Only a fool could ever have imagined that Edmonton or any other large city would “end homelessness,” in 10 years or 20 or 30, except by means of fascist methods or wild, unforeseeable social change. Nevertheless, this sappy utopian vision got a bunch of now-superannuated Alberta politicians celebrated for their heroic vision-y-ness. No one is now eager to point out their humiliating total failure — to point out that an entire professional class collectively promised the public something specific, and came nowhere close to delivering. They did not deliver half of what they promised. Not a quarter. Not a tenth.
There was a man in his 20’s pan-handling just inside the lobby of the Walmart Monday evening. At the doors on the other side of the store was a listing of their job vacancies.
I was thinking of Colby Cosh earlier today. Wondering what had become of him since he was a journalist for the Alberta Report and then after it’s dissolution Mr. Cosh starting his own blog.
I always thought that Colby was one of the finest political writers this country had had in my lifetime, and how sad it seemed to me that Mr. Cosh had appeared to hang all his aspirations on being a sports writer.
Ah me.
Anyhow, Colby sure seems to still have his chops wired on tighter than a nun’s …habit.
Don’t forget MAyor Moonbeam, COmrade Gregor of Vancouver. He made the same wistful, stupid promise, to end homelessness in 10 years.
Instead, they build facilities, and hey! Here they come from across Canuckistan.
Mayor Mugwump Helps in Victoria is much of the same vein, a typical dimbulb social justice wanker, without a clue about how the economy works, and massive envy syndrome.
These lunatics don’t learn, IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME.
Junk expands to fill the available space.
Not a big city guy. Get in, do the business, get out.
Stayed in a downtown Calgary hotel this past weekend. Right next to Stephens Ave with its shops, pubs, restaurants, and ….homeless.
There is a real problem. Mental illness.
Telling them to go get a job is like telling someone with cancer to take an aspirin.
Housing and welfare won’t fix it. Treat the illness like the health care industry would any other malady.
Recently, there was yet another story in the San Francisco Chronicle about the homeless. It said spending on homeless services went up from $165 million in 2014 to $241 million in 2015. Yet- shockingly – the problem is worse, and they have more homeless people than ever. The solution? More spending. But the San Francisco politicians are dumb-ass Marxists. The NDP should be able to make it work.
That is simply because the social service “industry” is not the least bit interested in solving problems. They are interested in building huge bureaucracies containing thousands of public sector union members.
From the Colby Cosh article:
“Surely one valid way to view homelessness is as an ecological niche. Cities, almost by definition, end up with as many panhandlers and tent-dwellers as they are prepared, culturally and financially, to pay for — one way or another. If that is the case, then the homeless can never be made extinct as a category by evacuating the niche. More will always arrive to fill it.”
Exactly.
If you PAY them, they will come. Just ask Santa Monica or San Francisco.
“…Treat the illness like the health care industry would any other malady.”
More administrative jobs paid for with taxes?
Say what you will about religious (Christian vice Muslim) charities…when one received their help it usually came with a lecture (to the man of the house) about finding work in order to support his family. This part of the equation is totally missing in today’s social worker/socialist paradise known as welfare. With respect to the mentally ill, they were put in sanitoriums. I’d suspect all of the people with the bizarre piercings, eating disorders, excessive tatooing, etc would be locked up, shot up with morphine (or whatever medication) three times a day and would never be heard from again…much less procreate.
*
“a bunch of now-superannuated Alberta politicians celebrated for their heroic vision-y-ness”
it’s like being a weatherman on television… it doesn’t matter how many times you’re dead
wrong… you still get to bring your argle-bargle to the masses… daily.
*
One quibble, many of the mentally ill are not homeless. You need to have an address to vote, and Justin Trudeau is primeminister
sigh.
law of unintended consequences, solve 1 problem by creating thousands more. except in this case they didn’t even do that.
Ive rubbed shoulders with a not insignificant number of the less advantaged. Oftentimes they ask to crash at my place or lend them money. I respond that if they help do some work on the place I will oblige. sadly too many times that’s as far as it gets. this is not some sort of moralistic play, I actually do still have a lot of work on this place. wtf is the problem? a day or 2 of work in exchange for a roof over their head? isn’t that how its worked for the last 5,000 years?
search me.
