Shelters needed, too

Someone I know who was homeless in Vancouver for several months last year tells me she thinks more shelters are needed, as well as permanent housing, because existing facilities are often at capacity, and some homeless people do not feel safe going to certain shelters.

Does the woman in the photo

Does the woman in the photo know that her image has been used in this story? If not, is that not little more than exploitation?

A solution

The Tyee, civic groups, and bloggers have discused our homeless issue for a long time. I even published a book in 2006 that covers it in the context of the 2010 Olympics, and I sent copies to our local mayors, but all this effort has still not encouraged them to act responsibly.

Olympics organizations and their government partners have a different agenda, and dealing responsibly with the homeless is not at the top of their list. There is a solution, but VANOC and civic leaders won’t like it.

The last thing they want is to have our homeless issue hit the world stage. If they see it going in that direction they’ll quickly promote that Vancouverites should shut up because it’s bad for Olympics business. They’ll insist that we should not air dirty laundry.

It's like saying that if you have a weird uncle in your family molesting children, that you should ignore it because it will go away on its own when the kids grow up.

We all know this is absolutely wrong and immoral.

If homelessness in Vancouver hasn’t been properly addressed by now, it won’t go away without someone stepping up to make drastic changes.

If you are genuinely concerned about the homeless ...

Think Local Act Global

Here's what I suggest you do . . .

Email Oprah Winfrey and fill her in.

She actually asks average people for show ideas on her website.

Oprah was here last year touring the Strait on Jim Pattison’s yacht.

Invite her back to take a look at the other side of Vancouver.

If Oprah ignores you, go to OlyBLOG.com and email me for a list of other celebrities and news organizations that have a mainline into the heart of America and around the world.

If Gordon Campbell, Sam Sullivan, John Furlong, or Jacques Rogge won’t listen, talk to someone who will recognize the critical nature of Vancouver’s homeless issue.

If they won’t immediately take this issue seriously, politely email Olympics sponsors, and ask them if they want their brand connected to this tragedy.

Violent protest is passé. Web 2.0 is much mightier.

After you’ve emailed Oprah, contact your family, all your friends and colleagues and ask them to email Oprah too.

Here’s why this will work … international news media are already aggressively criticizing Beijing Olympics social issues, and if you think we have problems here regarding displacement of the homeless ...

“Bbb baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Displacement of marginalized people happens in all Olympics regions while the IOC looks the other way. It’s time for them to step up.

Invite Oprah to Vancouver today!

Tell her I sent you.

Failed Experiment

Well if the report is correct, then the grand experiment to close down Mental Health Institutions did not work.

Seems to me that the government shoule reopen or otherwise build new mental institutions and re-commit those that cannot look after themselves.

Do you think that this

Do you think that this Government could do a "Ralphie"; give all the homeless people in Vancouver some spending money and a one way bus ticket to Victoria and the Island just before the Olympics comes to town? Wouldn't put it past them.

It's a god damn disgrace!

15,000 or 15 any homelessness in BC is a disgrace. Politicians spend tons of money on PR, photo Ops; etc., but little on the real issues: the untrainable poor, mental illness, and drug addiction.

By the time the Olympics happen, homelessness may double, a bloody great way to advertise: BC, the best place to be.

I think our motto in BC should be: Down in out in BC; or BC for sale.

BC is becoming a sad little two tier province, where the wealthy get richer and the poor, poorer.

that picture breaks my heart

Van Isle:
Or Calgary where the authorities would send (and have sent) the problem individual straight back here.
How about mobile shelters?
Old Greyhounds just travel back and forth.
You are either on the bus or off the bus

powerful picture

Thought this shot might be posed..
look at her hands...I said to my wife..she could be dying...then realized..of course she`s dying..outside on the sidewalk in winter..of course you`d be dying.
What a ghastly place Vancouver is becoming...ghastly.

