Homeless in Vancouver? There’s a app for that. The Tyee reports with a straight face;
Take VanShelter, an app (still in progress) that displays which shelters in the Downtown Eastside have available beds, in real time. The idea is that the shelters update the numbers on twitter, and if you are a subscriber to the service, get free text messages on your phone.
As a society, we’re done. Where’s that asteroid so we can try again?
When the Greenies realize that some taxpayer money that could have been grifted into a useless Eco-Ponzi scam has been diverted into a totally useless Social Justice scheme, they will not be happy campers.
Because there is always an opportunity cost, eepecially for useless greenie or social justice plans.
The next innovations at homeless shelters…Wifi and bottomless cups of starbucks coffee.
How about an app showing which cities in Canada have jobs available because, you know, in the past people actually moved for work rather than demand housing in the world’s least affordable housing market.
Really? Do “homeless” people have Iphones now? That just further blurs the line between being homeless and being professionally poor.
Reminds me of the picture I saw of Michelle Obama serving at a soup kitchen and the “poor” people coming to get their free meal were taking photos of her with their phones.
And to think, I went to university, work full time in a good job, and I cannot afford a phone that runs apps.
“As a society, we’re done. Where’s that asteroid so we can try again?” Eskimo.
Sometimes I share this sentiment!
The app will then feed the info into your GPS-ready Ferrari, which will switch to autopilot mode and transport you to the available shelter, leaving you free to cook your taxpayer-funded coke and search for that one last good vein.
Actually, cell phones have long ceased to be a ‘luxury’ for the rich, just about everyone on this planet has one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use
I currently work two jobs that have led me to a conclusion: Aside from mental illness poverty in Canada is usually the result of poor choices.
At the church I work at I often pull up to find some homeless person is charging their cell phone in our exterior electrical sockets. This is alright with us, but as my wife and I have given up cell phones as too expensive, I find it puzzling. Like those that come in to ask for food, (or more likely to come for food after we have told them we don’t give out money and yes we understand their situation is unique, but the foos we give them will free up money they’d usualy have spent on food for other things.) I recently had a woman crying on the phone about her water bill. Her water had been turned off. She was calling from her home phone but if need be we can reach her anytime on her cell phone.
My wife stays at home to raise our daughters while I work two jobs, cell phones and big TV’s are sacrifices we’ve gladly made.
My other job is as a pizza delivery guy. I deliver to my fair share of upper class houses, especially as I don’t work for a cheap franchise but a local gourmet pizza joint. Mostly though, I deliver to people who appear to earn less money than myself. I cannot afford to spend $50 on a supper for two that often, but apparently people who live in trailer parks can.
I am all for helping people. People stuck in addiction who want freedom, homeless people struggling to get a job, families who have had a hard couple of months and can’t pay all the utilities, I love helping them out. I resent those that figure it is churchs’, non-profits’ , governemnts and ultimately my, duty to save them from their own poor choices.
I have an old TV that is not flat, no cell phone, second hand funiture, plenty of food in the fridge and a roof over my head.
Poverty is a choice.
Kate, you woke me from my reverie in which I imagined that every hurt feeling, every stumble in the playground, every financial risk taken, every natural disaster, in fact everything imperfect in Life is thwarted by the sheer genius of The Central Committee. In this dream, getting to that paradise on earth was simply achieved by surrendering all personal resources, sovereignty, and future reward for effort to The Central Committee – comprised, of course, by the superior human beings that are enlightened with the knowledge that collectivism works best (for them): professional journalists, political science professors, Nobel laureate economists, Hungarian fund managers, Toronto Star columnists, not to mention various pundits blogging their big hearts out. In this paradise, food is free, thanks to enlightened farmers who live with great purpose to selflessly feed the masses.
I hail the attempts to make our society perfect by those possessing greater wisdom than I. But how can they have missed the opportunity to develop an app in which one requests the desired service, such as a new, clean hypodermic needle, and using your GeoLocation on your “I Refuse To Be A Victim” cellular communicator, our perfect society expediently delivers the needed products and services to you. How heartless is it to make the needy travel to the resources when we are clearly obliged to make the resources travel to the needy! The price would be low: one’s soul. But since that no longer exists in the perfect society, that is a small price to pay, no?
