22 Replies to “The World Is Being Run By Crazy People”

  1. heh, assuming 1 to a bed and if this is the cost for one year, per person rent would be $25,000 a month.
    I’ve seen some homes that’re pretty much mansions rent out at $4000.00 a month.

  3. Such is the price of living in a self-proclaimed “world class” city.
    “World Class” meaning any rat-infested social sewer where 50% or more of the people no longer bathe on a regular basis.

  5. Dear God.
    You could put them in the Royal York for half that.
    People (“beds”)……………….40
    Days in a year……………….365
    Nice room in the Royal York……400
    Multiplied out…………$5,840,000
    Budget………………..12,000,000
    Unfavourable………….$(6,160,000)
    Good God.

  6. It’s really just a place for the homeless to gather and have a dart outside. The building is not holding up well nor being well maintained. On the side of the building an unhappy patron has scrolled ‘streets to homes is a joke’ referring to David Miller’s homeless housing strategy that is supposedly being executed inside. Just another big, expensive building for the civil servant elites to sit around and haul down Starbucks and muse about climate change.

  7. It’s like I keep telling the war on poverty people when they come canvasing for hand outs – this is the only country in the world where the poor drive to the bank to cash their welfare cheque or bank it online from their i-phone or laptop.
    Homeless people I do have a problem with – they should not be on the streets, most are runaways who are into drugs, prostitution and petty crime, or they are too mentally unstable to support themselves – they don’t need housing, they need institutionalization to iron out their problems and keep the rest of us safe from them until they do.
    I’m thinking work camps in fresh clean air environments – good food, a warm bed, safe drug-free environment and 8 hrs/day labor for the state doing useful work (make the institution revenue neutral) to keep them fit and sweat the drugs out of their systems and instill empathy for working taxpayers – throw in some job skill training and a release program that involves mandatory employment and residence and there ya go – homeless problem solved.

  8. Only $12 million? In downtown Toronto? Where the average price of a detached home is about $1 million?
    I’ll save my outrage for Ontario Hydro, thanks.

  9. I used to work in downtown Toronto on the night shift as a security guard in a office complex. One of the many issues we had to deal with were the numerous homeless people camping out in stairwells from the parking garage. The stench coming off most of them, the petty crime and vandalism was just amazing. Kicked one out once and his response was “I have been on the streets for 18 years, you will be gone soon. I don’t care what you do or who you call.”
    I would see them line up at 530 in the morning waiting for the Sally Ann breakfast truck to show up and then they would throw half the stuff away that they didn’t want. Every winter they would be given winter coats, sleeping bags that were brand new.
    The homeless situation is funded by the damn leftists that demand more and more funding to “help” the homeless and suck out millions per year from operating budgets. Money that if it was just given to the homeless directly would give them a decent place to stay, food, and transportation. Seriously.
    I have had no sympathy for these bums and pan handlers after watching them in action.
    Mind you there are those that are psychologically unsound. And it would be better to be institutionalized then just living on the streets. Of course that would be violating their “human rights”.

  10. Occam wrote:
    “I’m thinking work camps in fresh clean air environments – good food, a warm bed, safe drug-free environment and 8 hrs/day labor for the state doing useful work (make the institution revenue neutral) to keep them fit and sweat the drugs out of their systems and instill empathy for working taxpayers – throw in some job skill training and a release program that involves mandatory employment and residence and there ya go – homeless problem solved.”
    Why not just put all the homeless, winos and drug addicts in Toronto?
    Homeless problem for the rest of the country solved. Viola.

  12. “Caring” for the homeless is a growth industry in Hogtown. What with the price of accommodation rising in tandem with taxes, your average college grad/barista is having a hard go of it. Many are discovering that you can make more take-home money standing on a street corner with a squeegee for a couple hours than you can in a whole day of asking people if they’d like fries with that.
    City of Toronto government took advantage of this situation to give some Friends Of the Regime $12 megabucks, this is not a surprise. This is how things are done. Pretend compassion for “The Homeless” while increasing their numbers with taxes. ‘Round and ’round we go.
    Best we can all hope for is a soft landing, that would be where the free money kind of slowly tapers off, giving most of the zombie horde time to make other arrangements. If it all just stops suddenly one day the zombie apocalypse will occur for real.
    That will be the day my relatives stop calling me crazy for living out in the sticks like I do. Every cloud does have its silver lining.