Stop talking an do something all you elected folks

Whatever happened to the extra portables that used to be parked by most schools? Takes a couple of hours to set up, has heat and many have bathrooms. sure it's a stopgap solution, and everyone knows we have a number of city owned lots to put them on at least until the politicians quit talking and do something. The Victoria mayor ins't running next time so maybe he has the gonads to get those people inside.30 years ago I saw my first street person sleeping on grates behind the hotel we were at. Have we learned nothing? It's cheaper to get tht woman a bed than to have her spend a night in emergency down at the local hospital where it cost over 1,000 A DAY. A fairly common notice chalker on downtown eastside :
Talk minus Action equals Zero

Baldey Hughes

Have any of the posters here heard of the Baldy Hughes recovery project outside of Prince George? It is a huge ex-military base being turned into a drug rehab center. It is being touted as the latest and greatest by Lorne Mayencourt the same genius who brought us the safe streets act. The Project is called New Hope and can house several hundred addicts looking for recovery. on the surface it looks positive as it is not just another 28 day rehab spin cycle that only serves to fatten addicts up for their next run. However, it would also make a great place to apprehend and force addicts into being housed in a remote area far from the prying eyes of international reporters. Keep an eye on this center and let us see what it turns into. A great new adventure in addict rehabilitation or a concentration camp for those deemed unacceptable for international viewing. I personally remain skeptical, especially with Mayencourts history of ill conceived notions on how to clean up the streets. Food for thought for all you posters who have a brain and don't buy the Neo-liberal brainwashing so many fall for!

Black/white/grey

"A great new adventure in addict rehabilitation or a concentration camp for those deemed unacceptable for international viewing.."

Maybe it will turn out to be both, not either/or? I do not believe it to be helpful, to apply an absolutist view in this. If it is done right, not run by people with a beady eye on the bottom line and little in the way of mental flexibility, not to mention well-placed compassion, tempered with pragmatic practicality, it may do some good. It is a fact that some people need help, they're not getting it now, and I am not aware that hanging around the dumpier parts of this fair city has a restorative effect on anyone. I know, from experience, that the more expansive parts of the province may have such an effect. Being able to go to a place, where you can take a 360-degree without seeing one single straight line, or any product of Arthur Erickson's developmental history, will put you into a different universe; it can be positively shamanic, and you may come out a new and better person. I have done so a few times, and I did start out young and stupid. Obviously, some of the clients that might go there in this project are equally stupid, if not young, inasmuch as they run short on self-preservation skills. Go for it, I say. It may be good for some, useless for others, and damaging for none. But watch the watchers, that is a sound notion. There is a problem inherent in being a watcher: If you want the job, you shouldn't have it, according to Confucius, and I agree with him. So, the recruiters should find someone who does a swell job now, but doesn't want this job, and then give them what they want to make them change their mind.

But lots of nice new shiny condo's

So there's a few homeless people flopping around the streets of Vancouver... but look on the bright side... we're gonna get a whole pile of nice new shiny half-million dollar plus condo's on the former Woodlands site and the Riverside site on the hillside of Coquitlam!... and boy, those new Coquitlam condo's on the Riverside site will be beauties, with those panoramic views from up on the Hillside!... NOW THATS PROGRESS!, right?.

Let's look at the facts... the NDP had 8 years during the 1990's to fix the homeless problem and get Riverside back into business... but I guess when your busy running casino's, taking care of the homeless just doesn't seem important.

Gordon Ramble.

The poverty soft shoe shuffle...

I guess the poor attendance to this thread, including myself, is an indicator of how much good we think is really going to come out of all this bandwidth type. I lived in poverty for many years, and whilst I can't really be classified as poor any more, I suppose, which is not to say that I am rich, I always did understand one thing from very early: So long as there has been class divided society, there has always been, and will always be "The Poor". For it is in the nature of the beast that those within and who control that unequal arrangement of society. invariably take more than their fair share out at the top end, invariably condemn the bottom end to too little.

It's not rocket science. The economic product of society is always a finite pie, which gets apportioned out on the basis of the class system pecking order. Like I say, it has been thus as long as there has been the division of society into classes, through all its form metamorphoses since the time of unapologetic slavery, through feudalism and now into its highest stage of development: capitalism, with its likewise attendant higher and lower.

The only thing that has not changed is its net economic result and broader societal impact, which includes obscene wealth on one end, and poverty and slums on the other.

And until the poor themselves, and the other "working class" strata with society come to recognize that, weary of it, and decide to organize and act to do something about it-, it will remain ever thus.

Which does tend to make talk of poverty more than a tad pointless, such as even we "progressives" tend, from time to time, to weary of discussing it.

The statistics vary some in the class order of course, lesser in good times and higher in system trauma times, their validity and whose responsibility always ever argued in a round about, like dogs chasing their own tail-, but the one constant is, it is ever there, always threatening the majority working class as lives one pay cheque from poverty themselves, most of them. Others, maybe two pay cheques.

