Depends on who is counted

"Again, it's closed doors," said Paul Burnside, a poet and homeless person who was refused entry. "The people it's about aren't allowed to go in."

Clearly this person should not be counted as homeless. Basically he failed to take up the right vocation. Poets are not in high demand.

There are others who just want to 'do nothing' except laze around.

While there are those who truly cannot take care of themselves, and likely should be instutionalized (and that according to some statistics accounts for more than 50%) and we should allow for that, most others have no excuse.

The druggies and alcoholics should be shipped to a remote institution to dry out for a year or two.

However it seems as usual, the NDP want to inflate the numbers again and waste money.

Other than the mentally deficient, the alcoholics and druggies, the rest do not deserve to be helped.

G*D D**ned corrupt

Rick, you are correct, the Campbell government is one of directing the taxpayer's money to their political friends. This massive shifting of the 'peoples' money is kept hidden by the Libs. good friends at CORUS radio and the Asper press.

Never has so much money, been diverted from just causes, to so few people.

The whole system is corrupt, utterly corrupt!

congratulations to

congratulations to chudnovsky for graduating from counting potholes to counting homeless. he's movin' on up. can anyone verify that he's going to split from the ndp to form his own marxist party?

the right

Funny how our resident right wingers constantly fail to pull together anything that represents a coherent criticism, but instead, sling mud and throw insults. Congratulations sdgreen and elliot, er, i mean rousseau, you two are a real credit to your movement.

Response by deadline?

Good story, but I have a bit of a technical question: when you say that the B.C. Housing spokesperson didn't call back "by deadline", what does that mean for a web-based publication? In a newspaper, "by deadline" generally means the day before the story appears in print, but in the Tyee's world, where stories are published (I presume) when they're ready and not subject to a press schedule, shouldn't these say the actual date and time they were published (ie. "by Wednesday, Jan. 22 as this story was published) or something?

cyber deadlines

Internet sites have deadlines, too. Once a story is written, it needs to be edited, paired with art, posted. And we publish most of our articles on a 24 hour cycle, posted in the late afternoons or evenings. So to say 'by deadline' means the reporter gave the source some time to respond, but had to hand in the piece in order for it to appear, as scheduled, late that day or early the next. Hope that answers it 'squishy'

Thanks David

That does answer it, thanks. I knew that it meant some response time, just didn't know how much.

Fudging numbers

I guess sdgreen, rousseau, elliot, etal think it is OK for a government to fudge numbers (ie lie) and criticize the very people who are supposed to hold the government to account. [EDITED FOR LEGAL CONCERNS. -MODERATOR.]. Unfortunately we will only read about it in the Tyee and not in the MSM. Can you imagine the uproar in the MSM if the NDP had fudged numbers on something important? Or didn't that happen already?

Best Quote

For this to be happening in Canada is a total disgrace.

rousseau

In other words: it is a Marxist/Commie idea to insist that it is more important that everybody has housing, than a few rich people have several houses they do not occupy?

Hey, Maybe there is something to what Marx preached?

actually alive, i wasn't

actually alive, i wasn't being completely facetious. i have heard for several years now that chudnovsky is a marxist. just wondering if anyone can verify.

Quote:Funny how our resident

Grunts, farts, hot air whistles and one liner developed "scientific" theories.

Cut these guys some slack fer chrissake, will ya! They gotta speak through their swollen tongues and all that drool, whilst pounding their heads against the brick wall of reality.

Sound like Snot and Roulette, don't I? :-)

The point is

actually rousseau, it is OK if you did not get the point of my comment.

I am sure that most readers agree with the sentiment that we should house everyone before we create more waste-space for the very rich!

If one needs to support a Marxist for that to happen, it will suit me just fine, nothing could be worse than our present "market economy".

Whether Chudnovsky go one way or another is irrelevant.

i understood your nonsense

[COMMENT REMOVED. TRY AGAIN WITHOUT THE PERSONAL INVECTIVE. -MODERATOR.]

Sharing is Good

It has been constantly reiterated that Canada and BC have never enjoyed prosperity as we have now.

But just what does that mean when increasing numbers of our citizens ARE NOT faring so well?

Saying something doesn't make it so.

But just what does that mean when increasing numbers of our citizens ARE NOT faring so well?