Socialism in its majestic equality, allows the rich and the poor alike to use Blackberrys under bridges.
I lady I know works for the Ministry, her worst story is the guy who pulled up driving a Porsche Boxter and tried to apply for assistance…
Ahh, the great unanswered question in digital communications.
If bits have been sent across a medium, received, processed, and displayed … and ignored… Has *data* been sent, or has *information* been sent?
Yet another reason to refuse to give monetary assistance to street people. Buy them a coffee? Sure. Give them a bill. No. Hell no.
Words fail me.
I posted the story on Facebook. A Mexican friend of mine responded, not quite “getting” what’s going on here. After all, he logically thought, how on earth could homeless people access such a site? Here’s what I wrote him:
According to more than a few in the proverbial Canadian “Poverty Industry”, the failure to provide everyone with a cel phone (and adequate plan) constitutes a “human rights violation”. These folks have NO idea what REAL poverty actually is!
Perhaps an app on where to get a job?
And here it was my impression (or so I’d been told) that the main reason the homeless did not apply for employment was that they could not be contacted.
So now can they still use that as an excuse?
Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares. . .
Guess that phrase is obsolete now.
We should send the homeless to Mexico to live, that’s what Mexico does to us. Then they could sit on nice beaches with their iPhones and maybe Mexico will give them a home and tons of welfare income to enjoy like we do with their homeless.
You know you live in a decadent society when your poor carry I-phones and have an app to tell them where the free crash pads, free eats and legal injection sites are.
What can we expect from the “Progressive crowd” more of this kind of lunacy. To them not having a blackberry or a Iphone is deemed poor.
Proof positive that the poor are getting richer.
The app is not for the poor. It provides timely information to street workers so they know where to refer the homeless, and city managers with accurate information to provide voluminous reports to city politicians who can then proceed to ask for massive budget increases to address ‘The Homeless Crisis’.
If you cannot trust Twitter, who can you trust? CNN?
Spent most of yesterday working in the local soup kitchen. Food bank and other amenities for the dispossessed are also located there.
The parking lot was full of newer cars and many
fully-loaded F150’s.
I would speculate thar fully 40% of all “clients”
were on their cell phones at any given time. Lots of Blackberries in evidence as well.
Sarnia Jim would know what establishment I am referring to.
Most were polite but all appeared to be infused with a sense of entitlement and distinctly un-embarassed to be there.
Does that app come with a free ipad, xpad, gpad or whatever you call ’em, with a pre-paid service?
If I were homeless, the least thing I could afford would be hi-tech twitting or twatting, in order to find out where I might next be squatting!
(I’m a poet and I know it)
and distinctly un-embarassed to be there.
Posted by: Atric at August 31, 2011 1:53 PM
That’s the key observation, eh?
The wholesale decline of character in our “culture”.
I treat a lot of addicts and homeless in the ER. They all seem to have cell phones, some better than mine.
langmann at August 31, 2011 2:26 PM:
“I treat a lot of addicts and homeless in the ER. They all seem to have cell phones, some better than mine.”
Then they’re not really homeless langmann. I lived on the street for more than two years and learned a lot about what’s what re: the so-called “homeless”.
Firstly, people with cell phones et cetera are usually “part-time” or pretend homeless — punks who were kicked out of the house for drugs or dealing, violence etc., police problems, just out of jail on probation or parole so they go to the homeless shelter for a couple weeks until welfare kicks in again. Then they get a new apartment, get kicked out again for running a crack-house, pimping, gang violence or crime, end up in jail and homeless again, get on welfare again and the cycle repeats over and over. They are usually healthy strong young men, with family, friends and lots of resources, but they are violent and criminals and drug dealer spoiled brats — products of the “hug-a-criminal” entitlement culture. They don’t belong in homeless shelters and are not really “homeless” like the real down-and-outers. The whole damn bunch of these punks should be sent to work farms and learn how to swing a pick and shovel, or be kept in jail instead.
“… all appeared to be infused with a sense of entitlement and distinctly un-embarassed to be there.”
Atric at August 31, 2011 1:53 PM
This really is the crux of the problem, isn’t it?