3.7 per 1000

This puts BC at 3.7 per 1000 people as being homeless, a sorry statistic in such cold yet wealthy, country (15,500/4,200,200).

Also not counted as homeless but no doubt adding to the count of people that should be able to live on their own
are young adults, aged 19-30, still living at their parents because of financial reasons. Though purely from my recollection; it seems to me that when I was a young that there was hardly a young man (not attending university) who lived with his parents after age 18. Young women were usually out on their own (if not married or in school) by age 20.

These still-in-the-nest young people add to the burden of baby-boomers and help make the baby-boomers appear that they are not saving for retirement like they should be. There are also greater numbers of young people who have their way paid through university (which is much more expensive under this government) by baby-boomer parents because of greater responsibilities placed upon them by tax regulations, child care laws, and the courts. Child support, no longer tax deductible, further drains the accounts of divorced baby-boomers in comparison to a generation ago. I watch many baby-boomers struggle to assist their children until their children are into their 30s. This was not the case when I was a young adult. I am not bemoaning how it was when I was young, but baby-boomers are bearing the cost of our children having such paltry minimum wages and high costs associated with eating and housing. This adds to the burden of our being able to assist the homeless. After all, our adult children are often homeless, and we have an obligation to help them first.

Poor turn out

Yes Canis, I'm surprised too of the poor turn out here, and you are right that people are tired of talking and not seeing results.

When apathy sets in VANOC wins, and so do all the politicians, news companies and sponsors that profit from 2010.

Olympics organizations are fearful of only two things. The first is terrorism, and a very close second, is having the world find out what really happens in Olympics Host regions.

If you believe the homeless issue is legitimate in Vancouver, and if you're tired of talking and being ignored, then you're talking to the wrong person.

Talk to someone else.

Oprah is a good start, because if she even glances at this issue it will go international overnight, and when that happens, all concerned parties who have the power to effect change will do so quickly.

Email Oprah and invite her back to Vancouver to take a look at the other side of an Olympics gold medal.

I update her regularly, and if more people do too, she might take a look. When she does, it will be hard for our civic leaders to ignore.

Even if she can't help directly, she might be able to recommend someone who can.

If you don't know what to say to her, send her a link to this Tyee article and simply ask her to take a look.

What do you have to lose?

The Tyee is doing their part.

I'm swinging for the fence (read my post above).

Step up to the big leagues and take a crack at the bat yourself.

The Cops smarter than the NDP and Liberals

The NDP had 8 years during the 1990's to fix Riverview and get it back into full operation... but the NDP were to busy building ferry's fit for a King, as well as running Casino's...... the Liberals so far have had six years fix Riverview and get it back into full operation, but they have also failed.

So finally, the Cops figured out what the Politicians should have figured out long ago...

A new report by Vancouver police says a staggering 49 per cent of police calls for service in the Downtown Eastside involve at least one mentally ill person.

"Closing of mental health institutions, funding cutbacks for social housing, inadequate welfare rates and abundance of drugs causing crisis in Downtown Eastside, officer says"

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=bb2d3bbd-fe74-41cc-9e42-25e1c45453e3

Hey... look on the bright side, you'll soon be able to buy a half-million dollar(plus) condo on the hillside of the Coquitlam at the former Riverside site... while Greater Vancouver health-care and police resources continue to be squandered.

Think local act global ....

Dorothy ... rioting is not the answer.

If it were, it would have worked in other Olympics regions, and so far, in all other Olympics regions including Vancouver, it has failed miserably.

If it worked, we wouldn't be in this mess.

The IOC knows how to manage civil disobedience because they have had to deal with it for years.

However, as the movie said, they DO NOT KNOW how to handle the truth.

Your challenge is to get the truth to as many people as possible.

Here's an edited and condensed version of my first letter to Oprah.

Say Gordon_Ramble

I don't recall that Riverview was to be a shelter for the homeless. The NDP did build a lot of low income family housing when the feds scrapped their program. I do wonder what the homeless statistic was in the eight years you talk about. As for the liberals they have had more federal money transfers, a better revenue from higher commodity prices and started with surplus budgets left by the NDP. Tar them both by all means but use a different brush. The homeless issue is something that has come forward a lot since Gordon came on the scene. Does that mean something?

hopelessness

Dear C. Latrans;
This is not such a thin turnout really. It even pulled SDGreen out to advocate reimprisoning the unsightly. Then of course the concentration camp in Prince George was a high point too.

