The is­sue of home­less­ness in Port-of-Spain has once again gained na­tion­al at­ten­tion, as the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced plans to re­vi­talise the cap­i­tal city.

On Mon­day, Dr Kei­th Row­ley un­veiled some stel­lar and am­bi­tious plans to re­move the cap­i­tal city out of what he de­scribed as "ur­ban de­cay." This de­cay, the PM said, in­clud­ed de­pop­u­la­tion, aban­don­ment and de­crepit in­fra­struc­ture, un­em­ploy­ment, des­ti­tu­tion and high lev­els of crime in the cap­i­tal. PM Row­ley al­so ref­er­enced poor san­i­ta­tion in Port-of-Spain, go­ing as far as to dub the Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street (for­mer­ly Queen Street) at the 'toi­let of the city'.

But no plan, small or grandeur, for the na­tion's cap­i­tal can move for­ward if the is­sue of home­less­ness is not de­ci­sive­ly ad­dressed.

Dur­ing his tenure as the cap­i­tal's may­or from 2010 to 2013, Louis Lee Sing's main bug­bear was the va­grancy prob­lem. Sev­en years af­ter he demit­ted of­fice, the na­tion is no clos­er to re­mov­ing the home­less from its cap­i­tal.

In­stead, ac­cord­ing to present Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez, there are some 400 peo­ple who now call the streets of the cap­i­tal their home.

While for some, re­mov­ing va­grants may be a mat­ter of op­tics, it is clear that tak­ing the home­less off the streets al­so begs the ques­tion of how the na­tion treats with its weak­est and most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.

Aside from for­mer may­or Lee Sing's ef­forts in 2011, which saw 177 street dwellers round­ed up and charged with loi­ter­ing, sev­er­al oth­er plans were sub­se­quent­ly launched to re­move and re­ha­bil­i­tate the so­cial­ly dis­placed.

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh at­tempt­ed to re­move 200 va­grants off the streets of the cap­i­tal in time for Christ­mas 2012. It failed mis­er­ably, as many of the home­less went in­to hid­ing.

A re­cent move last year by present May­or Mar­tinez, with his 'move along' pol­i­cy, at­tempt­ed to have the home­less eval­u­at­ed and sent to the Cen­tre for the So­cial­ly Dis­placed for help but that too was stalled by le­gal ac­tion on be­half of the home­less.

But from all these ef­forts over the years, it is clear strong laws need to be draft­ed and im­ple­ment­ed that would see prop­er as­sess­ment, treat­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of street dwellers in the first in­stance.

Back in 1975, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment en­act­ed the Men­tal Health Act Chap­ter 28:02 to ad­dress dan­gers to the pub­lic and the needs of the home­less. The act must now be up­dat­ed and changed to tack­le the needs of the na­tion as it re­lates to street dwellers.

It is no longer good enough to send the home­less to St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal or pro­vide them with a meal and pock­et change for a few days.

What is clear is that treat­ing with home­less­ness re­quires com­pre­hen­sive psy­choso­cial sup­port com­plete with com­pas­sion and pa­tience. Any­thing less will be noth­ing more than a band aid on a bul­let wound. In all on this, how­ev­er, one must re­mem­ber that we are all sus­cep­ti­ble to the frail­ties of the hu­man mind and spir­it.