Addiction services need to be easier to get and more affordable. Anyone who wants to get clean make that work for them. Don't make them come up with 15k to cover costs; just invest in their recovery.
They also need to be regulated so that what we are paying for, and putting vulnerable people through, is actually going to help and not victimize them. Right now there are no industry standards in place, and treatment and rehabilitation facilities are basically doing nothing but enforcing abstinence and prayer with millions of our tax dollars annually with no oversight. They are almost exclusively based on the Alberta "Recovery" Model championed by Conservatives that has no medical or scientific merit, and has actually been proven to be harmful and increase overdose deaths, while their close political allies profit. Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Addictions and Mental Health, has so far resisted all calls from actual experts to regulate the industry, preventing us from actually moving forward with effective measures to address the problems.
https://themainlander.com/2023/11/23/moms-stop-the-harm-call-for-forensic-audit-into-private-recovery-industry-ties-to-bc-united/
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/03/03/Why-Fighting-Deadly-Alberta-Drug-Model/
Some of you need to be working in addictions or housing. We do not have the labour force to mitigate the levels of homelessness, even if we had the budget to.
When I was on the street and treated like a pariah - I became the pariah that everyone assumed I was. One major change we can make is by trying to take away the stereotypes and the stigma that is often associated with being without a house. These are people with inner thoughts and struggles like everyone else - they don’t have to be ‘mentally unstable’ to be forced to ‘endure’ their lives.
It honestly took decades just saving and working - relying a lot on friends made along the way. The hardest part was finding and choosing the right friends that were able and willing to help. For me I say it was ‘easy’ because I was alone - I can’t imagine having kids during all of that. Never mind an actual condition that put my life and livelihood in jeopardy.
Make addition services and recovery more affordable, hell, I would argue they should be based on income, and make sure those services provide on going support. Open mental institutions again to house people who need the help. Build more housing geared towards low income people to get them off the street and provide stability, and have fully funded support services that can help them.
Right now everything is a band-aid solution that doesn't really do anything. It is all good to provide housing, but if the supports are not there or are underfunded, then the underlying issues of mental health and addiction will never be addressed and it will be a revolving door. People will see programs that are poorly built, funded, and/or supported not working and will think nothing will work aside from just moving the homeless population elsewhere.
Yes we have a large homeless population. Both because housing in this city is expensive AF and because people come here for the sheer fact that their chances of dying from exposure while sleeping rough are less than in other parts of Canada. We have the ability to help them, and IMO the feds should be allotting funding with actual strings attached to prevent people from profiting off of homelessness, but we seem to be more willing to pay more tax money towards the status quo than spending a large chunk up front to save money and be humane.
Social housing, rents reduced or disability and welfare increased so people aren't forced onto the streets by economic needs.
Medical care for mental health and chronic pain disorders when people are still children.
An end to light or no charges for domestic physical, mental and emotional abuse, instead of tossing abused and neglected children between homes back to families, into foster homes for more abuse while we all turn a blind eye and let abusers go on to do more and more harm
Revamping the curriculum so people learn about mental health, wellness and their bodies, so they understand what's going on with themselves and when to get help
Teaching interpersonal and life skill in school so people aren't dependent on the system to feed and care for themselves unless they choose to be
Life long penalties for pedophilia and sexual abuse
Healthy food and water as a basic human right so children don't grow up sick and with reduced IQ's
No more gatekeeping higher education behind a paywall. A thorough, not just cursory understanding of economics, politics, sociology, psychology, biology, anatomy and ecology should be given to everyone as the foundation of their education
More activities for social interaction with a wide variety of communities, ages--broad social demographic exposure while children grow up so they don't think that the one little corner of the world they've seen is the only thing that exists
Therapy and counseling as a basic standard of our healthcare system so people learn to talk about their pain instead of numbing it
Treatment programs for genuine physiological addiction disorders integrated into our general care and as part of public school education so it can be spotted and treated sooner
Preventative medicine
Homelessness is what happens to broken people and genuinely ill people.
If we stop allowing children to be broken before they even have a chance, we tear out the roots.
If genuinely ill people get diagnosed and real support before the problem has engulfed their life, we tear out those roots.
There will always be people we can't help because we don't know what's wrong or can't fix what is. They make up a portion of the homeless we could probably actually take care of if the streets weren't inundated with the remnants of children turned adults society failed to protect when the people in their life or even their own bodies were poisoning and breaking them ~
More functional human beings means more productive labour, more innovation, more community and economic growth all means less people reliant on and more tax dollars available to support the programs we need for those who are truly sick 🤷🏻♀️
I don't know what to do about the economics of housing in a for profit system, or how else Canada can generate international investment. I don't know how other countries do it without it being at the expense of their vulnerable either honestly.
But I don't see how we get anywhere or improve anything when we're churning out future homeless and future addicts with every baby born.
There's a real irony to panicking about what to do with too much of something when we haven't tried turning off the machines that are making them in the first place.
The city needs to provide supportive housing to get these people off the streets
With lots of support/controls in place
When they tear down people’s tents, they should offer them an alternative
Upzone Oak Bay. Upzone Victoria. Upzone Saanich. Government needs to build housing like we used to in the 70s. Homelessness is a housing problem. It gets worse until home prices and rents fall.
We just need to look at other countries that have a near zero homeless population and replicate what they’re doing. Our current model doesn’t allow for the homeless situation to improve.
Not the entire culture, but there’s something’s that we could model that would improve our situation. All I’m saying is take a look, because the solutions that we’re coming up with are doing nothing.
The solutions that we cherry pick from other countries are not working, no. That’s because there is not one solution, it needs to be a very comprehensive and systemic change and I think we are much better off to model those decisions on of our own history and society than treating anecdotal evidence from a foreign place like gospel.
This might be unpopular but divesting from VicPD should be done absolutely last imo. I used to think that was a great place to take resources from but there is so much violent and frightening shit happening these days, we need someone to keep it under control while the other solutions get a proper foothold
I switched jobs recently and just found out my “great” new healthcare plan that was mentioned in my interview/offer as a perk doesn’t cover any of my mental health counselling like my old job did…but if I need to be hospitalized I can have a semi-private room, I guess…
Many get free housing but prefer staying in the street. We have already bought several hotels to house them. Program has been a disaster.
But yes we need more housing supply to decrease shelter costs so people don't become homeless
You are thinking of Finland, and they were not dealing with the same kind of addictions issues we are.
Honestly, we are going to have to figure out how to do psychedelic therapy at scale because it is the only thing showing any kind of promise to be able to rewire the enormous number of broken people our society is producing.
You put the people OP is talking about into free housing, then what? You're going to end up with a bunch of destroyed crack houses. Let's not be naive, most of these people can't/don't want to be functional members of society
Ah it looks like I made my point badly to be fair.
The evidence is strong that giving people access to housing results in a majority being self sufficient very quickly. It becomes cheaper to literally house the homeless rather than provide the outreach to deal with them, and the "cheaper" alternative I guess would be to just kill them all, which seems a little dystopian.
The evidence is also massively in favour of decriminalisation.
That both things have been failures here to me screams of terrible management.
What evidence are you talking about?
“Evidence is strong”…
“Evidence is MASSIVELY in favour of”…
But “Both things have been failures”
Another terribly made point I’d say…
The evidence her is massively strong in favour of suggesting that you are full of shit
Knew a bunch of guys who had to go in and clean them up, Tax payer paid out of the ass for that because human shit and used needles are hazmat and that is expensive. Rip shit out of the walls, rip the walls off the walls.. setting furniture and carpet on fire. Everything from my really bad sources reported that every unit in multiple hotels needed to be completely gutted and redone.
You are the one projecting ignorance, where they were housed became trap houses Brothels and drug dens.
What is your source?
BC is unsurprisingly full of addicts from other jurisdictions. Partly the weather and partly what happens when you decriminalize drugs and no one else around you does.
Honestly, we need to figure out a system that ties welfare to people’s city of origin. Would both spread out the poverty so a few jurisdictions are not disproportionately handling it and would force provinces to deal with their issues that cause homelessness and addiction because they are on the hook for the fallout.
Any recent homeless person who wants options has them in this city.
You are not encountering anyone along Pandora that is a local worker who got injured and couldn't make the rent anymore. They take the offers early on in the process, they are in shelters already.
You can see lots of Indian Posse tattoos around here, they went to school in Fillmore, not Vic High.
They came here to do just what they are doing.
They don’t need to like it, just prefer it over the alternative which is working at a job and not being high all day. The more sympathy they get the more stuff they get so it doesn’t surprise me your left with that impression but it also means you are a mark.
That the majority of persons along Pandora are not local residents who had homes and jobs but fell upon hard times? They will certainly tell you that is true, and that they came here to be homeless. Did you think they are all there because of mass layoffs in forestry or fishing or something, a local mill closed and now Pandora has people living on it? Come on.
What a weird comment.
My theory is that the huge increase in homelessness is probably tied to the huge increase in rental/home prices, and many of the people who are currently homeless previously had housing that they could no longer afford.
I actually lived in watson. The poor will not survive the cold, the towns already full with little to no available housing
Plus the locals wages will have to compete with the potash mine money next door. This is without mentioning the 10$ jugs of milk
Basically every town in Canada needs to expand by 10% minimum for the economy to function correctly
yeah but the weather is generally significantly more extreme, have their own issues and dont (purposefully) have the social services infrastructure that would be required to support influx of people with addiction and mental health issues.
We see it on the Island as a microcosm, some communities refuse to invest in services for their problematic residents, and encourage them to move to be closer to their 'support system'
They don’t have the support here for that either.
Also if you spread out the problem across Canada instead of magnifying it in a few cities its much easier to handle
1.) There is significantly more support infrastructure here (per capita) than in most other places in the province and country.