I understand the frustration in the face of such obtuse failure to learn from past disasters that makes you want the poor to rise up and cast off the etc. etc.

The problem isn't there, though. You wind up with a crapshoot at best whether the lot you'd get are any better than the lot you've got.

The problem is that common decency is quite beyond these bozos. They stand ready, they bleat, to offer any and all assistance short of actual help. Build houses for the homeless? Oh, nonono! that wouldn't help, besides they couldn't afford them!

Subsidise the houses? Oh, we couldn't, the market would spank. Besides, my house cost sooooo much, why should they get something for nothing?

Homelessness is easy to solve. Any community could do it. Just build houses, then let the poor live in them. Build them all over the place, all neighbourhoods. Build networks and self help groups. Offer effective services at those houses. Transparently, so as to discourage cheating. Robbing the poor is a sport with some of our leaders, and they've got it down to an art.

Whether you're old, ill or disabled, you still belong to us, and any society that can't look after it's own is in the hands of it's enemies.

Thanks Bailey

Truer words are seldom spoken.

The sad part of it all is that we're raising a generation of 20/30 somethings that have become so derecinated from their own plight (climbing the increasingly slippery slope) that they seem unable to appreciate the writing on the wall for their own futures.

Somehow, if that generation can be turned around - things would change.

I think it's that, that sense of re-kindled hope among the young, which one sees in the Obama campaign down south.

Will it coalesce into something lasting and real?

Probably not - but at least for once they aren't looking to the god almighty market for their salvation.

People, together, somehow connected across space and over the years, can make a difference.

Reinstitutionalization

...is not the answer, no matter what the form. Institutions under the Libs have gotten bigger, beholden as they are to the "widget" economic theory of health care, education and public service. The widget theory proposes that if you plan to offer a service, scale it up to serve hundreds of thousands at a time, simplify its constituent parts as much as you can regardless of needs, organize a bureaucracy to measure your outcomes, and apply for more money to fix it when it doesn't work.

It's a classic prescription for our health care system which has supported big inefficient hospitals at the cost of smaller more efficient community hospitals, of rationalization of schools and districts, of the ministry of Forests.

Riverview had problems too. Warehousing the mentally ill usually increased their dependency, and when appropriate oversight was missing, abuse would occur - patient-on-patient, staff-on-patient, visitor-on-patient.... The older governments hoped that various private and religious social service organizations would step in to offer housing and support, and the government could just sign contracts with them for minimum care standards, but the government failed to plan for this follow-up care before closing the institution.

It's still doing this with health care. It's done it with education, although a lot of charter schools have been quicker off the mark to apply for funding and provide the rudiments of an education plan in return for 50% funding and permission to tax parents for something different.

(cont'd)

Part II

But not the mentally-ill homeless. Atco trailers is no less an institution than Riverview, and a whole lot less respectful. Anyone who suggests such things (or Storyeum or Abandoned Warehouse A) had better have a plan for keeping the homeless and mentally ill from hurting each other while they're there, because that's why a lot of them are living on the street anyway. They don't feel safe in the housing that they're offered, so they get out. And that means staff - lots of them, at least three per shift in any facility with more than 20 people, and at least 2 per shift in facilities with less.

I'm not talking about some silly WCB regulation. Until you've lived with these people (like I did for two months many years ago) you have no idea how strange their lives are, how much threat they're under from daily living and the people around them, and how violent and inappropriate their reactions are. They've burned down houses, apartment buildings and churches to keep warm, they've shot, stabbed, clubbed and injected others who they thought were threatening them, and they've run in fear of their lives through busy traffic, abandoning all their painstakingly-assembled "stuff" (the equivalent of their RRSP) simply because someone "looked" at them.

I don't want to be abusive to those who don't know about this, but really, I keep hearing these suggestions over and over again on these threads, "Just set up some temporary housing for them" as if keeping the rain off them were an end to it. It isn't, and it never was. People who would abandon themselves to sleeping in the cold wet Vancouver weather fear something far worse than dying of cold. If you haven't asked them what it is, you'd better shut up, because you haven't a clue.

