No one knows where they come from, what exactly is wrong with them, or why they choose the town, but one thing that has increasingly become a characteristic of St Ann's Bay is the bizarre prevalence of homeless people.

"Yes man, yuh have lot a dem," Sharon Wilson, a small cook-shop operator told The Gleaner.

"Especially at nighttime - yuh fi see them on the piazza in the town. Them just bungle up everywhere and sleep. Yuh fi see inna the town a nighttime - awful, man! The scent alone!" Wilson said.

One returning resident, who insisted that he will only go by the name Mr Ray, invited The Gleaner into his home to view his car which he claims was damaged by a vagrant.

"What happen is, there is a madman about the place here - he's trying to be friendly with me. Now look at this, nobody is going to compensate me for this," Mr Ray said, as he pointed out the damage.

$80,000 car damage

Mr Ray claimed that one day, after opening his gate, the overly friendly madman ran into his yard and started accusing him of all sorts of odd things. The man then ran into Mr Ray's garage and started jumping on the roof of his Volvo motorcar as though it were a trampoline. The damage, Mr Ray says, will cost an estimated $80,000 to fix.

There was not one resident or business person with whom The Gleaner spoke, who did not speak passionately about the issue. There were some, however, who were evidently burdened to find a humane solution, like businesswoman Marcia Moulton.

Stories and photos by Andrew Wildes

"There are quite a lot of them, and if I tell you how many times I sit down and try to come up with ideas of how I would do it myself to take them off the street," shared Moulton, who owns a small business in the town with her son, Phillip.

One of her many ideas would be to transform the old police headquarters, a building that has been left languishing in disuse for years, into a shelter where relevant social intervention groups could collaborate and deliver care.

"There is no public place for them … and they do pose a problem because some of them can become very aggressive," Moulton said.

andrew.wildes@gleanerjm.com