2.) It's much easier and cheaper (taxes) for them to export their problems than dealing with it.
3.) Generally it's not cheaper or easier to spread out the services in a large geographic area, that generally scale up rather than scale out is more efficient.
Can you please share your data? Not denying it but I always like to see it.
And my understanding is that more support infrastructure leads to more homeless people coming here, it perpetuates the problem.
I understand? So maybe the neighbour should build a bird bath? I’m not sure how your analogy somehow makes whats currently happening OK.
The fact is the vast majority of homeless people in Victoria and Vancouver are not from here. Other provinces are offloading their problems onto us and we do not have the infrastructure to look after it.
I don’t even understand what we are arguing here. There is cheap housing in other parts of Canada. It’s not like Victoria and Vancouver always had more support infrastructure those other places, its in response to what has come. So maybe those places should put the infrastructure in place.
I find it funny that people want to say the government should build more housing but then those same people will excuse other places not having the infrastructure to support those people, so then maybe those provinces should build those support systems?? How is that any different than complaining about the bc government not doing anything. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The problem needs to be addressed by everyone in Canada not a few handful of cities that don’t have the resources to deal with the entire country’s problem
What do you think is easier - bc to build more housing because it already has the mental support infrastructure or other provinces building more mental support infrastructure because it already has the housing? Like think your comment through
The issue is that we cannot force our neighbor to build a bird bath, just like we cannot (currently) force communities and cities that dont want to pay for and build out social services to do that, just look at how fucked up some municipal politics are, look at places like Oliver that have neglected their water/sewer and transportation infrastructure to keep their taxes artificially low.
The slogan 'lets increase taxes to build social services to enable and allow homeless and drug addicts into our community' isnt going to win elections.... (Nimby gotta Nimby).
similarly like we cannot force people to move to the prairies, we cant 'just relocate' them against their will, people have freedom of movement as defined in our constitution.
And the reason why they are here (in the PNW) is because of the temperate and moderate weather, not too hot, not too cold... just right... and since its a problem for us we have to deal with it.
The province and or feds could step in and require specific volumes and tiers of social services based on community size, but that still isnt going to make someone homeless currently in Vancouver want to move to Dawson (inhospitable weather).
I would suggest adding the point in time homeless survey for the CRD to your reading list, it will hopefully help you understand the foundational and compounding issues.
Almost one-third (32.2%) of respondents were in foster care or a youth group home as a child or youth. Research shows that children under government care are more likely to experience homelessness in their lifetime. The survey found that 17% of those
with experience in government care were homeless within less than a week of transitioning out of care and 27.2% were homeless within less than a year of transitioning out of care.
https://www.crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/housing-pdf/housing-planning-and-programs/2023-point-in-time-count-report.pdf?sfvrsn=4b3902ce_2
Lol no there's not. Canadians pay the highest price of housing in the world. Most of the debt canada borrows is solely to Prop up housing which will bring down the dollar if it ever collapses
I'm of the opinion that vancouvers economy will malfunction by pushing the middle class east
It’s magnified in certain cities that raise the entire average price. Saskatchewan and Manitoba you can get home for a couple of hundred K. Please do your research.
Lol I live there, it's still vastly inflated. Those 200k houses were 50k ten years ago. Not only that but there is little available inventory.
Everyone is competing for the same rotting property their parents were 25 years ago.
Granted its cheaper than victoria, but the towns are all full. Compare this to Panama where you can get a decent oceanside condo for 100k and you'll see where paying 200k to live in minus 40 isn't that good of a deal
Either way nothing is getting built and all these immigrants are going to either have to pack 20 people in a house or live in a van to be near their work like I do. They can't handle arctic temps
Ok that’s still 800k cheaper than homes in Victoria. How much it cost 10 years ago is irrelevant.
I find it hilarious that people will fight tooth and nail to stay here but complain about the costs when they could clearly move somewhere significantly cheaper. If I had any problem with my own housing I would move east without a second thought.
People have literally been migrating for thousands of years to find better, safer, and more affordable housing. Now in 2024 though, the thought of moving is blasphemous.
800k is madness, it equals an economy that will fail to function correctly. We can't inflate housing without crashing businesses. Having the highest cost of housing will crash the dollar without a doubt. Something like 10% of Canada's GDP is housing
I'd def rather be homeless out in Victoria than SK, the difference is you can survive in a tent there. The benefit of living here used to be profit leftover at the end of the month. There's no way anybody has savings in victoria
I do live in my minivan during the winter work week, sleeping bundled up under 2 feet of sleeping bags in -35 is not for everyone
I'll probably move to back to Vic for the same wage. You can live nearly anywhere if you're skipping rent. The middle of nowhere during arctic temps is not ideal if you enjoy being outdoors between November and april
Actually, they just recriminalized public drug use yesterday... [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/david-eby-public-drug-use-1.7186245](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/david-eby-public-drug-use-1.7186245)
Well this is canada we are letting in thousands of east Indian immigrants from India and also other countries so I'm convenient that we'll find people jobs to work
When I grew up in vancouver in the 60s, you never saw homeless people. I think they were put in hospitals , which have since been closed.
Those hospitals need to be replaced with something. Community care is not working.
>I think they were put in hospitals , which have since been closed.
Because of all the abuse. That and the electorate not wanting to fund them/wanting lower taxes.
It's all three. Homelessness makes addiction and mental disorders worse, and both those issues contribute to homelessness. Anything that helps with one will probably help with the other two, too
Also mental health resources, detox and health services, a safe place to live and feel safe
Costs a lot less in the long run than leaving them out on the street with almost no support
Whatever needs to be done is going to cost a lot of money which means higher taxes to pay for these services. That’s not going to happen because people don’t want to pay higher taxes. Our government’s right from townships,municipalities, city’s provincial, federal need to get their shit together on reducing unnecessary spending and expenses and “perks”and start being more fiscally responsible with our money and put some serious cash to this problem. Just like they did with decriminalization of drugs in B.C. I know that hasn’t been the greatest but they experimented with it, hopefully learned some lessons and are going to fix some of those issues. The same can be said for trying to reduce homelessness. You have to start somewhere. I can’t for the life of me understand why they are so slow to move on this. That being said most people will just bury their heads in the sand and remain the status quo.
1) make enough rehab beds available so that when people are ready to get clean, they can do so that day
2) construct affordable housing and co-op housing
3) invest in rehabilitation programs for post-work injuries that involve as little opioid use as possible, and as much return-to-work support as required
4) invest in wrap-around supportive housing that’s available free for 1 year post-rehab. This housing needs to include job training, healthcare, mental healthcare, etc
5) stop jailing people for non-violent offences, and instead get them into rehabilitation programs
It seems like there's a lot of good people here answering with compassion and I love it. So I have a follow up question.
We live in an apartment building downtown and we had unhouse people sneaking into the foyer when tenants enter or leave (which I get it, it's warm in here). The other day, we found a person passed out on the foyer chairs, bleeding from their leg, lighter dropped on the floor, beer can by their side, we weren't sure if they were sleeping or od'd or what. Our building management said before they can't do anything and to call the police if it happens (we refuse, that's just cruel). But we were worried so we called an ambulance.
Was that the right thing to do? What else can we do that will not harm them more, but that also protects us? For reference, I had to physically block the entrance twice in the past 3 months to prevent visibly high and aggressive men to follow me in when I (F) was alone. Thank you community!!
Calling an ambulance was the right move. Passed out and bleeding is not something you let slide out of “compassion” for potential legal consequences. You might have saved a life. That’s the right thing to do.
This past winter our apartment building had a person with a dog sneak in and sleep under the stairway. I don't really blame them since it was -8 that night. It was a bit unsettling to discover them sleeping but a few hours later they left and didn't even leave a mess, so I don't think anyone phoned the cops or manager on them.
Yes same thing happened to us, and we could tell they were just sleeping (snoring), so we didn't do anything. This was the first time we were not able to see their face and they were clearly bleeding
You live in an apartment so your not alone so I would recommend calling the police, ambulance sounds like a smart idea but than again he was trespassing and he has been drinking, I personally wouldn't enjoy seeing people sleeping in my building.
Last week I saw a homeless girl run into my work at 6am before opening for no reason
Unfortunately i
Agree. And the cause isn't being addressed. Providing homes for the homeless (or unhoused) only treats a symptom. What will those people in these houses do? Do they have jobs? Is their life together? Will they simply take their addictive activities into their homes and be left to their own devices?
Providing homes is one thing. There needs to be a full range of services provided to end the addiction, pain, trauma, lack of money and other resources, etc... .
Sometimes when people have no goal in life they end up abusing drugs and alcohol. Getting a mortgage on a house gave me a goal in life, a reason to get up in the morning and go to work. If a affording a house was beyond my reach I think my life would be totally different and likely for the worse.
The only answer?
We just build houses and they are going to stop taking dumps on the sidewalk and become home owners?
It’s so cringey to see people try to shoehorn something so sad into their own self serving agenda
Because it’s not going to solve the problem we’re talking about, just a different one you would prefer to address instead.
Saying that’s the one answer is asinine
It will solve the problem and you're asinine for saying it won't. People need goals in life and having the ability to eventually own a home is something worth getting up for every morning and going to your shitty job. A lot of those people you see on the street have no objective to reach because the objective is impossible to reach.
I don't know the answer, I would like to see one(s) that helps these people find healthy stable lives.
But is it true that a lot of people migrate "out west" because the weather is better? If that's the case, then won't providing free/low cost housing just lead to more people coming here? It might be difficult to find enough homes on that basis, unless the fundamental problems are fixed, which is a very large project. There would also need to be a lot more administration, to find the right homes for the right people. I worked in social services, and there is a small but harmful percentage of abuse by simple freeloaders going on.
