Torontonians – Doing The Jobs The Homeless Won’t Do

I’ve read this thing three times and I still don’t get it. The only part that “fits” is that it’s happening in Toronto;

The city is giving $100 pre-paid Visa cards to people who agree to pretend they’re homeless when Toronto conducts its needs assessment of those without shelter.
In an e-mail sent out last week to different social agencies and individuals, city employee Monica Waldman said they are looking for “tons” of people to sign up to be “decoys” on April 15, the night scheduled for the city’s second homeless head count.
“Decoys are essentially ‘faux’ homeless people for quality assurance purposes in this research,” she wrote. “As a decoy, you would need to come to a 30-minute training session and then be deployed to various sites throughout the city where you will wait to be approached by the research volunteers.”

h/t Russell H.

59 Replies to “Torontonians – Doing The Jobs The Homeless Won’t Do”

This morning on our local radio(cfos) newscast the reprter stated that this is Federaly Funded project.
anyone know if this is fact or fiction?

Quality control in Millertown? That does not compute. That’s like asking how everyone likes the new Miller wading pools now available everywhere (Formerly called potholes).

I want to sign up just to see what the “training” is all about :^))

Big government is like ebola in its need to replicate itself.
This isn’t about homeless people. It’s about government creating a market for itself. They have to constantly invent things for themselves to do to justify the expenses and increase their budgets and number of hacks.
What they don’t want is for the public to know the details of what they do to achieve this as they do to their host (economy) what ebola does to its host.

The Real CJ
You’ve just invented the “need” to hire more people. You see, now they need to “quality check” the “quality checkers.” A crack unit of perminent, full-time federal/provincial and/or municiple employees will be needed to oversee the fiasco…

The problem is that you can not apply logic to this argument when you are dealing with a city that can support this kind of stuff.
“City paid $4,500 to fix politician’s ‘shrill’ voice”
Hat tip to Bourque
Don’t get get it and hope I never will”

Strategy is clear to me. Frankly – I do not believe the report to begin with-these agencies do not have the cash to do this sort of thing in the first place. More than likely the powers that be in Toronto do not want to take a look at the reality of the lack of affordable housing and have found a way to discredit those who have been bringing the issue to the forefront. Where I live, it is impossible to find a one bedroom apartment for less than $900 a month.
Affordable accomodation is a very real issue, not just in Toronto, but in other parts of Canada as well. Just because I have a conservative viewpoint does not mean I ignore the fact that affordable housing is an issue for the homeless, the working poor and now – much of the middle class. I hold that this “news story” is highly suspect. Does not make sense either that this program would be funded by the government either. Something just does not fit or ring true here.

Another thought. Several of you mentioned ACORN – perhaps that is exactly the unpopular association you were supposed to make. Conservatives can be fooled too. Ask – Who stands to gain from this story?
Good chance that with an ACORN tactic association Toronto can gain public support to NOT deal with the issue of affordable housing. If they are successful, I suspect other cities facing the affordable housing issue will follow with a similiar strategy to destroy any support for an affordble housing initiative.