People in Western societies were once embarrassed if they were not able to see to their own and their family’s needs. Now, people are told that there is no embarrassment in taking an ever-increasing portion of what their fellow-citizens have earned to support destructive life style choices and/or poor work ethic.
In the name of being kind to our fellow man, our societies have created insatiable consumers of others’ time and energy.
*
“robert says… Do ‘homeless’ people have Iphones now? That just further blurs
the line between being homeless and being professionally poor.”
ah, robert… you neocon luddite… try and keep up huh.
here, in dalton mcslippery’s socialist paradise… all schoolchildren must have
their blackberries to be a fully functioning member of society…
“Ontario’s Premier says hand-held devices can and should be used as
educational tools, creating a fresh debate over cellphones in the
classroom and potential headaches for teachers who have been fighting
to keep their students’ attention.”
trust me… no respectable jane-finch flashmob would be see without their
‘crackberries’.
*
you want entitled ?
the next generation’s going to be even worse….
How will parents react when they find out they will be expected to provide workers’ compensation benefits, rest and meal breaks and paid vacation time for…babysitters? Dinner and a movie night may soon become much more complicated.
Assembly Bill 889 (authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, will require these protections for all “domestic employees,” including nannies, housekeepers and caregivers.
The bill has already passed the Assembly and is quickly moving through the Senate with blanket support from the Democrat members that control both houses of the Legislature – and without the support of a single Republican member. Assuming the bill will easily clear its last couple of legislative hurdles, AB 889 will soon be on its way to the Governor’s desk.
Under AB 889, household “employers” (aka “parents”) who hire a babysitter on a Friday night will be legally obligated to pay at least minimum wage to any sitter over the age of 18 (unless it is a family member), provide a substitute caregiver every two hours to cover rest and meal breaks, in addition to workers’ compensation coverage, overtime pay, and a meticulously calculated timecard/paycheck.
Failure to abide by any of these provisions may result in a legal cause of action against the employer including cumulative penalties, attorneys’ fees, legal costs and expenses associated with hiring expert witnesses, an unprecedented measure of legal recourse provided no other class of workers – from agricultural laborers to garment manufacturers. (On the bright side, language requiring an hour of paid vacation time for every 30 hours worked was amended out of the bill in the Senate.)
Unfortunately, the unreasonable costs and risks contained in this bill will discourage folks from hiring housekeepers, nannies and babysitters and increase the use of institutionalized care rather than allowing children, the sick or elderly to be cared for in their homes. I can’t help but wonder if that is the goal of AB 889 – a terrible bill that needs to be stopped.
More information on the text and status of the bill can be accessed from my webpage at senate.ca.gov/lamalfa.
What can we expect from the “Progressive crowd” more of this kind of lunacy. To them not having a blackberry or a Iphone is deemed poor.
Posted by: Rose at August 31, 2011 1:37 PM
I guess I count among the poor then.
Robert and neo are bang on.
When I ended up in a homeless shelter I was one of a handful of people who actually tried to get out of the place by getting up at 4:00 am and working back-breaking minimum wage construction jobs outside in the dead of winter — at the age of 54! Often working without breakfast or lunch — the kind of hard labour that required a heavy calorie intake that simply wasn’t available at the shelter, so I was often anaemic and sick as a dog. No damn way I could afford my cell-phone anymore, even working full-time, so I threw it away — it took up precious space in my backpack.
Meanwhile, the healthy strong young men in the shelter — WHO NEVER WORKED — all had cell phones, plus girl friends and non-stop partying, drugs and alcohol, money through drug dealing, and they bullied the quiet respectable people in the place. The punks waited at the bustops for anyone from the shelter who was returning from work in order to sell them coke or meth with instant contact with their suppliers through cell phones. They knew that the homeless people that did work usually worked for the temp agencies and got paid cash daily. The recovering drug addicts among us naturally couldn’t resist the temptation. The “homeless” drug network is a well organized criminal enterprise.
Most of Canada’s homeless shelters are terrible environments, full of thieves and psychos, and even the staff are often career criminals turning a blind eye — they often get staff positions as an extension of the “hug-a-thug” programs. So I later decided to live on the street instead of in the shelters. It was relatively safer and quieter on the street if you could find a location with a bit of privacy away from the gangs etc. With lots and lots of blankets you can survive winter relatively easily, and in relative peace compared to the shelters.