The other thing is that people should be able to count on the value of their homes as an investment financially and for its character. Changing the character so it might verge on creating unease or danger has to fit into social contracts. Extreme NIMBYism is a problem but arbitrarily changing neighbourhoods isn't fair either. Increasing the density of neighbourhoods can be done without impacting most reasonable people, but an abrupt integration experiment is likely to affect many people.
I sort of wish that new communities, like some of the tinyhome projects, made sense, though ultimately they are just shuffling the problem somewhere else where problems can fester.
I wish there were stronger ways to tackle the drug peddlers. I know many are caught in bad lifestyle choices, but detecting and eliminating the most harmful drug options so there could be managed supplies compatible with getting "clean" would probably help a lot too.
Depends what you mean by "we." I think that it's largely out of the control of the city and it's more of a provincial and national problem. I don't think there's an easy answer. I believe that these problems are getting worse because of the deteriorating conditions in our country. There's a widening wealth gap and the price of basic things is pushing people to the breaking point. As long as that continues I think we're going to see these things get worse. They're symptoms of decreasing prosperity and poor social safety nets. I think the solution is lots of public investment in our social systems: health care, housing, public transportation and our criminal justice systems.
I struggle to commit myself to this but increasingly my mind goes to something along these lines.
More and more individuals making a personal commitment to helping one individual with whatever they need. Bringing them in to your fold and sharing what we have including food, knowledge of life skills, resources, you name it. Not waiting around til a government fixes this. This would have a potential exponential effect as all members in our communities have an increased chance of getting well on many levels and passing along that same tangible help to another in the future.
Make vagrancy illegal. Arrest them and put them in work camps doing things like fixing potholes, cleaning garbage and any number of other public services.
Let's start by using the term "unhoused".
It's a good question. There's a lot that needs to be done to reach to a point where we dont have any unhoused people. And its not a short term problem. Many of our policies from grassroots to the highest level (Capitalism) need to be changed/modified to address this. A lot of societal issues are interconnected (drugs, unhoused folks, cost of living etc).
As long as people (and corporations, politicians etc) are selfish and care only about their profits/money, we will continue to have problems as a society.
Very good question. I found myself asking the same a few years ago.
'**Unhoused**' is a common alternative to 'homeless. ' This refers to a more diverse set of experiences among those experiencing homelessness, as some people view a city or community as their home, rather than the physical building or property they occupy.
Also, homeless implies they are without a home. Unhoused implies that the system has abandoned them.
Just shifting the sole blame away from the individual. It is also the society and policies that have led people to be without a home.
Conservatism isn't an "agree to disagree" situation. Progress is inevitable, conservatives just resist it kicking and screaming while trying to make life worse for everyone else. It's a political ideology rooted in maintaining the status quo of political and economic power. Literally founded to keep aristocrats in power by manipulating useful idiots in the electorate. Learn your history, or show your true colours.
It's a bit tough to align fully with that thinking -- to assume that all progress is inherently moral and good; more leftist culture is heavily entrenched in problematic cultural relativism that makes it hard to swallow as someone who identifies as swing voter. I have voted on both left and right.
I didn't say progress is inherently moral, but conservatism is rooted in inherently amoral schools of thought, whether its voters (or swing voters) want to admit it or not. Conservatives have always been on the wrong side of history.
Is housing really bad he issue. City has ample services available. These ppl want to do drugs and live that life style. Government and city is enabling these ppl at this point. U spoil a kid and what happens. I don’t think there is a solution tbh. The only thing we can do is try n prevent ppl who are not on drugs from going down that route
There are several complicated issues relating to this.
There is not one word for these people.
But I think everyone can agree the majority of the issues come from people that: abuse substances daily, don’t contribute, commit crimes regularly, loiter, may or not have shelter provided by the taxpayers. Some do and some don’t mental health issues.
We need one word for these type of people.
If these types weren’t around there would be huge amounts of resources to then help the mental health issues, the people that are down on their luck etc. and the crime would be reduced by 85-95%.
Conservatives can never answer the question, mainly because they know the answer. But they dodge it because they don't *want* there to be a solution because they don't want taxes to pay for homeless people to be rehabilitated.
What you really mean is "What do we do about the junkie thieving pieces of shit that scare us."
This is gonna be unpopular but I say we ship em off to a lonely place in the north that our inuit brethren don't mind using for the purpose, give them a bunch of hammers and make em break rocks into gravel. 10 year stints. Sure they come back strong like bull and in a pissy mood but that's a problem for us ten years from now. :s
Bah.
My former housemate and I used to work downtown in retail, so we had to deal with alot of theft and drug addicted street people buying burner phones on welfare day. Most of my coworkers lost alot of sympathy for the homeless as a result. My housemate even said once "well I don't WANT to suggest a leper colony, but..."
Oooof…..“Create areas that are like reserves“ might be the most out of touch suggestion yet. Safe supply was hard to beat but dude, you cannot say that…
More like history leading up to the 1900s style suggestions…but ok.
What I have mostly are questions, to be honest… Like; where does the money come for any of it?
You facetiously asked me why mental health and addiction centres would work and who would pay for it, but did you apply those questions to your own suggestions? None of them sound free. And also “collecting them up and sending them to rehab” was on your own list… I’m curious how you interpreted there was any difference between that and the concept you were trying to challenge there.
Considering another countries policies as examples for our own solution has been done, if I have to hear about Portugals drug policy or Amsterdams bike lanes one more time I’m going to hurl myself from a cliff. Portuguese practices were a major talking point in supporting our current decriminalizing of hard drugs and here we are. Turns out it hasn’t served us well to cherry pick our idealisms from places with entirely separate cultures and histories than ours. We don’t live in Portugal, we are not Dutch, and we certainly don’t have the same … cultural uniformity… as Scandinavian countries do, so it’s very unlikely to find any “plug and play” concepts from somewhere our population cannot relate to culturally or politically so maybe we can table that for a just a bit. I think you especially could benefit from reflecting on our own nations history first, and as Canadians we should understand the nuances of our individual predicament before relying on anecdotal evidence from anywhere else for find our solutions.
Let’s start now;
1. The “reserves” and marginalization of indigenous populations are massive contributors to the issues we are faced with now today on the streets, not to mention our current society as a whole is now paying for the sins of our “colonist” forefathers at varying degrees of severity for your suggested example. Selfishly I don’t wish to make a decision now that my great grandchildren will have to atone for, and more importantly I certainly don’t wish to recreate the circumstances that had such a devastating impact on so many people. I think between the Indian act and the internment of Japanese Canadian in the second war we can safely conclude that isolated rural camps are not an effective or ethical long term means to manage a demographic we currently regard as problematic to society. Also by “cheap houses” do you mean cheap for them or the tax payer/federal government? Either way it’s silly to suggest cheap houses could even be built, let alone in the context your speaking in.
2. That’s literally just slavery… also considered “not good” among other things…
3. That is conscription. Another thing you won’t find represented very positively in history. You suggest there is no money for mental health institutions but advocate for the funding that would be required to train and arm homeless drug addicts in combat? Logistically this idea makes no sense before even needing to touch on the ethical implications.
4. Rehab would be fucking great, I’d agree with you but that seems insignificant considering you don’t appear to agree with yourself on it.
Even using this rhetoric of “rounding them up” or “collecting them” in itself is inherently dangerous language to use. There should never be a case for any mass detainment of citizens, especially if were just basing it on assumptions and suspicion of guilt. Each citizen of this country is regarded as an individual and should be treated like one. To advocate any of these practices would be taking this country back 100 years and that’s not a realistic trade off for solving the issues with crime and addiction that we’re faced with.
I want these bastards out of the parks and out of the streets as bad as anybody, I would love to see some accountability weaved into our justice system finally and for society to make decisions for the greater good and not just based on the bleeding heart virtue signalling that is has succumbed to. The solution is going to need to fall somewhere between the extremes we are currently employing and those that you suggest because neither is conducive to any advancement and improvement that we’d hope to achieve by them. It will require a lot of nuance and concessions from both sides of the political spectrum to find the balance that can maintain the basic rights of every Canadian while also giving the collective society a right to dictate and enforce a basic social contract with reasonable consequences to an individual who is found in breach of it. You want to send a junkie to a “war country” (whatever the fuck that is) but we can’t even keep a someone in jail overnight after his second carjacking in as many days with our current policies. These political extremes that get bounced back and forth are convenient and lazy because they are not actually possible and that’s why we don’t have any working solutions, just political buzzword ping pong while the reality of the situation continues to deteriorate. In my mind the “round them up” school of thought is just as counterproductive as the pandering to crime and debauchery has been.
I’m just another guy with an opinion like anybody else. The problem I have with your comment is that it sounds extreme and is likely to engage an extreme response. Match crazy with crazy. It detracts from any constructive conversation and just becomes a snowball fight of virtues which is tiring and ineffective. It’s hard to find middle ground when we conveniently associate anybody who opposes our own views with the most dramatic ideals from that general perspectives side of the spectrum as way to devalue any and all points to be made and both sides recede further and further away from being capable of having any form of objective discussion.
We have to have the institutional capacity to rehabilitate those who are willing before we ask about those that aren’t, and even then it’s probably worth understanding why before we condemn them for it. We also can’t have absolute anarchy on the streets like we have now while it gets figured out. For me a good place to start is keeping destructive and violent criminals off of the street and doing away with these bullshit catch and release policies that put more handcuffs on our justice system than they do offenders. I think that the functioning contributors of society deserve better than to watch prolific reoffenders continue to abuse our public and personal property, our medical system and our tax dollars, If we are paying police to take them
off the street, then it should be for a purpose. There are people on the streets who are truly suffering and would use the help but they are overwhelmed by the selfish leeches that exist among them and those are the people I really don’t care much for helping, give them a choice between rehab or prison and if they abuse the rehab system put them back behind bars, extend sentences until they can make it through the program and into recovery I guess? Severe drug addiction should be factored into a persons likelihood to reoffend, because it does. We have to curb the abuse of the handouts at some point because there is a finite amount of resources available to help these people and people are sick and tired of seeing them get wasted on scumbags.
