Enabling File I/O functions on a shared host

I'm using a shared host for some web applications I'm doing. These applications (including PEAR) use file i/o functions such as fread(). At the moment, my shared host has these functions disabled. Since the fread is disabled it's causing the browser-based PEAR front end not to display the images and icons. I'd also like to be able to read and write my own files. I was wondering if there was a way to enable these I/O functions myself using ini_set or some other way since I don't have direct access to the php.ini file? Thanks, Jim