The rhetoric is saying is that our raping and pillaging of the land for the benefit of the wealthy comes at a huge expense to the ill, the weak and the down and out. This recession may well be called the right wing depression when it ends. It may well be the precursor to the next world war.

Sorry

Sorry rousseau, if my “nonsense” upset you!
I was labouring under the impression that we were into constructive comments here.
Obviously the idea that shelter (and food?) should be for everyone does not sit well with you, so be it, but please do consider that some take it as a human right!
Unfortunately I have no time to engage in flaming you, or for that matter to run any politicians campaign.
I will however avoid commenting about your posts, along with a few other people who feel their views should not be challenged.

SIG

There do seem to be a number of events converging that may just "tip" things in this direction..........

While we have people living

While we have people living ouside who would prefer to be inside, a problem exists . There are a few folks who for some reason or other don't feel safe in a agency building space,or they are refused entry as drug addicted, so lets get to understand why they have that fear.A few more detox beds would come in handy.

People freezing to death lying on the ground indicates to me that no matter what set of numbers are being bandied about, something is wrong with the system and must be fixed. A caring society shows it'a not tha caring if the present set up exists. It's really not that new a condition here in Victoria. I spoke to my MLA, Gretchen Brewen, several years ago. The answer I got was that in a perfect world people wouldn't need food banks or sleep under bridges. What great minds our elected officials have! We have unlimited funds for some Games in 2010 but don't quite know how to handle those folks lying on the streets begging for some change. Wake up Victoria and other cities, the issues will not go away by themselves.

bridge anyone

Rousseau, maybe you could be the 4th and then you could have a game of bridge. [COMMENT REMOVED. -MODERATOR.].
Wrt to Chudnovsky being a Marxist, by your line of positing, he must have been as he was president of the BCTF.

homes for the less

I live here in Gastown and I can only say that the problem is getting worse at least 10 fold in this year alone. Some of the people I talk to here that are homeless, are homeless by choice. They describe waking up at 4am with bed bugs crawling all over you is not fun. Then there is the rodent problem. I am going to make an introduction to the Vancouver Olympics Video for U-TUBE that shows how serious these problems are in Vancouver... Mr. Silly-Van became mayor [COMMENT REMOVED FOR LEGAL CONCERNS. -MODERATOR.] lest we all forget... And what an awe full thing he has done to this city. Now if history as it is known to repeat itself does, God forbid, will he be the next Premier?????????

You see Coleman's

You see Coleman's advertisements everywhere about how rental subsidies are available for working families and all you need is apply. I bet more is spent in advertisments than money actually spent on rental subsidies. Its a problem as families do not have the money up front and therefore its just another bogious solution just like the bogious housing market. It has something to do with creating a false economy with high real estate prices by increasing the demand through immigration and heavy marketing to outside countries like Canada needs you to have her babies. Yikes! Oh yes and lots of home renovations and everyone thinking they are now house rich and borrowing on that to do the fixing up and boy are they going to be in a fix with most of BC maxed out on their credit(remember they are house rich)they certainly are not going to be prepared when theire homes bottom out. When the Campbell government got in Revy came to town need I say more. Its whats happened to our Amercian neighbors and its only a question of time before Canada's middleclass knows the meaning of homeless. I always wondered whey the middle class lowered the bottom for their poor did they not realize they where just making a new place for themselves the now working poor. The middle class sure loved their government when they though they became instant millionairs because of their homes and didn't have a problem putting young and old alike to the streets to die. I wonder how they are going to feel when they find themselves in a housing crisis?

Sharing

Don't you have a mayor, a city council and zoning by-laws. Big-box zoning is a municipal, rather than a provincial, issue and the government in Victoria unable to push or pull that issue.

R/Man

Coming from Vancouver my friend, that's a very silly question.

What difference does it make?

In many more rural areas municipal governance stops at the highway....I'll wager that's the case in Sharing's community.

The law of the God-Almighty Joneses is the only thing that matters in this province don't ya know! And all the importanty decisions are made on Gordon Campbell's credenza.

Shut down the mills and the plants, who cares? Everyone can find work at Walmart, at McDonald's or as a security guard in their parking lots.

A few small and inconvenient facts for you about this brave new world.

Sorry these stats are American but I'm sure they're not far off the Canadian mark:

The United States Bureau of Labour Statistics tells us that America now has more choreographers (16,340) than metal-casters (14,880), more people dealing cards in casinos (82,960) than running lathes (65,840), and nearly times as many security guards (1,004,130) as machinists (385,690).