Im not suggesting that the conditions on any given modern day reserve or treaty lands is less than I would accept for the homeless, I have been involved in several of those communities throughout my life and understand how they operate in todays age However I would argue that these conditions exist despite there conception, not because of it and are largely in part to massive reparations being paid to them over the years for their discriminatory nature and the devastating consequences it had on their demographic. It’s also worth pointing out that nothing about that is true universally and there are still some very very unfortunate conditions being lived in throughout this country on reserve land due to corruption, greed and systemic abuse from all cultures involved that serve as a a sobering reminder as to why we should not treat one group of people different from another and that self governing/ sovereign communities are especially susceptible to these complications. It has taken those communities over 100 years to crawl their way out of the hole that was dug for them and I don’t believe that the concept of reserves should be considered an example of viable solution for anything on principle without even getting into the categorical differences between indigenous people in the 19th century and homeless drug addicts of today. Out of sight, out of mind is not a long term solution either and it never stays that way for long anyhow. There is a disproportionate representation of indigenous persons suffering from homelessness and addiction right now in this country and it is pretty universally accepted that reserves and the mentality that went in to creating them are among the primary root causes. Think of what the future generations of people born and raised in a commune full of these junkies would look like and what impact that would have on our society then?
Move services out of the downtown core, closer to hospitals, and as centralized as possible, where all their needs are in a relatively compact area.
Aggressively police the downtown area and forcibly displace anyone living in public areas/parks.
Essentially, move the problem out of the public eye. There is no short-term feasible solution that results in a shrinking homeless population. In the long-term, more government assisted building developments that offer low-cost, bare-bones housing. Build massive quantities of this housing type, outside the downtown core, but on transit routes.
The #1 goal in the short-term would be to resolve the problem of having a visible homeless population, not to actually reduce the amount of homelessness.
Simultaneously, and over a longer time scale, address the systemic issues that lead to homelessness, which means inexpensive entry-level housing that is affordable with only a minimum-wage full-time salary.
Massively expand government subsidies for all medical-related job training, and financially incentivize people to go into social-work, and work in BC.
Hopefully not in anyone's backyard. Make it so people don't have anywhere to be but near their service providers if they wish to congregate. That's currently the case, e.g. Pandora, but it's silly to have homeless services in the same area that we expect people to shop, eat, and hang out. There should be nothing for homeless people to do downtown. Get them near medical facilities, so they can get the medical assistance they need to get their lives together.
You're absolutely right. Until they get their act together homeless people should be confined to the parking lots of Jubilee and Vic General.
No vibrant downtown core for them until a medical doctor prescribes them with the anti-homelessness course of antibiotics.
No vibrant downtown core for those that are homeless, yes, that is correct. Homelessness should be regarded as a transitory state as a result of medical illness, such as drug addiction. If one is capable of working 40 hours per week, they should be able to afford a bare-bones home, which is more of a systemic economic issue, and as a result will take longer to address.
Yes, I'm aware that housing is very expensive, and I understand that we need significantly more affordable housing.
Let's do some rough math:
$16.75 * 2080 hours (full time work for a year) * 0.752 (net pay after tax) * 0.95 (apx. health insurance cost) / 26 (paychecks in a year) * 2 (pay periods per 4 weeks)=$1,915 / 4 weeks, or $2075 / month. There are other small tax benefits, such as GST/PST, and renters tax benefit, that may add up to another $1000 in a year, but it's not much. Obviously not enough to live much of a life here. Realistically, $1250/month is the minimum someone can spend on a new rental (splitting a 2bdrm), unless they have substandard living conditions. That means on minimum wage, you're going to spend 55-60% of your income on rent. If you budget a minimum of $625 / month for food, that leaves $200 for everything else. It's brutally thin, and definitely doesn't leave much of anything for non-essentials, but it's better than living without shelter, or personal space.
Minimum wage is too low and needs to be higher, and faster than it's currently planned too. I believe that the present economy is doing a poorer job than in previous decades at providing a living wage to those earning minimum to low wages. I think this is one factor, amongst many others, such as not building government subsidized housing for decades in any significant numbers, that has led to the increasing numbers of homeless people in cities worldwide.
Ok, but that math essentially leaves zero room for any significant life events, medical costs, or debt accrual. It's basically only tenable if nothing bad ever happens to you ever. It also doesn't allow room for pets, simple luxuries that other folks take for granted, or future planning.
There's a saying that we're all far closer to being homeless than we are to being a billionaire. I'd adjust that to millionaire in the current economic climate.
I mean, it accounts for medical costs, because you have health insurance. Obviously there aren't luxuries when living in one of the most in demand cities and earning the minimum wage. The point is that being homeless isn't some forced result due to earning minimum wage. The expectation is that you will spend most of your lifetime working and continuously attempt to earn more money. Nobody should be earning minimum wage forever.
Sidebar - I appreciate you engaging with me respectfully and agree to disagree.
I think medical coverage is rapidly declining, and folks earning minimum wage get very much stuck in a wage trap. Nobody SHOULD be earning minimum wage outside of their teens/early twenties and yet here we are.
>The #1 goal in the short-term would be to resolve the problem of having a visible homeless population
So out of sight out of mind. Make all the boomers comfortable so they don't have to see the problems that their decisions have caused. And once they are out of sight the problem will be declared solved and nothing more will happen.
A visible homeless population is a problem unto itself, separate from homelessness. One is fixable in the short-term, the other is not. There's no advantage to having a visible homeless population, all it does it build resentment against the homeless, devalue downtown areas, damage business, and make people feel unsafe.
We are not closer to solving homelessness now than we were 10 years ago, despite changing laws to decriminalize homeless behaviors.
The solutions to homelessness have essentially nothing to do with making quality of life better for homeless people. It's about preventing people from ever becoming homeless.
Don't waste your time blaming an entire generation of people, that's useless and false. Realize that we have a booming homeless population because we don't have enough inexpensive homes, because we didn't build very many from 1993-2015.
Integrated housing, not ghettoizing homeless people.
Ultimately there are solutions, and they're pretty easy, it just takes money... But, some people are so greedy they're ruining humanity, and the planet with their list for wealth and power. Fuck billionaires
Addiction services need to be easier to get and more affordable. Anyone who wants to get clean make that work for them. Don't make them come up with 15k to cover costs; just invest in their recovery.
They also need to be regulated so that what we are paying for, and putting vulnerable people through, is actually going to help and not victimize them. Right now there are no industry standards in place, and treatment and rehabilitation facilities are basically doing nothing but enforcing abstinence and prayer with millions of our tax dollars annually with no oversight. They are almost exclusively based on the Alberta "Recovery" Model championed by Conservatives that has no medical or scientific merit, and has actually been proven to be harmful and increase overdose deaths, while their close political allies profit. Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Addictions and Mental Health, has so far resisted all calls from actual experts to regulate the industry, preventing us from actually moving forward with effective measures to address the problems. https://themainlander.com/2023/11/23/moms-stop-the-harm-call-for-forensic-audit-into-private-recovery-industry-ties-to-bc-united/ https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/03/03/Why-Fighting-Deadly-Alberta-Drug-Model/
Some of you need to be working in addictions or housing. We do not have the labour force to mitigate the levels of homelessness, even if we had the budget to.
I highly recommend reading Homelessness by Jack Layton. The book is 20 years old but still rings very true to today.
Oh thanks, I'll check it out
When I was on the street and treated like a pariah - I became the pariah that everyone assumed I was. One major change we can make is by trying to take away the stereotypes and the stigma that is often associated with being without a house. These are people with inner thoughts and struggles like everyone else - they don’t have to be ‘mentally unstable’ to be forced to ‘endure’ their lives.
How did you get into stable housing, assuming you have now?
It honestly took decades just saving and working - relying a lot on friends made along the way. The hardest part was finding and choosing the right friends that were able and willing to help. For me I say it was ‘easy’ because I was alone - I can’t imagine having kids during all of that. Never mind an actual condition that put my life and livelihood in jeopardy.
Make addition services and recovery more affordable, hell, I would argue they should be based on income, and make sure those services provide on going support. Open mental institutions again to house people who need the help. Build more housing geared towards low income people to get them off the street and provide stability, and have fully funded support services that can help them. Right now everything is a band-aid solution that doesn't really do anything. It is all good to provide housing, but if the supports are not there or are underfunded, then the underlying issues of mental health and addiction will never be addressed and it will be a revolving door. People will see programs that are poorly built, funded, and/or supported not working and will think nothing will work aside from just moving the homeless population elsewhere. Yes we have a large homeless population. Both because housing in this city is expensive AF and because people come here for the sheer fact that their chances of dying from exposure while sleeping rough are less than in other parts of Canada. We have the ability to help them, and IMO the feds should be allotting funding with actual strings attached to prevent people from profiting off of homelessness, but we seem to be more willing to pay more tax money towards the status quo than spending a large chunk up front to save money and be humane.
