Six weeks ago, none of Alex’s friends were counting on getting to wish him a happy birthday today. He’d been found clinically dead in his tent early one morning after he hadn’t done his usual ” up early and outta here” pack-up before bylaw arrived. It took 45 minutes of CPR and naloxone injections before Alex took his first breath. He spent 15 days in the ICU in a coma, and there were weeks of touch and go afterwards. And then he was released straight back into homelessness last Friday – a common practice by local hospitals, whose indifferent release policies were the reason for why more than 200 people were on the street on the night of the last point in time count. Alex and his girlfriend spent the next two nights sleeping on the sidewalk, even though she had a cubicle bed at My Place to go to. Fortunately, advocacy efforts of his family and friends finally got him a cubicle bed too, on Sunday, and he’s inside at last, though still with a long road ahead and mourning the death of his street brother Jake while Alex was in hospital. Alex is 29 today. And still standing.