But once homeless, it is near impossible to save enough money to get off the street — no matter how hard you work at minimum wage. It doesn’t matter if you live a crime-free addictions-free life such as I did. You are simply too poor at that point to rebuild financially without a small miracle. (I’ve also lived in the poorest Third world barrios when I was a foreign aid worker — believe me it is easier to live in those Third-world barrios than be homeless on the streets in Canada).
People with cell phones, computers, Internet, etc., are not really poor and are not really homeless in Canada. I speak from experience and was homeless even with a University degree, from 2004-2007.
“Yeah, dude, I could review our holdings between the community meal and the free injection clinic, meet ya in Pigeon Park near the wi-fi tower.”
@ ricardo: I realize that. But guys like you are few and far between.
How did end up and you get up off the street?
I live in a light industrial section of Vancouver & have had homeless residents in the back alleys for the last 10 years. Because they have no fixed address they cannot collect welfare & can be called “working” homeless. They ditch their homes during the day,make a few dollars,& set up their home again at night. Everyone’s story is different,but the one thing they all have in common is a deep fear of going to a shelter. Yes they will probably have anything of value stolen but the real fear is of the colds & flu. You can spend a night on the floor with 40 coughing hacking men & come out in the morning with a virus that makes it very hard to carry on in a cold wet Vancouver winter.
Handing out money for nothing on the street should be made illegal. Nothing can be done to the ‘homeless’ or whatever they are – they have nothing to lose, but the fools that encourage them by giving them cash(probably the same fools who think it’s fun to feed wild animals and pests), should get a $100 fine or something – that would end aggressive ‘panhandling’ pretty quickly.
I don’t know whose quote it is but:
“the law, in its emmense fairness forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges…”
langmann: “How did end up and you get up off the street?”
I had my “small miracle” as it were — a dedicated homeless worker cruising the alleys at 3:00 am practically tripped over me, and offered me a temporary apartment. Obviously I jumped at it. But the funny thing is she also offered apartments to a number of the other homeless people around and they all refused it! Face it, some people are on the street because they want to be there. Some homeless people are so far gone mentally that they simply can’t handle the responsiblity associated with having a home again. You can’t force people into shelters either (and I don’t blame them for avoiding crappy shelters) — people at that level of hopelessness value at least one thing that should not be taken from them: their freedom (assuming they are not criminals or a danger to anyone). Without that last fundamental freedom to choose they probably would have jumped off a bridge a long time ago. I know I would have.
reformbagman at August 31, 2011 10:03 PM:
“…one thing they all have in common is a deep fear of going to a shelter. Yes they will probably have anything of value stolen but the real fear is of the colds & flu…”
You are absolutely correct reformbagman. Illness runs rampant in those places. I was one of more than 100 people who caught the deadly “Norwalk virus” when there was an outbreak in the shelters a number of years ago. We were put into isolation and even the local Police refused to enter our isolation unit without wearing the full bio-hazard suits (it didn’t help that the Norwalk outbreak occurred a few years after 9/11 and there was an anthrax/bio-weapons scare).
I used to joke that all the officials walking around in bio-hazard suits looked like Taliban terrorists in their burkas and ankle-length robes!
I agree with the gist of the post and note ricardo’s comments but here’s another perspective: a web enabled cell phone costs $40 new, and a homeless person can possibly buy one a lot cheaper from an addict. The monthly bill for unlimited internet on a pay as you go plan is ten bucks; calls are 35 cents a minute.
These are hardly extravagant purchases. A phone number is necessary to find work, even part time or temp work. A normal person can claim cell phones are too expensive – but they have land lines.
Even the crappiest phones sold today can run “apps” (in this case, probably just a website), and even the most degenerate addict can manage to spring fifteen or so bucks a month to have basic communications, so its not like this shelter app is the typical idiocy that leftists come up with.
Vancouver has a lot of shelters, they are distributed all over downtown, and they tend to run close to full capacity; in this context, allowing the homeless to use their cheap cell phones to save them a lot of walking to find a bed isn’t the worst allocation of resources. The Poverty Industry does many far goofier things.