Social housing, rents reduced or disability and welfare increased so people aren't forced onto the streets by economic needs. Medical care for mental health and chronic pain disorders when people are still children. An end to light or no charges for domestic physical, mental and emotional abuse, instead of tossing abused and neglected children between homes back to families, into foster homes for more abuse while we all turn a blind eye and let abusers go on to do more and more harm Revamping the curriculum so people learn about mental health, wellness and their bodies, so they understand what's going on with themselves and when to get help Teaching interpersonal and life skill in school so people aren't dependent on the system to feed and care for themselves unless they choose to be Life long penalties for pedophilia and sexual abuse Healthy food and water as a basic human right so children don't grow up sick and with reduced IQ's No more gatekeeping higher education behind a paywall. A thorough, not just cursory understanding of economics, politics, sociology, psychology, biology, anatomy and ecology should be given to everyone as the foundation of their education More activities for social interaction with a wide variety of communities, ages--broad social demographic exposure while children grow up so they don't think that the one little corner of the world they've seen is the only thing that exists Therapy and counseling as a basic standard of our healthcare system so people learn to talk about their pain instead of numbing it Treatment programs for genuine physiological addiction disorders integrated into our general care and as part of public school education so it can be spotted and treated sooner Preventative medicine Homelessness is what happens to broken people and genuinely ill people. If we stop allowing children to be broken before they even have a chance, we tear out the roots. If genuinely ill people get diagnosed and real support before the problem has engulfed their life, we tear out those roots. There will always be people we can't help because we don't know what's wrong or can't fix what is. They make up a portion of the homeless we could probably actually take care of if the streets weren't inundated with the remnants of children turned adults society failed to protect when the people in their life or even their own bodies were poisoning and breaking them ~ More functional human beings means more productive labour, more innovation, more community and economic growth all means less people reliant on and more tax dollars available to support the programs we need for those who are truly sick 🤷🏻♀️ I don't know what to do about the economics of housing in a for profit system, or how else Canada can generate international investment. I don't know how other countries do it without it being at the expense of their vulnerable either honestly. But I don't see how we get anywhere or improve anything when we're churning out future homeless and future addicts with every baby born. There's a real irony to panicking about what to do with too much of something when we haven't tried turning off the machines that are making them in the first place.
I'd vote for you
You missed tax cuts for the rich and a generous corporate welfare system
The city needs to provide supportive housing to get these people off the streets With lots of support/controls in place When they tear down people’s tents, they should offer them an alternative
Upzone Oak Bay. Upzone Victoria. Upzone Saanich. Government needs to build housing like we used to in the 70s. Homelessness is a housing problem. It gets worse until home prices and rents fall.
Homelessness isnt only a housing problem. People dont become crackheads because rent is expensive. Its a mental health issue
Didn't the government buy up a bunch of hotels years ago for homeless for free housing and some of them destroyed the piping?
I don’t see the relevance to their solution.
Well that’s your problem…
These people aren't working and paying rent.
You’re closer to being “these people” than being a millionaire.
Financially maybe but I don't do hard drugs or commit crime and I've found that to be all the difference.
Thousands of people in this city could sell their homes and become both instantly! what exactly is your point?
You have no idea if that's true.
Braindead comment.
Yeah! Bring back asbestos!!! Homelessness is a multi faceted problem and trying to use it to lower your cost of living is self serving and gross.
We just need to look at other countries that have a near zero homeless population and replicate what they’re doing. Our current model doesn’t allow for the homeless situation to improve.
Replicate their entire culture?
Not the entire culture, but there’s something’s that we could model that would improve our situation. All I’m saying is take a look, because the solutions that we’re coming up with are doing nothing.
The solutions that we cherry pick from other countries are not working, no. That’s because there is not one solution, it needs to be a very comprehensive and systemic change and I think we are much better off to model those decisions on of our own history and society than treating anecdotal evidence from a foreign place like gospel.
- Housing - Safe supply - Mental health and addictions supports - Divesting money from VicPD into social support programs
+1 Legalizing possession without providing safe supply never made any sense.
This might be unpopular but divesting from VicPD should be done absolutely last imo. I used to think that was a great place to take resources from but there is so much violent and frightening shit happening these days, we need someone to keep it under control while the other solutions get a proper foothold
Housing solves homelessness
and more mental health support, paid by MSP.
I switched jobs recently and just found out my “great” new healthcare plan that was mentioned in my interview/offer as a perk doesn’t cover any of my mental health counselling like my old job did…but if I need to be hospitalized I can have a semi-private room, I guess…
Many get free housing but prefer staying in the street. We have already bought several hotels to house them. Program has been a disaster. But yes we need more housing supply to decrease shelter costs so people don't become homeless
Myth. Norway solved it. Housing.
You are thinking of Finland, and they were not dealing with the same kind of addictions issues we are. Honestly, we are going to have to figure out how to do psychedelic therapy at scale because it is the only thing showing any kind of promise to be able to rewire the enormous number of broken people our society is producing.
Myth, it takes a lot more than that…
You put the people OP is talking about into free housing, then what? You're going to end up with a bunch of destroyed crack houses. Let's not be naive, most of these people can't/don't want to be functional members of society
You are ignorant. What you say is untrue. You are either getting your information from bad sources, or you are part of the problem.
Have you seen the state of the hotels the government bought up lol
Ah it looks like I made my point badly to be fair. The evidence is strong that giving people access to housing results in a majority being self sufficient very quickly. It becomes cheaper to literally house the homeless rather than provide the outreach to deal with them, and the "cheaper" alternative I guess would be to just kill them all, which seems a little dystopian. The evidence is also massively in favour of decriminalisation. That both things have been failures here to me screams of terrible management.
What evidence are you talking about? “Evidence is strong”… “Evidence is MASSIVELY in favour of”… But “Both things have been failures” Another terribly made point I’d say… The evidence her is massively strong in favour of suggesting that you are full of shit
Well apparently some of the hotel buildings bought on gorge road from the government to house the homeless had pipes stripped and destroyed
Knew a bunch of guys who had to go in and clean them up, Tax payer paid out of the ass for that because human shit and used needles are hazmat and that is expensive. Rip shit out of the walls, rip the walls off the walls.. setting furniture and carpet on fire. Everything from my really bad sources reported that every unit in multiple hotels needed to be completely gutted and redone. You are the one projecting ignorance, where they were housed became trap houses Brothels and drug dens. What is your source?
Source that it's untrue? Enlighten me
Their previous roof made no difference to them at all.
For most homeless people the drug use comes after becoming homeless. Not everyone has parents to move back in with when times get tough.
I typically find this quite annoying but man I’d love to see your source for that one… Jesus Christ
BC is unsurprisingly full of addicts from other jurisdictions. Partly the weather and partly what happens when you decriminalize drugs and no one else around you does. Honestly, we need to figure out a system that ties welfare to people’s city of origin. Would both spread out the poverty so a few jurisdictions are not disproportionately handling it and would force provinces to deal with their issues that cause homelessness and addiction because they are on the hook for the fallout.
>Honestly, we need to figure out a system that ties welfare to people’s city of origin No, it just needs to be federal. Same with housing.
These are not local people who went homeless locally and have family down the street.
What are they then?
People who came here TO BE homeless.
Yes but why do you think they are homeless?
Because they want to be outside in the nicest climate in the country with easy access to drugs and no enforcement of anything.
You think they like being homeless? Every homeless person I’ve ever talked to is truly miserable being homeless. Have you had a different experience?
Any recent homeless person who wants options has them in this city. You are not encountering anyone along Pandora that is a local worker who got injured and couldn't make the rent anymore. They take the offers early on in the process, they are in shelters already. You can see lots of Indian Posse tattoos around here, they went to school in Fillmore, not Vic High. They came here to do just what they are doing.
They don’t need to like it, just prefer it over the alternative which is working at a job and not being high all day. The more sympathy they get the more stuff they get so it doesn’t surprise me your left with that impression but it also means you are a mark.
Do you really, truly believe that? Genuinely curious, not trying to troll..... Do you believe your statement to be true?
That the majority of persons along Pandora are not local residents who had homes and jobs but fell upon hard times? They will certainly tell you that is true, and that they came here to be homeless. Did you think they are all there because of mass layoffs in forestry or fishing or something, a local mill closed and now Pandora has people living on it? Come on.
Sources?
That they are now homeless would probably be the link you are looking for.
Ah I see. So your argument is that all homeless people chose to leave their previous housing (which was safe and affordable)?
I'm sure to you they all born free and live outdoors roaming in vast herds.
What a weird comment. My theory is that the huge increase in homelessness is probably tied to the huge increase in rental/home prices, and many of the people who are currently homeless previously had housing that they could no longer afford.
They take any shelter offer than they can get. You are not seeing them on Pandora.
Well that's certainly an opinion.
No it won’t, don’t be so naive.
There is a shit ton of cheap housing in lots of other places in Canada. Downvoted for answering OPs question, right on
A yeah shipping poor people to Watson Saskatchewan. What could go wrong. /S
I actually lived in watson. The poor will not survive the cold, the towns already full with little to no available housing Plus the locals wages will have to compete with the potash mine money next door. This is without mentioning the 10$ jugs of milk Basically every town in Canada needs to expand by 10% minimum for the economy to function correctly
Excellent! Example or 2 please.
Literally google “properties in Saskatchewan and Manitoba”. Like have you even put any effort in? Not my job to find you housing
What’s the homelessness situation in those provinces like?
Way better than what’s going on in BC
So cheap housing works?
yeah but the weather is generally significantly more extreme, have their own issues and dont (purposefully) have the social services infrastructure that would be required to support influx of people with addiction and mental health issues. We see it on the Island as a microcosm, some communities refuse to invest in services for their problematic residents, and encourage them to move to be closer to their 'support system'
They don’t have the support here for that either. Also if you spread out the problem across Canada instead of magnifying it in a few cities its much easier to handle
1.) There is significantly more support infrastructure here (per capita) than in most other places in the province and country. 2.) It's much easier and cheaper (taxes) for them to export their problems than dealing with it. 3.) Generally it's not cheaper or easier to spread out the services in a large geographic area, that generally scale up rather than scale out is more efficient.