I remember reading a story years ago that back in the old days there were more hospital beds in mental hospitals than there were in physical hospitals (for lack of a better term). Then, socialists decided it was against their human rights to treat the mentally ill with some dignity and try to make them functioning members of society, so they closed the vast majority of them down. That’s when the “homeless crisis” started.
minuteman, you’re about right. The traditional estimate was for roughly equal numbers of psych beds as all other (surgical + medical + obstetric) beds in a community. That changed significantly with the development of the major tranquilizers, anti depressants and anti-psychotics in the 1950s. There is a profound reluctance on the part of many to recognize that first, the “homeless” are not a homogeneous group, and second that for some it is a choice, no matter how incomprehensible that choice may be to members of the bourgeois middle class. Finally, as pointed out by others, the poverty industry has no vested interest in eliminating the “problem” since that would eliminate their own jobs. Much of it is an issue of economics. Some people simply choose to deploy what resources they have — time, energy, and sometimes money on priorities other than permanent shelter. Some prefer to make money casually begging vs regular, scheduled work. Remove one group from that economic niche in a community and others will take their place. The issue of the mentally ill is a separate issue. We used to run a day hospital out of the downtown hospital in Calgary (the old Calgary General) which provided a safe location, some harmless distractions for the patients, and supervision for their medication. The bureaucrats ordered it closed resulting in the predicted spike in in-patient admissions.
One famous person, whose name is more regularly reviled than that of Colby Cosh, put it this way: “The poor you will always have with you”. The source, you ask? Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, and John 12:8. Whether by choice, or by personal disaster, it is as true today as it has been for 2000 years. The responsibility is to aid the poor as per Deuteronomy 15:11: “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”
The difference is that support of the poor is supposed to be an individual responsibility, not a corporate or government one. And this is true for a lot of very good reasons. Individuals are better at assessing need, more efficient at meeting that need, and when one becomes involved, there is more of a personal stake. Leaving the problem in the hand of bureaucrats will only waste a lot of money, and put a large distance between the source of said money and the real problem.
Sorry to burst the do gooder’s bubble but most of the ‘homeless’ people are not homeless. their chosen home is the street and shelters. For many of them the street and shelter is where they want to live. Those who do not want to be there find a way out but there is a large number who prefer to live on the street and in shelters. I have known some who had full time jobs that stayed at the shelter of slept in the park.
You and Joey say it well. My wife, who worked in a local mentally challenged facility for over thirty years, agrees with yours and Joey’s comments.
Just like the 12 billion native industry, the bureaucrats have no interest in fixing the problem to the betterment of the mentally challenged or ill. Those people that chose to live on the streets will never be helped.
Plenty of room for “Syrian” Immigrants with paid housing and full “Social” benefits.
That is once you’ve upgraded their free housing to something that meets their eclectic standards.
http://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/850-syrian-refugees-to-resettle-in-alberta-by-end-of-year
“Some refugees turning down housing options in Ottawa, centre says”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/refugees-turning-down-housing-ottawa-1.3434746
No matter how tightly they budget there’s never enough money for booze and drugs. Housing just isn’t as important. Also as long as they keep treating lunatics and morons in the community (def – on the street) there will be homeless.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
I thought FDR’s “New Deal” and Canada’s vast array of social programs had eliminated poverty, homelessness and sad feelings in North America. This article and the evidence makes it sound like our political leaders don’t have a clue. Surely that can’t be the case!!
That “mental illness” you refer to is called alcohol-related dementia. I don’t think anyone expects such people to “get jobs” – but it would be nice if they sought treatment. You know: tried to be better human beings with some kind of future.
Some bright lights opened a homeless – or maybe rehab, we weren’t told – shelter in my neighbourhood last year. I walk by there 3 to 5 times a week, every week, and there has been ONE occasion there wasn’t at least one cruiser parked outside. I don’t think they’re there to give pep talks. Getting really tired of the endless coddling of predators…
Here’s an idea: if taxpayers are forced to fund utopian wishes then use the money to build micro housing. I hear it’s all the rage for millennials who find themselves priced out of the traditional housing market. In fact, the micro houses for the poor and homeless should be mixed in with the micro housing for millennials. I think SJWs mingling and living with those they presume to work for (and lecture us about) would be quite educational for young progressives. It’d be like missionary work for the social science set. Preferably these housing developments should be built near high end neighbourhoods since those people could also use more realism, less self-righteous idealism.