That cat keeps coming back, weren't you listening...?!

“People who would abandon themselves to sleeping in the cold wet Vancouver weather fear something far worse than dying of cold. If you haven't asked them what it is, you'd better shut up, because you haven't a clue.”

Maybe some of what stirs also is this:

37.
One's own house is best, though small it may be,
each man is master at home;
with a bleeding heart will he beg, who must,
his meat at every meal.

(Havamal)

which then translates into this:

I have no home; I make awareness my dwelling.

(The Samurai creed)

The drive to ‘have one’s own’, I believe it cuts across time and place and cultures, and even beyond the glass wall of mental illness.

We are all not so different, from the one in the sleeping bag on the cold tiles of downtown, to the one in the pent-house condo or estate villa, obsessively cramming millions, nay, billions, into the piggybank, and everyone in between. We are all trying to ‘have our own’, live on our own terms, and secure that state with whatever we have – or haven’t – got.

Part of the problem is, we have all become so insignificant to one another. You can care for a couple of hundred people, your village. The human brain doesn’t go further. What we need is to re-establish the village, in whatever form we can do here and now. (and I am, most emphatically not speaking of the olympic ‘village’!)

I still say it is US, not glittering celebrities, not the next goddamn generation, who have enough to carry as it is. If the buck doesn’t stop here, I don’t know what.

bailey

Is it, Bailey?
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.sanpatrignano.org/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DSan%2BPatrignano%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Cut & Paste:
ec.europa.eu/employment_social/local_employment/lla/fo/File.do?id=1e27113d155aa8180115d15c5fcf038c

http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=110229&Itemid=161
"New Hope is patterned after the successful San Patrignano program in Italy"

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=630bb775-3767-4a77-8536-e0639b88ca06&k=56726

Time will tell if it is all a scam, or is the real deal.

As well, you may in interested in this aspect of addiction:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2007.12-health-rat-trap/

The homeless, mentally ill, alcoholics, drug addicts, etc.

The solving of this problem is by no means a one shoe fits all resolve. If, only the answer was that simple.( Zalm, covers that aspect well) Judging by the comments here, I would say many of us can personally relate to these unfortunate people in one form or another. I'm of the opinion that the first that we must reach out and help are the mentally ill, then proceed up from there. I say up because the mentally ill cannot possibly help themselves, they do not posses that ability.

Some homeless are committing crimes in the

Some homeless are committing crimes in the hope they will get caught and go to jail just so they'll get 3 square meals a day, and a secure/solid roof over their head.

I knew a homeless guy living around Maple Ridge... he'd committ petty crimes in the hope of getting caught, becuase; his standard of living actually improved when he went to jail, as compared to living on the street.

You know this province has degenerated when thousands of destitue people can increase their standard of living by going to jail... it wasn't like that in Greater Vancouver 30 years ago... back then, a regular guy could always get a good high paying job in fishing, mining, forestry, construction, areospace, etc, etc,... and the cost of a decent single-family house was under $100,000.

Look on the bright side I guess, we'll soon have 10,000 new condo's on the Riverview site... whoopeeeeeeee!.

Quote:The problem isn't

Bailey, my friend, indeed the turnout seems to have gathered some momentum. :-)

And the concerns you raise, for example, if I read you correctly, re my hypothesis that the various working class strata, including the poor, needing to take up responsibility for "building" the solutions movements to the problems of their own collective lives, and indeed, that of the planet, are certainly legitimate to a very large degree. But then there is no guarantee that everything will have a fairy tale ending to any of the great dilemma issues in time, the movement of the stars, the fate of the universe, or the human condition. Failure and worse outcomes are always a possibility, at least as much as success possibilities, not?

That said, I think, still better that the Great Unwashed should rely on their individual and collective selves, certainly better than they should look to ruling class elites, including the "professional/managerial working class strata elites" that serve them. The failure of reliance upon that solution possibility certainly ever returns to haunt us.

Beware those who speak in our name, but are not us.

Which is not to say that policies of alliance and co-operation with other "liberal" and well meaning elements from other class strata in society should receive an absolute thumbs down.There are always exceptions, just beware of over reliance upon them, and our tendencies to naivety.

Life is a crapshoot very often at best anyway, eh my friend? Which has certainly been a true working class experience with all the so-called vanguards that would speak in our name; communist, ndp or what have you?