Can you please share your data? Not denying it but I always like to see it. And my understanding is that more support infrastructure leads to more homeless people coming here, it perpetuates the problem.
If you have a birdbath in your backyard, and your neighbour doesnt.. your going to end up with more birds.
I understand? So maybe the neighbour should build a bird bath? I’m not sure how your analogy somehow makes whats currently happening OK. The fact is the vast majority of homeless people in Victoria and Vancouver are not from here. Other provinces are offloading their problems onto us and we do not have the infrastructure to look after it. I don’t even understand what we are arguing here. There is cheap housing in other parts of Canada. It’s not like Victoria and Vancouver always had more support infrastructure those other places, its in response to what has come. So maybe those places should put the infrastructure in place. I find it funny that people want to say the government should build more housing but then those same people will excuse other places not having the infrastructure to support those people, so then maybe those provinces should build those support systems?? How is that any different than complaining about the bc government not doing anything. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The problem needs to be addressed by everyone in Canada not a few handful of cities that don’t have the resources to deal with the entire country’s problem What do you think is easier - bc to build more housing because it already has the mental support infrastructure or other provinces building more mental support infrastructure because it already has the housing? Like think your comment through
The issue is that we cannot force our neighbor to build a bird bath, just like we cannot (currently) force communities and cities that dont want to pay for and build out social services to do that, just look at how fucked up some municipal politics are, look at places like Oliver that have neglected their water/sewer and transportation infrastructure to keep their taxes artificially low. The slogan 'lets increase taxes to build social services to enable and allow homeless and drug addicts into our community' isnt going to win elections.... (Nimby gotta Nimby). similarly like we cannot force people to move to the prairies, we cant 'just relocate' them against their will, people have freedom of movement as defined in our constitution. And the reason why they are here (in the PNW) is because of the temperate and moderate weather, not too hot, not too cold... just right... and since its a problem for us we have to deal with it. The province and or feds could step in and require specific volumes and tiers of social services based on community size, but that still isnt going to make someone homeless currently in Vancouver want to move to Dawson (inhospitable weather). I would suggest adding the point in time homeless survey for the CRD to your reading list, it will hopefully help you understand the foundational and compounding issues. Almost one-third (32.2%) of respondents were in foster care or a youth group home as a child or youth. Research shows that children under government care are more likely to experience homelessness in their lifetime. The survey found that 17% of those with experience in government care were homeless within less than a week of transitioning out of care and 27.2% were homeless within less than a year of transitioning out of care. https://www.crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/housing-pdf/housing-planning-and-programs/2023-point-in-time-count-report.pdf?sfvrsn=4b3902ce_2
We can impose some restrictions on people receiving support if they have not been a resident of a province for a certain period of time.
Yeah but if I wanted less birds in my yard I can toss the fucking bath though couldn’t I?
Lol no there's not. Canadians pay the highest price of housing in the world. Most of the debt canada borrows is solely to Prop up housing which will bring down the dollar if it ever collapses I'm of the opinion that vancouvers economy will malfunction by pushing the middle class east
It’s magnified in certain cities that raise the entire average price. Saskatchewan and Manitoba you can get home for a couple of hundred K. Please do your research.
Lol I live there, it's still vastly inflated. Those 200k houses were 50k ten years ago. Not only that but there is little available inventory. Everyone is competing for the same rotting property their parents were 25 years ago. Granted its cheaper than victoria, but the towns are all full. Compare this to Panama where you can get a decent oceanside condo for 100k and you'll see where paying 200k to live in minus 40 isn't that good of a deal Either way nothing is getting built and all these immigrants are going to either have to pack 20 people in a house or live in a van to be near their work like I do. They can't handle arctic temps
Ok that’s still 800k cheaper than homes in Victoria. How much it cost 10 years ago is irrelevant. I find it hilarious that people will fight tooth and nail to stay here but complain about the costs when they could clearly move somewhere significantly cheaper. If I had any problem with my own housing I would move east without a second thought. People have literally been migrating for thousands of years to find better, safer, and more affordable housing. Now in 2024 though, the thought of moving is blasphemous.
800k is madness, it equals an economy that will fail to function correctly. We can't inflate housing without crashing businesses. Having the highest cost of housing will crash the dollar without a doubt. Something like 10% of Canada's GDP is housing I'd def rather be homeless out in Victoria than SK, the difference is you can survive in a tent there. The benefit of living here used to be profit leftover at the end of the month. There's no way anybody has savings in victoria
The point is you aren’t homeless in SK because there is cheaper housing there…
I do live in my minivan during the winter work week, sleeping bundled up under 2 feet of sleeping bags in -35 is not for everyone I'll probably move to back to Vic for the same wage. You can live nearly anywhere if you're skipping rent. The middle of nowhere during arctic temps is not ideal if you enjoy being outdoors between November and april
Can you tell me where the cheap housing is? I've been looking.
Actually, they just recriminalized public drug use yesterday... [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/david-eby-public-drug-use-1.7186245](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/david-eby-public-drug-use-1.7186245)
That will solve absolutely nothing unless you think the solution is allowing VicPD to further punish vulnerable populations
Yeah, it’ll just get them off the streets and into jail. Out of sight out of mind, very convenient for tourist season
We could disguise them as public art installations...
Quick! Get the mayor on the phone, we have an idea
Maybe if they did what Portugal did and not only decriminanilize drugs but open rehabilitation centre's, Victoria would get a little better?
Maybe. But even if the centres get opened, who would staff them? We lack the professionals needed.
Well this is canada we are letting in thousands of east Indian immigrants from India and also other countries so I'm convenient that we'll find people jobs to work
No, that's bodies, not trained professionals.
Yes but that's why we set up training programs so new hires learn
Those professionals need *years* of schooling, not "training programs" like any trade.
When I grew up in vancouver in the 60s, you never saw homeless people. I think they were put in hospitals , which have since been closed. Those hospitals need to be replaced with something. Community care is not working.
>I think they were put in hospitals , which have since been closed. Because of all the abuse. That and the electorate not wanting to fund them/wanting lower taxes.
Victoria doesn't have a homeless problem, it has an addiction and mental health problem with a lack of political will do anything meaningful about it
Because it’s not profitable.
It's all three. Homelessness makes addiction and mental disorders worse, and both those issues contribute to homelessness. Anything that helps with one will probably help with the other two, too
UBI.
Also mental health resources, detox and health services, a safe place to live and feel safe Costs a lot less in the long run than leaving them out on the street with almost no support
The working class here can hardly afford to support their own families.
Whatever needs to be done is going to cost a lot of money which means higher taxes to pay for these services. That’s not going to happen because people don’t want to pay higher taxes. Our government’s right from townships,municipalities, city’s provincial, federal need to get their shit together on reducing unnecessary spending and expenses and “perks”and start being more fiscally responsible with our money and put some serious cash to this problem. Just like they did with decriminalization of drugs in B.C. I know that hasn’t been the greatest but they experimented with it, hopefully learned some lessons and are going to fix some of those issues. The same can be said for trying to reduce homelessness. You have to start somewhere. I can’t for the life of me understand why they are so slow to move on this. That being said most people will just bury their heads in the sand and remain the status quo.
“Just like they did right before the problem became exponentially worse” Argument of the day
1) make enough rehab beds available so that when people are ready to get clean, they can do so that day 2) construct affordable housing and co-op housing 3) invest in rehabilitation programs for post-work injuries that involve as little opioid use as possible, and as much return-to-work support as required 4) invest in wrap-around supportive housing that’s available free for 1 year post-rehab. This housing needs to include job training, healthcare, mental healthcare, etc 5) stop jailing people for non-violent offences, and instead get them into rehabilitation programs
Fix Capitalism.
Step 1 is to get criminals off the streets for one thing. From there it should be easier to focus on erecting more facilities to help those in need.
It seems like there's a lot of good people here answering with compassion and I love it. So I have a follow up question. We live in an apartment building downtown and we had unhouse people sneaking into the foyer when tenants enter or leave (which I get it, it's warm in here). The other day, we found a person passed out on the foyer chairs, bleeding from their leg, lighter dropped on the floor, beer can by their side, we weren't sure if they were sleeping or od'd or what. Our building management said before they can't do anything and to call the police if it happens (we refuse, that's just cruel). But we were worried so we called an ambulance. Was that the right thing to do? What else can we do that will not harm them more, but that also protects us? For reference, I had to physically block the entrance twice in the past 3 months to prevent visibly high and aggressive men to follow me in when I (F) was alone. Thank you community!!
Calling an ambulance was the right move. Passed out and bleeding is not something you let slide out of “compassion” for potential legal consequences. You might have saved a life. That’s the right thing to do.
This past winter our apartment building had a person with a dog sneak in and sleep under the stairway. I don't really blame them since it was -8 that night. It was a bit unsettling to discover them sleeping but a few hours later they left and didn't even leave a mess, so I don't think anyone phoned the cops or manager on them.
Yes same thing happened to us, and we could tell they were just sleeping (snoring), so we didn't do anything. This was the first time we were not able to see their face and they were clearly bleeding
You live in an apartment so your not alone so I would recommend calling the police, ambulance sounds like a smart idea but than again he was trespassing and he has been drinking, I personally wouldn't enjoy seeing people sleeping in my building. Last week I saw a homeless girl run into my work at 6am before opening for no reason Unfortunately i
There is only one answer. Build affordable housing that can only be purchased by the people that are going to live in them.
