Shanghai teacher's long journey to a home in Richmond

Tom Tang taught art and painted street portraits in Shanghai before coming to Canada in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings. He built a life here: marriage, a son, an apartment. Somehow, nearly 40 years later, he ended up living in a tent in Brighouse Neighbourhood Park in Richmond, B.C., with two small plastic bags holding everything he owned.

"Time all blurs together when you spend a long time wandering on the streets. I don't know what date it is," Tang said in Shanghainese on a recent Sunday afternoon, sitting in the shade with a walker beside him.

The path from teaching to homelessness was not a straight line. It was a series of fractures—health issues, financial collapse, the slow erosion of the safety net that had held him for decades. When The Canadian Press found him, he was 76 years old and diabetic, sharing cigarettes with drug dealers who roamed the park, checking on them while they slept to make sure they were still breathing.

Tang had learned to survive by blending in, by being friendly to everyone so nobody would rob him. When dealers asked if he wanted to try their product, he'd laugh and say he had no money. When people used drugs next to him, he'd apologize and move away.

"Sometimes the drug dealers ask me if I want to try. I say No because I don't have any money," Tang said, his tone light but carrying the weight of someone who'd learned to live by deflection.

Outreach worker Hugh Freiberg with Richmond's Refuge Church knew Tang and understood the survival mechanism at play. But Freiberg's compassion extended further: he saw in seniors like Tang—people with no substance use or mental health issues, people who'd worked their whole lives and done nothing wrong—a particular tragedy.

"These are people who worked all their lives," Freiberg said. "They did nothing wrong, and they ended up on the street, and they're getting minimal support from the provincial government."

Tang had long dreamed of a permanent place to live, somewhere he could rest. The first thing he would do, he said, laughing, was "sleep for three days and three nights straight."

But laughter was often a coping mechanism. The reality was harder: a man in his mid-seventies, chronically homeless, living on park benches and in makeshift shelter, watching the city move past him while his own life stood still.

Then, after eighteen months on the streets, something shifted. Last week, Tang moved into a long-term care home. A social worker confirmed the placement. It wasn't the apartment he might have dreamed of, but it was walls and a bed and safety—the basic human things homelessness had stolen from him.

Tang's journey is one story among thousands in Canada's housing crisis, but it's also a story of resilience and luck. The luck of meeting someone like Freiberg. The luck of finally being seen, finally being helped. The luck that should never have been necessary in the first place.