  13. The $12.1M isn’t an operating budget, its the total cost of acquiring the building and renovating it to create the Peter St Facility. The $30,000 per bed cost will be amortized over the life of the shelter, ie if the shelter is open for 30 years the cost will be $1000 per bed per year or $2.74 per bed per night. To find the daily cost per bed you would need to know the annual budget of the shelter (my google-fu came up empty), divide it by 14,600 (40beds x 365nights) and add the operating cost to the project cost of $2.74.
    Occam, The federal government has closed down the minimum security work farm prisons because it was deemed a violation of the prisoners rights. Apparently sitting in your cell doing nothing for years on end is less cruel to criminals than being responsible and learning a skill while outdoors. I doubt that a work camp for the indigent would fly.
    Dystopian, “Voila” makes more sense than viola, unless you’re about to go orchestral on someone’s a&&. Yes, I’m an incorrigible spelling Nazi.

  14. The greedy leading the incompetent, employed by the naive, paid for by the duped, reported by the partisan.
    As a former City of Toronto sub contractor let me tell you how this works. The City hires the cheapest consultant to produce an RFQ, the General Contractor (GC) bids the work below cost then employees sub contractors based on after the fact negotiations. The GC doesn’t explain deficiencies in the RFQ to the City , starts the work then starts issuing endless requests for change orders at exorbitant prices for those deficiencies. It continues to force the hand of the City by citing them as the reason for the deficiencies and the taxpayer keeps paying so the greedy have positive reinforcement to do it again and again and again.

  15. The system is set up to favour political friendlies – they underbid the project to win it, with the knowledge that cost “overuns” will make up the difference.

  16. @Al in Ottawa:
    Wow, intelligent comments, something I don’t see much off here. You took the words right out of my mouth regarding the amortization issue and the ‘viola’ comment. Great minds thing alike.
    (:

  17. Someone should really do a complete calculation on the operating costs.
    The recommended staffing for the facility was 31 plus full time equivalents.
    http://www.toronto.ca/budget2009/pdf/09_SSHA_129_Peter_Street_BN.pdf
    At 80k (?) all in per capita, it works out to $170 per bed per day. That’s payroll alone! Add maintenance, utilities, supplies, amortized capital cost, interest and the Royal York is starting to look like a bargain!

  18. Toronto budgets to provide 1,430,000 bed nights for the homeless. The operating cost is $172,000,000, or $120 per bed per night.
    Presumably capital, interest and maintenance costs are not included. I wonder if the City Hall bureaucracy is in these costs?

  20. Kate, You’re absolutely correct! The whole system is setup to drive small sub-contractors into the ground while the large GCs and their ‘political friendlies’ raid the cookie jar.

  21. I remember a Toronto Star article and it must be over twenty years ago. A visit was paid to a homeless shelter in that city. Two men were interviewed. They were jokingly referred to as “million dollar men”. This meaning that they were costing Toronto agencies mega bucks.
    I am very careful not to exaggerate and I do have the figure of 230,000 dollars for both men. This in therapy, medical treatment, police involvement and so on. I still cannot believe those figures. One man stood outside business establishments and begged. He demanded and got fees for not begging.
    Finally out of desperation by an authority, a proposal was made to buy a farm in New Brunswick for the men. Honest, it seems just yarn, but I read it. One of the men was quoted as saying ” Yes. I might just like that. I was raised on a farm. I just might like to do that”.

    Unbelievable, but I wished it was just that.

  22. Give me $10 million.
    I’ll buy a disused 40-room motel near Brockville along Highway 2. I’ll renovate it to basic modern standards and then bus the occupants in from Toronto.
    Of course, I get to keep the difference between the ten million and my costs.
    And – bonus – I’ve saved Toronto two million dollars, boosted the Brockville area economy and removed 40 vagrants from the entertainment district, allowing those precious Toronto luvvies to frequent their favourite Starbucks in peace without noxious panhandlers.
    Problem solved!

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