But why should these efforts be necessary? I distinctly remember the great Ed Broadbent conducting a campaign at great expense to the Canadian taxpayer to ERADICATE CHILD POVERTY BY 2000.
Surely the millions he spent were not wasted, surely the great social justice warrior would not fail?
/sarc permanently on.
“It’d be like missionary work for the social science set.”
I believe George Orwell once observed that the high-minded progressives of his day were not so much interested in doing good as being seen to be good.
Funny how rewarding bad behaviour encourages more.
The solution offered to homelessness is the same old making people comfortable in their poverty.
So they flock to where the most comfort is provided.
Why the progressive virtue posers do not supply free booze and drugs , beats me.
They want these persons dependent for ever.
As always, these parasites, rewarding lesser parasites are very generous.
With our money.
Just like all those freeloaders in Vancouver who got exposed snuffling in the trough last year.
Funny how these professional do-gooders always need a salary paid by the taxpayer.
Who is this “great Ed Broadbent” of whom you speak? I remember an Ed Broadbent but he was far from being great.
Let us see now.
There politicians almost without fail, regardless of the party, use homelessness to show how they “care”. They may at times, though it is a fleeting moment, while a camera is on or a microphone in front of their face.
The politicians will talk endless about how they care about homeless when they are on the spot.
Why is it that some think that homeless are mental cases?
Just because it does not suit your taste does not necessarily follow that they are crazy. There are those that like being that way. Paradoxically they are free to please only themselves. They don’t have to answer to anybody, they do as they please in the realm of where they are.
There is no solution to homelessness, you can’t force people to live a lifestyle that suits you. Hell there are those that would argue that your lifestyle sucks. You may not live on the street though you could possibly qualify as some kind of weird.
See how that works?
There will always be those that drop out of society at large, they think that society sucks. You may have such thoughts from time to time. That you don’t drop out could be sign of cowardice, does not follow that they are superior.
Cosh writes that it cost 600 million to take care of 9451 homeless. That works out to $63,485 per person. How much of that money do you think that person enjoyed? If they just gave it to the person outright, they would live better than your agent.
Therein lies the scam.
Most of the money ended up with hangers on, the social workers, the management of the social workers, the union of the social workers and so on and so on.
What was left put the poor sucker back on the street.
Isn’t that cool?
Then the whole circus, sorry, the cycle will start all over again anew……..very much the exact sequence.
“he was far from being great”
Well, he was a Great Big Crock of Shiite.
That said, somehow Ed/Ted/Fred(-can’t remember the A-hole’s common name-/), …anyways all commies are alike and being commies they’d say so themselves(one size-fits-all philosophy minus any humanity)… , they pretend to be the conscience of pArliAment(which I believe Fred BoredBent’s claim-to-fame was) …as if government robbing the fruit of a citizen’s Labour isn’t somehow immoral and conscienceless, I digress,(carrying on with my rant or what-eFFer),
–Tired BornBent was clearly a tortured soul,(as Zoolander Trudeau is a tortured soul) for having been born with a
Silver Spoon Protruding from his Orifice.
Yes I know that BoredBeam cannot be conclusively tied to wealth, but do an internet search on him and you will find that neither his mother nor his father are named BratBurnt as he himself may seem to be.
I rest my case, or my rant, …anyway my bulldog is demanding my attention and he is a persistent cuss. He wants to finish off my excellent Simple Simon’s Chicken Pot Pie and I’m going to let him too.
(I’m never sick but I seem to be down with something and everything seemingly tastes salty)
Have more frequent interactions with the Urban Outdoorsman than the average tax slave.
My take is up to half are afflicted with serious mental illness, the other half less so. And a good portion of that second half in a normal society would perform some productive role. Which is why a percentage prefer to live the Urban Outdoorsman lifestyle, enabled by the professional poverty pimping bureaucrats.
But that first half, many would be better off and live more humane lives, in facilities that should be up to date versions of the rural asylums of yore.
Supportive settings, medication consistency, attention to the individual, a holistic approach to the patient. And always with an eye on possible reintegration into greater society, if feasible.
And as bonus, a likely overall efficiency gain for total societal costs.