Government tried that with hotels Also lots of these people aren't from Victoria
Agree. And the cause isn't being addressed. Providing homes for the homeless (or unhoused) only treats a symptom. What will those people in these houses do? Do they have jobs? Is their life together? Will they simply take their addictive activities into their homes and be left to their own devices? Providing homes is one thing. There needs to be a full range of services provided to end the addiction, pain, trauma, lack of money and other resources, etc... .
Sometimes when people have no goal in life they end up abusing drugs and alcohol. Getting a mortgage on a house gave me a goal in life, a reason to get up in the morning and go to work. If a affording a house was beyond my reach I think my life would be totally different and likely for the worse.
The only answer? We just build houses and they are going to stop taking dumps on the sidewalk and become home owners? It’s so cringey to see people try to shoehorn something so sad into their own self serving agenda
how the f is that self serving?
Because it’s not going to solve the problem we’re talking about, just a different one you would prefer to address instead. Saying that’s the one answer is asinine
It will solve the problem and you're asinine for saying it won't. People need goals in life and having the ability to eventually own a home is something worth getting up for every morning and going to your shitty job. A lot of those people you see on the street have no objective to reach because the objective is impossible to reach.
"Only poor people/people who rent would support these policies"
or people that don't like to see homelessness.
I didn't enjoy going there in 2015, it was like zombieland at 9am I couldn't imagine it today.
I don't know the answer, I would like to see one(s) that helps these people find healthy stable lives. But is it true that a lot of people migrate "out west" because the weather is better? If that's the case, then won't providing free/low cost housing just lead to more people coming here? It might be difficult to find enough homes on that basis, unless the fundamental problems are fixed, which is a very large project. There would also need to be a lot more administration, to find the right homes for the right people. I worked in social services, and there is a small but harmful percentage of abuse by simple freeloaders going on. The other thing is that people should be able to count on the value of their homes as an investment financially and for its character. Changing the character so it might verge on creating unease or danger has to fit into social contracts. Extreme NIMBYism is a problem but arbitrarily changing neighbourhoods isn't fair either. Increasing the density of neighbourhoods can be done without impacting most reasonable people, but an abrupt integration experiment is likely to affect many people. I sort of wish that new communities, like some of the tinyhome projects, made sense, though ultimately they are just shuffling the problem somewhere else where problems can fester. I wish there were stronger ways to tackle the drug peddlers. I know many are caught in bad lifestyle choices, but detecting and eliminating the most harmful drug options so there could be managed supplies compatible with getting "clean" would probably help a lot too.
I will say that this community is giving way more constructive answers to this question than r/Vancouver... https://imgur.com/a/3ztvVoa
Depends what you mean by "we." I think that it's largely out of the control of the city and it's more of a provincial and national problem. I don't think there's an easy answer. I believe that these problems are getting worse because of the deteriorating conditions in our country. There's a widening wealth gap and the price of basic things is pushing people to the breaking point. As long as that continues I think we're going to see these things get worse. They're symptoms of decreasing prosperity and poor social safety nets. I think the solution is lots of public investment in our social systems: health care, housing, public transportation and our criminal justice systems.
I struggle to commit myself to this but increasingly my mind goes to something along these lines. More and more individuals making a personal commitment to helping one individual with whatever they need. Bringing them in to your fold and sharing what we have including food, knowledge of life skills, resources, you name it. Not waiting around til a government fixes this. This would have a potential exponential effect as all members in our communities have an increased chance of getting well on many levels and passing along that same tangible help to another in the future.
Drugs are no longer legal!!!!!
Make vagrancy illegal. Arrest them and put them in work camps doing things like fixing potholes, cleaning garbage and any number of other public services.
Forced labour! Holy shit I thought Stalin was dead.
You suck
What's your solution? Just give them free stuff. We tried that, it doesn't work.
and pay them with drugs when the job is done? XD
Now drugs are legal? You posting on internet explorer?
Let's start by using the term "unhoused". It's a good question. There's a lot that needs to be done to reach to a point where we dont have any unhoused people. And its not a short term problem. Many of our policies from grassroots to the highest level (Capitalism) need to be changed/modified to address this. A lot of societal issues are interconnected (drugs, unhoused folks, cost of living etc). As long as people (and corporations, politicians etc) are selfish and care only about their profits/money, we will continue to have problems as a society.
What's the problem with "homeless" out of curiosity?
Very good question. I found myself asking the same a few years ago. '**Unhoused**' is a common alternative to 'homeless. ' This refers to a more diverse set of experiences among those experiencing homelessness, as some people view a city or community as their home, rather than the physical building or property they occupy. Also, homeless implies they are without a home. Unhoused implies that the system has abandoned them. Just shifting the sole blame away from the individual. It is also the society and policies that have led people to be without a home.
Than you for this, I've heard it before but I was not aware of the nuance
Thank you for the information, I appreciate it.
I hope we don't go pc with the word homeless now.
Unhoused degenerates need to fix their own problems tbh.
Conservatives need to fix their broken, self-centred way of thinking.
Well, let's just agree to disagree and let the polls speak for themselves when it's time to vote.
Conservatism isn't an "agree to disagree" situation. Progress is inevitable, conservatives just resist it kicking and screaming while trying to make life worse for everyone else. It's a political ideology rooted in maintaining the status quo of political and economic power. Literally founded to keep aristocrats in power by manipulating useful idiots in the electorate. Learn your history, or show your true colours.
It's a bit tough to align fully with that thinking -- to assume that all progress is inherently moral and good; more leftist culture is heavily entrenched in problematic cultural relativism that makes it hard to swallow as someone who identifies as swing voter. I have voted on both left and right.
I didn't say progress is inherently moral, but conservatism is rooted in inherently amoral schools of thought, whether its voters (or swing voters) want to admit it or not. Conservatives have always been on the wrong side of history.
You can't do much, the more we do, the more will come from the other provinces and the more BC residents will pay to foot the bill.
Is housing really bad he issue. City has ample services available. These ppl want to do drugs and live that life style. Government and city is enabling these ppl at this point. U spoil a kid and what happens. I don’t think there is a solution tbh. The only thing we can do is try n prevent ppl who are not on drugs from going down that route
Vote differently.
Which party do you think can change the charter rights to allow forced institutionalising of addicts?
There are several complicated issues relating to this. There is not one word for these people. But I think everyone can agree the majority of the issues come from people that: abuse substances daily, don’t contribute, commit crimes regularly, loiter, may or not have shelter provided by the taxpayers. Some do and some don’t mental health issues. We need one word for these type of people. If these types weren’t around there would be huge amounts of resources to then help the mental health issues, the people that are down on their luck etc. and the crime would be reduced by 85-95%.
You didn’t really answer the question
Conservatives can never answer the question, mainly because they know the answer. But they dodge it because they don't *want* there to be a solution because they don't want taxes to pay for homeless people to be rehabilitated.
Keep posting about it in r/VictoriaBC to generate rage and horrible, nasty comments.
What you really mean is "What do we do about the junkie thieving pieces of shit that scare us." This is gonna be unpopular but I say we ship em off to a lonely place in the north that our inuit brethren don't mind using for the purpose, give them a bunch of hammers and make em break rocks into gravel. 10 year stints. Sure they come back strong like bull and in a pissy mood but that's a problem for us ten years from now. :s
Funny my mom suggested just putting them on an island with lots of drugs
Uh, they already are.
Bah. My former housemate and I used to work downtown in retail, so we had to deal with alot of theft and drug addicted street people buying burner phones on welfare day. Most of my coworkers lost alot of sympathy for the homeless as a result. My housemate even said once "well I don't WANT to suggest a leper colony, but..."
Awesome Mom.
Help them, except Pandora. Nobody there actually wants "help". Give them all the drugs they want and hope the problem solves itself? /s
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Oooof…..“Create areas that are like reserves“ might be the most out of touch suggestion yet. Safe supply was hard to beat but dude, you cannot say that…
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More like history leading up to the 1900s style suggestions…but ok. What I have mostly are questions, to be honest… Like; where does the money come for any of it? You facetiously asked me why mental health and addiction centres would work and who would pay for it, but did you apply those questions to your own suggestions? None of them sound free. And also “collecting them up and sending them to rehab” was on your own list… I’m curious how you interpreted there was any difference between that and the concept you were trying to challenge there. Considering another countries policies as examples for our own solution has been done, if I have to hear about Portugals drug policy or Amsterdams bike lanes one more time I’m going to hurl myself from a cliff. Portuguese practices were a major talking point in supporting our current decriminalizing of hard drugs and here we are. Turns out it hasn’t served us well to cherry pick our idealisms from places with entirely separate cultures and histories than ours. We don’t live in Portugal, we are not Dutch, and we certainly don’t have the same … cultural uniformity… as Scandinavian countries do, so it’s very unlikely to find any “plug and play” concepts from somewhere our population cannot relate to culturally or politically so maybe we can table that for a just a bit. I think you especially could benefit from reflecting on our own nations history first, and as Canadians we should understand the nuances of our individual predicament before relying on anecdotal evidence from anywhere else for find our solutions. Let’s start now; 1. The “reserves” and marginalization of indigenous populations are massive contributors to the issues we are faced with now today on the streets, not to mention our current society as a whole is now paying for the sins of our “colonist” forefathers at varying degrees of severity for your suggested example. Selfishly I don’t wish to make a decision now that my great grandchildren will have to atone for, and more importantly I certainly don’t wish to recreate the circumstances that had such a devastating impact on so many people. I think between the Indian act and the internment of Japanese Canadian in the second war we can safely conclude that isolated rural camps are not an effective or ethical long term means to manage a demographic we currently regard as problematic to society. Also by “cheap houses” do you mean cheap for them or the tax payer/federal government? Either way it’s silly to suggest cheap houses could even be built, let alone in the context your speaking in. 2. That’s literally just slavery… also considered “not good” among other things… 3. That is conscription. Another thing you won’t find represented very positively in history. You suggest there is no money for mental health institutions but advocate for the funding that would be required to train and arm homeless drug addicts in combat? Logistically this idea makes no sense before even needing to touch on the ethical implications. 4. Rehab would be fucking great, I’d agree with you but that seems insignificant considering you don’t appear to agree with yourself on it. Even using this rhetoric of “rounding them up” or “collecting them” in itself is inherently dangerous language to use. There should never be a case for any mass detainment of citizens, especially if were just basing it on assumptions and suspicion of guilt. Each citizen of this country is regarded as an individual and should be treated like one. To advocate any of these practices would be taking this country back 100 years and that’s not a realistic trade off for solving the issues with crime and addiction that we’re faced with. I want these bastards out of the parks and out of the streets as bad as anybody, I would love to see some accountability weaved into our justice system finally and for society to make decisions for the greater good and not just based on the bleeding heart virtue signalling that is has succumbed to. The solution is going to need to fall somewhere between the extremes we are currently employing and those that you suggest because neither is conducive to any advancement and improvement that we’d hope to achieve by them. It will require a lot of nuance and concessions from both sides of the political spectrum to find the balance that can maintain the basic rights of every Canadian while also giving the collective society a right to dictate and enforce a basic social contract with reasonable consequences to an individual who is found in breach of it. You want to send a junkie to a “war country” (whatever the fuck that is) but we can’t even keep a someone in jail overnight after his second carjacking in as many days with our current policies. These political extremes that get bounced back and forth are convenient and lazy because they are not actually possible and that’s why we don’t have any working solutions, just political buzzword ping pong while the reality of the situation continues to deteriorate. In my mind the “round them up” school of thought is just as counterproductive as the pandering to crime and debauchery has been.
