I walk down the Vancouver street.
It’s one of my first trips out of the country. A trip into this towering, urban, Canadian delight of a city.
But something is off.
I notice that, next to every trash can, there lies a homeless person.
Beggars, buskers, vagabonds, roaming around bus stations.
I see scruffy hair and unwashed clothes.
I smell forgotten dreams and the stench of dumpster diving.
A baggy-eyed man wearing tattered jeans rushes up to me, hastily asking for money or food.
He was quickly scolded and hushed away by my grandfather beside me.
I remember that trip more for how it introduced poverty into my 10 year old brain than for its gorgeous views.
You see, I never grew up in squalor.
Nor with deprivation.
Hardship in my childhood was when I had to go to the doctor for a shot.
And for the most part, if I wanted something, it was mine.
There are many cities I’ve visited throughout my life, and with each discovery comes a realization about my unique perspective and the ways I live. As a kid I was told the differences of the places people live, with regard to nationality as well as the different ways of living. Yet I had never realized how these differences influence what we are, and aren’t, exposed to as children.
I remember the moments I began to see true poverty. When I saw who lived under freeways and next to trash cans.
Tents in such large amounts it resembled a camping retreat, propped up all along a city’s underbelly.
Seeing this was new to me.
New because I had been living life through the suburban lens.
Vancouver has the second highest working poverty rate among large cities in Canada.
And this rate was clear to see the minute I had left the airport.
I say this with no resentment. Considering my carefully nurtured take on life at the time, the sight was unreal to me. Where I lived, you only saw the homeless along the roads, around the gas stations and below the bridges. Furthermore, my own neighborhood had houses as far as the eye could see.
In my head, everyone lived in a subdivision, or a cul de sac, or on “something Boulevard.”
I felt that, if not, how did they even live?
This question was answered during various vacations like the one to Canada. The idea of homelessness had greeted itself to my brain the minute it had asked for money. I thought the tired looking man had the wrong person.
Why did the man just ask me for money?
Is he also traveling through Vancouver?
These questions weren’t answered until I realized the man was both homeless and broke.
Looking back at how my suburban childhood affected my young worldview reinforces my belief that growing up where I did was both a blessing and a blockage. A blockage from the poverty running rampant around the world that I had never seen before.
These disparities were seen throughout my younger years, especially in urbanized areas of the world. Trips to downtown San Antonio made me rethink whether or not the “nice” part of my city was where anyone lived, including the “less fortunate.” Truthfully, seeing those who begged scared me, in the same way that any innocence breaking sight does.
Quite simply, my belief that the world provided enough for everyone, and that everyone was given the same opportunities that I did, tore further and further apart when I saw disparity like this.
With a now more nuanced knowledge of my city, I find it important to recognize that San Antonio is one of the poorest major metropolitan areas of the United States, with over 13 percent of the population living below the poverty line. Similar to Vancouver, many reside next to buildings that cost a fortune to live in.
Additionally the impoverished reside in large numbers up north in Austin, another area I began to visit as a child. The numerous coffee shops, hipster bars, vegan restaurants and towering buildings led me to believe, yet again, this was the city for any one to live.
But this rapid, youthful development in Austin conceals a major problem behind the older (and poorer) residents of the city.
Gentrification skyrockets the property values around the increasingly-popular city, which forces the homeowners of pre-gentrified Austin to pay much higher amounts of money to keep their homes. I hadn’t learned about this until my knowledge of urbanization and the economic changes that it creates grew.
The rose-colored glasses from my suburban childhood made the run-down areas of Austin much more sad to look at knowing that both the homeless and these older Austin residents suffer in their own ways.
Rather than individual accounts of poverty, nothing was quite like seeing the difference between countries and what disparity looked like in different parts of the world.
When traveling to Athens, the capital of Greece, I was shocked at how many areas of the downtown were rundown and in bad shape.
Properties, left and right, were foreclosed.
The biggest buildings were the most rusty.
Billboards were torn and the traffic signs were covered in graffiti.
Our tour bus towered over the taxis and motorbikes hurrying through traffic, and many who had lived around the hotel would come up to the tour group and ask for money. Pickpocketing was common, so much so that we were asked to keep our backpacks in front of us.
Athens had some of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, yet these economic and infrastructural differences between Athens and San Antonio were clear to me from the very first ride through the city. Greece is one of the poorest members of the European Union, with over 30 percent of the population below the poverty line. Compared to Vancouver, it was clear to see that poverty in Athens was much more widespread.
There are many reasons Athens had looked the way it did, with not every reason having to do with poverty, but seeing the difference in how life was lived throughout Athens made me wonder what the deeply poor looked like in Athens. Vancouver, Austin, Downtown San Antonio, Athens, these cities all revealed to me what it meant to be impoverished, each in their own ways and levels. When you grow up in an environment where everything is conditioned for accessibility and the daily comforts come easy, seeing disparity like this, whether in your own city or in a completely different country, is eye opening to say the least. Suburban living never revealed economic disparity in the ways that those summer trips did, and as the problems of the world perpetuate and reveal themselves to my generation, I feel that we all can continue to grow a more complete understanding of the world around me, regardless of the environment we were raised in.
By Ian Pumphrey