WESTERN BUREAU — He stands slightly hunched over his makeshift walking stick, looking at the world through bloodshot eyes in a lightly bearded face.

He’s Gifford Green, 73, of Gunns Drive, Granville in St James — and he is desperately in need of a place to live.

However, it is a need he cannot realise on his own.

Following a disagreement with an employer almost a year ago, Green has no steady income.

He said he has one son who, the last he heard, lived in Manchester; but they have not spoken in years.

“Let’s just say he is not paying me any mind because me poor and so,” the old man told the Observer.

Green is therefore relying on the state, or some benevolent persons from the private sector, to rescue him from his dilapidated single room home. The room has a leaking roof and termite-infested walls. One wall has a gaping hole.

“I cannot sleep at night because I am so worried,” said Green, who is also known as “Green Bush”. “If rain start to fall I am under ‘fretration’ ’cause I know when I go up there I step inna water inside there. The roof and the side leaking.”

But the leaking roof aside, the senior citizen has more pressing concerns.

“The landlady running me out now,” he said, adding that he was recently sued for some $26,000 in overdue rent.

His best bet now is to secure a house from Food for the Poor and he is hopeful he will be able to do so.

“I shame to know that I really born here in Jamaica, never come off these shores, and yet I find myself in that condition. I wouldn’t mind if a today me was going to get the house,” he said.

But the road to receiving such a house might prove a long one for the elderly man.

Jeremiah Dehaney, the Inspector of Food for the Poor for St James, told the Observer that there was an application process that Green would have to go through. That, he said, would have to be followed by investigations to verify that he is, in fact, in need. Once the verification process is completed, he will need to supply proof of ownership for the land on which he intends to build the house. If the land is rented he will need to supply proof that he has the owner’s authorization to build.

He would subsequently be required to build the house’s foundation to Food for the Poor’s specifications.

But according to Dehaney, Green was previously given the relevant instructions concerning the acquisition of a Food for the Poor dwelling, but had yet to comply with those instructions. Despite this however, the Inspector said he would seek to have Green’s case looked at again.

“Maybe his situation needs to be reviewed,” he said. ” I’ll carry out an investigation in his case and see what can be done. In the meantime I will see what can be done to assist this gentlemen through the Poor Relief Department.”

He added, however, that his department had already conducted investigations into Green’s situation and offered him care at the parish infirmary, but he turned down the offer.

“He refused to go to the infirmary,” Dehaney said.