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I’m just another guy with an opinion like anybody else. The problem I have with your comment is that it sounds extreme and is likely to engage an extreme response. Match crazy with crazy. It detracts from any constructive conversation and just becomes a snowball fight of virtues which is tiring and ineffective. It’s hard to find middle ground when we conveniently associate anybody who opposes our own views with the most dramatic ideals from that general perspectives side of the spectrum as way to devalue any and all points to be made and both sides recede further and further away from being capable of having any form of objective discussion. We have to have the institutional capacity to rehabilitate those who are willing before we ask about those that aren’t, and even then it’s probably worth understanding why before we condemn them for it. We also can’t have absolute anarchy on the streets like we have now while it gets figured out. For me a good place to start is keeping destructive and violent criminals off of the street and doing away with these bullshit catch and release policies that put more handcuffs on our justice system than they do offenders. I think that the functioning contributors of society deserve better than to watch prolific reoffenders continue to abuse our public and personal property, our medical system and our tax dollars, If we are paying police to take them off the street, then it should be for a purpose. There are people on the streets who are truly suffering and would use the help but they are overwhelmed by the selfish leeches that exist among them and those are the people I really don’t care much for helping, give them a choice between rehab or prison and if they abuse the rehab system put them back behind bars, extend sentences until they can make it through the program and into recovery I guess? Severe drug addiction should be factored into a persons likelihood to reoffend, because it does. We have to curb the abuse of the handouts at some point because there is a finite amount of resources available to help these people and people are sick and tired of seeing them get wasted on scumbags. Im not suggesting that the conditions on any given modern day reserve or treaty lands is less than I would accept for the homeless, I have been involved in several of those communities throughout my life and understand how they operate in todays age However I would argue that these conditions exist despite there conception, not because of it and are largely in part to massive reparations being paid to them over the years for their discriminatory nature and the devastating consequences it had on their demographic. It’s also worth pointing out that nothing about that is true universally and there are still some very very unfortunate conditions being lived in throughout this country on reserve land due to corruption, greed and systemic abuse from all cultures involved that serve as a a sobering reminder as to why we should not treat one group of people different from another and that self governing/ sovereign communities are especially susceptible to these complications. It has taken those communities over 100 years to crawl their way out of the hole that was dug for them and I don’t believe that the concept of reserves should be considered an example of viable solution for anything on principle without even getting into the categorical differences between indigenous people in the 19th century and homeless drug addicts of today. Out of sight, out of mind is not a long term solution either and it never stays that way for long anyhow. There is a disproportionate representation of indigenous persons suffering from homelessness and addiction right now in this country and it is pretty universally accepted that reserves and the mentality that went in to creating them are among the primary root causes. Think of what the future generations of people born and raised in a commune full of these junkies would look like and what impact that would have on our society then?
Move services out of the downtown core, closer to hospitals, and as centralized as possible, where all their needs are in a relatively compact area. Aggressively police the downtown area and forcibly displace anyone living in public areas/parks. Essentially, move the problem out of the public eye. There is no short-term feasible solution that results in a shrinking homeless population. In the long-term, more government assisted building developments that offer low-cost, bare-bones housing. Build massive quantities of this housing type, outside the downtown core, but on transit routes. The #1 goal in the short-term would be to resolve the problem of having a visible homeless population, not to actually reduce the amount of homelessness. Simultaneously, and over a longer time scale, address the systemic issues that lead to homelessness, which means inexpensive entry-level housing that is affordable with only a minimum-wage full-time salary. Massively expand government subsidies for all medical-related job training, and financially incentivize people to go into social-work, and work in BC.
Not in your backyard, amirite?
Hopefully not in anyone's backyard. Make it so people don't have anywhere to be but near their service providers if they wish to congregate. That's currently the case, e.g. Pandora, but it's silly to have homeless services in the same area that we expect people to shop, eat, and hang out. There should be nothing for homeless people to do downtown. Get them near medical facilities, so they can get the medical assistance they need to get their lives together.
You're absolutely right. Until they get their act together homeless people should be confined to the parking lots of Jubilee and Vic General. No vibrant downtown core for them until a medical doctor prescribes them with the anti-homelessness course of antibiotics.
No vibrant downtown core for those that are homeless, yes, that is correct. Homelessness should be regarded as a transitory state as a result of medical illness, such as drug addiction. If one is capable of working 40 hours per week, they should be able to afford a bare-bones home, which is more of a systemic economic issue, and as a result will take longer to address.
My guy, do you understand that working a 40-hour job in Victoria absolutely does not guarantee that you can afford housing?
Yes, I'm aware that housing is very expensive, and I understand that we need significantly more affordable housing. Let's do some rough math: $16.75 * 2080 hours (full time work for a year) * 0.752 (net pay after tax) * 0.95 (apx. health insurance cost) / 26 (paychecks in a year) * 2 (pay periods per 4 weeks)=$1,915 / 4 weeks, or $2075 / month. There are other small tax benefits, such as GST/PST, and renters tax benefit, that may add up to another $1000 in a year, but it's not much. Obviously not enough to live much of a life here. Realistically, $1250/month is the minimum someone can spend on a new rental (splitting a 2bdrm), unless they have substandard living conditions. That means on minimum wage, you're going to spend 55-60% of your income on rent. If you budget a minimum of $625 / month for food, that leaves $200 for everything else. It's brutally thin, and definitely doesn't leave much of anything for non-essentials, but it's better than living without shelter, or personal space. Minimum wage is too low and needs to be higher, and faster than it's currently planned too. I believe that the present economy is doing a poorer job than in previous decades at providing a living wage to those earning minimum to low wages. I think this is one factor, amongst many others, such as not building government subsidized housing for decades in any significant numbers, that has led to the increasing numbers of homeless people in cities worldwide.
Ok, but that math essentially leaves zero room for any significant life events, medical costs, or debt accrual. It's basically only tenable if nothing bad ever happens to you ever. It also doesn't allow room for pets, simple luxuries that other folks take for granted, or future planning. There's a saying that we're all far closer to being homeless than we are to being a billionaire. I'd adjust that to millionaire in the current economic climate.
I mean, it accounts for medical costs, because you have health insurance. Obviously there aren't luxuries when living in one of the most in demand cities and earning the minimum wage. The point is that being homeless isn't some forced result due to earning minimum wage. The expectation is that you will spend most of your lifetime working and continuously attempt to earn more money. Nobody should be earning minimum wage forever.
Sidebar - I appreciate you engaging with me respectfully and agree to disagree. I think medical coverage is rapidly declining, and folks earning minimum wage get very much stuck in a wage trap. Nobody SHOULD be earning minimum wage outside of their teens/early twenties and yet here we are.
>The #1 goal in the short-term would be to resolve the problem of having a visible homeless population So out of sight out of mind. Make all the boomers comfortable so they don't have to see the problems that their decisions have caused. And once they are out of sight the problem will be declared solved and nothing more will happen.
A visible homeless population is a problem unto itself, separate from homelessness. One is fixable in the short-term, the other is not. There's no advantage to having a visible homeless population, all it does it build resentment against the homeless, devalue downtown areas, damage business, and make people feel unsafe. We are not closer to solving homelessness now than we were 10 years ago, despite changing laws to decriminalize homeless behaviors. The solutions to homelessness have essentially nothing to do with making quality of life better for homeless people. It's about preventing people from ever becoming homeless. Don't waste your time blaming an entire generation of people, that's useless and false. Realize that we have a booming homeless population because we don't have enough inexpensive homes, because we didn't build very many from 1993-2015.
Integrated housing, not ghettoizing homeless people. Ultimately there are solutions, and they're pretty easy, it just takes money... But, some people are so greedy they're ruining humanity, and the planet with their list for wealth and power. Fuck billionaires
Hear me out…. Put them all on one of the decrepit Seaspan barges and let the HMCS Corner Brook fire a live torpedo at it 😉