Better we make our own mistakes and learn from them. And mistakes will be made. About as close to an absolute certainty as one can get about anything. :+)

Good research

Dear RickW;
Thank you for the very pertinent citations in your piece above. I would like to point out that they are somewhat contradictory, however.

The Walrus article seems to make the case that addiction is circumstantial, depending on misery to drive it. Even Skinner's rats had to be made miserable before they would take the morphine. And BF Skinner's research is infamous in some circles for it's horrible mistreatment of rats. Furthermore, he deliberately set up his Behaviorism in direct opposition to the Humanist school of thought that was concurrent.

I had the fortune, good or bad, to be a witness to that struggle, and I believe to this day that the determining element was the clandestine, which is to say unpublished, project funding from American military/intelligence sources that was ubiquitous in psychology research in the cold war days. Those guys just loved Behaviourism, and anything to do with influencing thoughts, beliefs and behaviours from outside.

The others propose concentrating the addicts in facilities for some years for "treatment". the details of the treatment are sketchy,though the Italian site opens with a bald man caressing the neck of a subservient looking youth. It's also unclear whether the 'clients' would be free to come and go.

This has always been the problem with facilities of all kinds. Robbing the poor individually is hardly worthwhile, but get six or seven hundred of them under your thumb, and there starts to be money in it.

Funding, you know? Power. Lots of weak, vulnerable people in one place who have to do whatever you say, and can be influenced to think whatever you teach them.

Who do you think is drawn to this kind of work?

Bailey, says

GWest was overwhelmed, "Truer words are seldom spoken."

Sure, start with, say North Vancouver. Build a modest hundred modest houses at say, $400,000 each (including land costs). Add on the "effective services" and annual maintenance, say, $5 million per year. That's only $45-50 million on top of North Vancouver's present budget expenditure of around $70 million. Let's just round it out to a doubling of Property Taxes, OK?

Run this up the flagpole as the municipal election approaches.

Gordon_Ramble

Gordon_Ramble said, Some homeless are committing crimes in the hope they will get caught and go to jail just so they'll get 3 square meals a day, and a secure/solid roof over their head.
Myself, if I were in their shoes I wouldn't spend one night out in the rain, cold, with no food. I wouldn't hope to get caught, I would make goddamn sure I was caught. One does not have to get destructive in order to get locked up. There are gaggles of things one could do. I would think confined to a nice warm cell trumps, being exposed to cold, wet weather every time. Many years ago I knew an old fella, who was a veteran of two wars. When I got to know him he was in his early seventies. what this old fella did on several different occasions was to get himself deliberately thrown into jail Those days jail was Oakalla Prison. He and his wife, lived in a small suite in Richmond, he would complain, saying that his wife was getting cantankerous, and wouldn't give him any money.( him having spent all his) So off he went to pull his caper, which would get him arrested. I Believe it was always carried out in a beer parlor and in the early winter months. The Judge (Palmer)in Richmond knew him on a first name basis, there was no love lost between these two. If the judge didn't give the old guy what he considered an adequate sentence, he would insult the judge with some unkind remark, which he knew many of. The Judge was more than happy to oblige him, and would add to the sentence. I guess this was sort of a win, win situation for the both of them. Usually the sentence was 2 or 3 months. Because of his age ,the old fella wasn't issued any work duties while in prison, in lieu of, he was relegated to sit around and entertain the inmates (and the guards) with his many war stories and of travels around the world. Upon his release he went directly to his post office who were holding his mail, which by now contained 2-3 old age checks, by not having spent any money for the last 2-3 months, he now had some funding and a rest from his wife.( No doubt she needed a well deserved rest from him as well) He was a legend.

Yeah, put it...

I agree with Bailey. Homelessness is easy to solve, though as much as his solution stands to work as well as the current one, like it, if for different reasons, it is idealistically simplistic, in my view. That said, I'd opt for its greater likelihood of success over the Riverview "institutional" model-, any day.

But what it more really takes, again in my view, is a population at sane numerical levels (actually sustainable), an abundant nature, worthwhile opportunities for employment at "fulfilling" income levels, opportunities for actually really living off the land for the other part of the population, like myself, that rejects the "urban" model of living, and for the rest, as occurs in the rest of wild nature, judicious culling, as in ceasing to think "religiously" that everyone must be saved, whatever the cost or outcome. For the remainder, after that extremely difficult rationalization process (And difficult decisions frequently have to be made in life-, wild or civilized.), simple humanitarian "help", institutional or otherwise, as a "social" responsibility. (For example, Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer, with whom I much have sympathy-, in the absence of collective help for what was likely an action of his bearing the hallmark of a real love for his daughter. My view.)

