them to at least park their shopping carts in the parking lot. There was one homeless guy who he asked not to come back because he was parking his shopping cart inside the restaurant. That homeless man sat in the dining area of Mcdonalds one evening and trimmed his hair and put on shaving cream and shaved. The staff didn't notice.

Eventually the manager who was setting limits left. The new managers tend to be teenagers who are not equipped to take on the street people. And they're just earning a few dollars between high school classes, so they really don't care.

Then the City of Vancouver made things worse by setting up a homeless shelter across the street from Mcdonalds. That added to the congregation of homeless people hanging out at the tables in front of Mcdonalds at night, smoking cigarrettes and pot and parking shopping carts filled with stuff pulled from garbage cans beside the door. But many of the regular homeless people at Mcdonalds are not actually linked to the homeless shelter. Those places are more for the homeless-light. The hard core homeless just keep living outside like they've always done.

But Mcdonald's has a plan. A staff person mentioned that they are going to renovate, turn the front patio area into a veranda. It's difficult to get a shopping cart onto a veranda. The veranda will have tables with umbrellas. (The current front patio once had umbrellas but they were stolen. The tables behind Mcdonalds also once had umbrellas but they were stolen too, and later Mcdonalds removed those tables because they were having problems with the homeless and street people hanging out back there all night.)

The homeless will still be at Mcdonalds though. The cheap coffee with a free refill is too good a deal to miss. Most of the regular homeless don't panhandle but they sometimes pick up a customer's discarded coffee cup and take it up to the cashier for a free refill. Some do buy food; the guy sunning himself in the photo bought a burger and an ice cream sundae yesterday.

So many businesses in Vancouver have to work around Vancouver's homeless and drug addicts. It's a real headache trying to use the washroom at Mcdonalds because they now lock the door and you have to buzz and buzz and buzz until the busy staff hear you and let you in. Before that they tried to discourage drug addicts from using their washrooms by installing special lighting that made it more difficult for them to see their veins.

Major renovations at Mcdonalds will begin very soon. In addition to a veranda, they will be installing fireplaces and internet wifi.

We're Full Up So Bugger Off!

Photo: The building on the left is the homeless shelter near Main and Terminal, Mar. 8/09

The new homeless shelter that Mayor Robertson's administration set up across from McDonald's near Main & Terminal Ave is doing a brisk business.  

It was raining last night and a guy sitting in the back of McDonald's restaurant with his head on the table woke up when he heard another guy, an old hippie travelling to London, Ont., ask me if there was a shelter nearby; I suggested he try the one across the street.  The snoozer said that shelter was full.  He had been there at 5:35 p.m. and was turned away.  He was amazed that they were already full as the place had just opened at 5 p.m. 

Another guy sitting in McDonald's confirmed that the shelter was full.  He said he had stayed there the previous night though, and his cell phone had been stolen.  He had answered it in the morning when he got a call from his boss, and had fallen back to sleep with it in his hand.  He never saw it again.  The hippie -- who used to live in Vancouver and manage the Cobalt Hotel -- was explaining that the trick to sleeping in a shelter is to wear two pairs of pants and put your valuables in the inside pair.  The guy who had his cell phone stolen said he had also recently had his pack stolen at that shelter.

Anyway the snoozer explained that if you go back to the homeless shelter at 11 p.m., they might have space.  That's because some people sign in early and eat, but don't return to sleep.  

These people being turned away from the shelter reminded me of a physiotherapist I knew in Vancouver.  She said she had  been working in a hospital and at Christmas the kids in the hospital performed a play in front of an audience of parents.  A young native boy played the Inn keeper and when Joseph came to the door to ask if there was any room in the Inn, he responded, 

"We're full up so bugger off!"   

Homeless Shelter Attracting Pot Smokers to McDonald's Across the Street

Photo:  The new homeless shelter is the white building in the background.

 

When you change one thing, you may affect things around it.  

A regular customer at McDonalds at Main & Terminal says there are more "bums" standing around outside now that the new homeless shelter has opened across the street.  They congregate in front of McDonalds a little after 7 p.m., and hang out until shortly before 8 p.m. when the shelter opens.  The customer sometimes ducks outside himself to have a quick cigarette, so he knows who's who out there.

"Are they the ones smoking pot?," I asked.  "Yeah", the customer said.  On two evenings out of the last three, I walked through a cloud of strong pot smoke when going in the front entrance at McDonalds to buy a take-out coffee.  

When Mayor Robertson and his HEAT team turned the empty warehouse across the street from McDonalds into a homeless shelter, they probably thought that because the building was in an industrial area and situated well back from Main St., it wouldn't affect people in the neighborhood.