We are becoming a pretend society that produces little, if anything, of lasting virtue and sustained value. This is the world the neocon globalizing idiots wanted – is it any wonder that the economy runs on credit and fear is the first thing on every citizen’s mind?

Ref: http://www.bls.gov/

gassyandy

Who are these people, Andy? A photo essay last year here on the Tyee featured homeless people in Vancouver and only one was from Vancouver. Would you please guess as to where these people are from and why they chose to live on the streets.

Should we guess that they want to live in Vancouver because they like it, even though housing is expensive to buy. Rents in Toronto are almost exactly the same and expect Edmonton is cheaper. Why here?

What percentage cannot maintain their own place and must be institutionalized, again?

On that; with the Charter of Rights how do people become institutionalized if they do not agree to it?

POP, WOW!

You're like a ground-hog GWest. Does a little bell ring whenever there's a new post - anywhere?

Thanks for the usual booooooooooring rant about the Premier. By the way. Know what you said the other day about Sask farmers and all the doom and gloom, and that I don't know dick about farming? Did you read Uncle Roy McGregor's piece in the Globe this am? Seems that the overwhelming majority, in his view, are beaming and super stoked. Please don't slag the Globe, you quote the Canwest papers all the time, you even quoted the Economist a couple of days after calling it the devil incarnate.

And. You're always saying how bad the "Yankees" (your words) are, yet there you go again quoting stats from the USA and saying that, "We are becoming pretend society that produces little, if anything, of lasting virtue and sustained value." Are you in the USA? Are you an........American!!!!?

R/man

I love Roy MacGregor, correspond with him all the time. Consider him a friend.

He lives in Kanata Ontario and his piece was pretty accurate relative to the oil, potash and uranium industry - and with respect to growth and development in the cities. I have a close relative who’s an associate professor in the Medical School at the University of Saskatchewan and other relatives all over the province whose families arrived there in the very early years of the 20th century - apart from going overseas to help save Great Britain from two lickings at the hands of the Germans - most of them never left for more than a two week holiday.

The NDP government did a great job turning around the mess that Grant Devine created and Brad Wall is sensible enough to realize that TILMA would be a disaster for Saskatchewan's Crown Corporations - which are the economic engine of the place.

I hope Wall will take Gordo aside tomorrow and go the woodshed with him about what Campbell has been doing to this province.

As to the agricultural sector, Roy doesn't know what he's talking about. The farms and towns outside the cities are empty, the schools are closed, the highways are a wreck and most of the small and medium farmers have been bought out by corporate farming operations that don't give a tinker's damn for the future of anything but their pocketbooks.

I do know what I'm talking about in that area and ROY, despite all his good qualities, hasn't a clue.

As for that last remark, I'll ignore it. Rather than deal with the fundamentals, you, like a lot of your right-wing brethren, appear more inclined to shoot the messenger.

surreal fealty to a terrible force

Forgive me realisticman, but the phrase 'surreal fealty to a terrible force', sounds very much like certain peoples' irrational belief in the beneficence of the invisible hand of the market and the nightmare promise of corporate global hegemony to me.

Unfortunately, most poor souls don’t have the ‘financial freedom’ to make the kinds of ‘choices’ that enable them to avoid the pressures of the unwashed masses in those vast impersonal parking lots, dominated, as you so elegantly put it, by ‘ugly blocks of consumerism’.

It is pleasant when one can ‘afford’ to feel so critically superior, so culturally and artistically refined; I hope you enjoy all your pre and post-sales experiences.

This thread, if I might be so bold as to remind you, is about homelessness.

What bothers me in parking lots and alleys and along the byways and highways of the place I live, is the surreal sight of shopping carts pushed by human beings cadging empties for a living.

In its own way, I suppose that's a kind of 'after-sales' experience too.

I’d really like to be a lot more direct and frank about this, but that’s not the way I write.

In person, I’d handle the opportunity differently!

GWest

"unwashed masses", you say. Those are your words, not mine and I was talking about people that do not have to seek the lowest price.

The emotion I expressed had nothing to do with the financial lack or plenty of the clientele. More like the Ridley Scott 1984 Apple Macintosh computer ad on tv.

Unless you are the editor I'll ignore your remark regarding the subject of the thread. I was responding to 'Sharing is Good'(s) post titled 'morechatter'.