And don't think that I do not understand the dangerous ground I tread upon here. (I just do not buy into the sanctity of life from the moment of conception bullshit to which "the religous faithful" ascribe, at the abortion or any other level.)

And that a serious risk exists, especially in the hand of right wing nutters, I understand. It is just that going "WHUMPH!" over to the other extreme is a no less harmful naivety as well.

The need is to build a real and sustainable model for human existence on the planet. And while "idealism" certainly has its usefulness in shaping a caring and compassionate future, it also is not enough, in and of itself. We, the working class, including its poor, need to understand that too.

R/man

We've been through this before. The average Canadian was better off in this country 30 - 35 years ago.

It's time we shook off the chains of the blind market capitalism that has created the system you support.

I don't care if it hurts the top 10% of income earners in this country - they've had it too good for too long and they've had their finger on the roulette wheel.

Time for a little fairness and a new deal.

Lets just see what happens when the pain starts to be felt in this country and folks begin to lose their houses.

As far as municipal politics being capable of solving this - don't be naive - Campbell makes all the decisions for municipalities anyway - you ought to know better.

woody, re: homeless comitting crimes to improve living standards

The courts/police have wised-up to the practise of the homeless comitting crimes in the hopes of going to jail for their 3 square meals a day and a secure/solid roof over thier head.

You can be dam sure that being in jail for 2 or 3 momths is far superior to living in a rat infested flea bagged downtown eastside hotel for $400 per month (and after paying rent, you'd have less than $100 to pay for food and essentials for a month)... heck, being in jail for 2 or 3 months would be like having a holiday in Maui in comparison to living in one of those flea bag hotels on Hastings... and alot safer to.

When I use to go to Chinatown/Downtown

When I use to go to Chinatown/Downtown Vanc. 30 - 35 years ago as a young kid (myGrandmother use to take me and my brother to Chinatown regularly for Chinese food)... I remember the sight of a homless person in the downtown eastside sleeping in a doorway was somewhat rare... back then, I remeber seeing a barely even a handful of homeless people, like maybe one or 2 each time we'd go down there, sometimes I'd see none.

Now when I go down there, I see hundreds of destitute people in the span of just 10 minutes.

Well, at least were gonna get 10,000 new condo's on Riverview!... hip, hip, horay!

re: Ophra

Oprah has bigger fish to fry than those located in Vancouver.

The US housing crisis (still in it's early stages) is just begining to tear the US apart... she's got several lifetimes worth of work ahead of her just cleaning up the Bush Jr. catastrophee... the MSM isn't doing much reporting on it yet... but there's multiple tent cities springing up around some of the major cities in the US as a result of the US hosuing implosion and other Bush policies that generally only benefit the top 1%...

video: A California tent city rises from the ashes of the US housing crisis;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmeHiFZUWtE

Maurice Cardinal

Your obviously dedicated to bringing the homeless and mental illness situation to the forefront. Ive read some of your comments here at the Tyee. I really feel your flogging a dead horse in your pursuit of trying to attain that medias attention,. As you point out, they appear on a separate mission. So, why would you bother to pursue them? Your wasting your time and energy. I stopped supporting that firm at least three years along with all of their media print and television, in fact the names you mention I have never heard of, and I do a sh!t load of reading and viewing of the news, on both TV and Internet. Regarding your above comment. "Bickering among ourselves at The Tyee" Myself I wouldn't define it for the most part as bickering. One of the reasons which makes this site so popular and prosperous is the allowing of opposing, contradicting dialog. How else is one to reexamine ones thoughts and views. Many commentators here at the Tyee have caused me to sit back and reevaluate my thoughts. If were all on the same wavelength, stangnation would take over, and rapidly cause the demise of the site. As for Oprah, I wouldn't put to much credence there, she is one very popular lady ,with a very tight schedule and time line. As famous and popular as she is , there is a limit to her abilities, she is after all a human being like the rest of us.

Why is it............

.....that so-called "capitalism" (as practiced here in North America) always needs a "leg up" by government? Why do they have to skew the "level playing field"?