Calgary

Just make sure Calgary or anyone else in Alberta doesn't get the idea to send their homeless west with a one-way ticket. They've done it before, they might be tempted to do it again.

I have a sad feeling that unless the program is national in scope, it will just bankrupt whichever city decides to do it first as the other cities will probably dump their problem on that first one.

Instant Ghetto

Such a city funded scheme will certainly encourage the dumping of more unwanted on Vancouver's door step.

Moreover the area(s) where these 'communities' are permitted to set-up shop will become instant ghettos. Not once yet have I heard of the miraculous reaching up from such conditions. Once an area gets this sort of designation -> as a destination with free room (and probably board) has that area ever recovered from this without the city or district or region having to basically bulldoze the whole thing and seal it off for a time.

That is right. Wherever this 'plan' gets put into place will instantly drop in value...by 30% or more. Then the crime wave will really get going, if the thought of a tent city causes nightmares to people, imagine whole city blocks filled to the brim! This is the sort of approach that has caused the inner city rot in many large US cities...places where the police do not go after dark, nor enter by day without body armor and in groups of no less than 5.

Gregor's plan sounds nice and pleasant.
Looks like it will work 'on paper'.
...has a history of failure on the ground.

Vancouver is going to have to take some real pain I guess before tearing a page from New York and getting serious about 'broken windows' and really coming up with an urban renewal plan that will do more than make a bigger ghetto.

I was a refugee in Europe

I was a refugee in Europe after WW2 and for all practical purposes homeless for 5 out of the following 6 years in Austria and England.

Europe was a sea of ruins, with people living in ruins and the basements of bombed out houses, plus, to the best of my recollection, about 4 million refugees from the Soviet occupied countries.

Money was worthless, there were no materials, food, or resources to build.

Yet, nobody ever slept on the streets. One of the main reasons were the extensive military and POW camps that could be used as DP (Displaced Person) camps. In England, where there was a terrible housing shortage, I've lived, with other guys in a former Canadian army hut for 3 years.

In short, there are all kinds of solutions, if the politicians get off the ideological kick of sending more and more benefits of our immense resource base abroad to foreign owners so they can colonize more of the world.

As far the drug addiction is concerned, has anybody ever considered why people become drug addicts, when the consequences have been known for 50 or more years?

Is it really a sickness, or a psychological craving to block out realities in a world built on fraud and lies everywhere we turn ?

This should be the first area to explore, not just moaning and groaning about it.

But then, what would happen to our glorious "wealth creating" economic system
and the garbage taught in our universities to brainwash students with, if the fraud and lies were cut out and replaced with logic and facts ?

Ed Deak.

Crawford1946

I agree on most of the points made in this story on Robertson and Homelessness. But, the point that 'Homelessness' is merely the symptom of the larger problem of 'Affordable Rental Housing' has not been made. Most Canadian cities today have a severe shortage of affordable rental housing. There are more people living in rental housing than in their own property. Since the Federal Governments dropped their assistance in building rental housing and passed that responsibility to the Provinces - we have seen only a small fraction of needed rental housing being built. We need to change this inaction to action. Perhaps if rental housing were to be considered needed 'infrastructure', we could see that much needed void filled!

Welcome to My Neighbourhood

Vancouver needs to experience much more pain and social strife before the electorate elects officials who can combine New York's 'broken windows'- law enforcement style along with effective and practical homeless policies that are not politically motivated against 'the rich'.

These ideas and Robertson's misguided beliefs will only worsen the homeless problems. Obviously, the Mayor of Vancouver has few resources and authority to deal with the homeless. I hope the left doesn't expect him to fight Victoria because Robertson's policies are totally dependent on his good relationship with the BC govt.

Vancouver citizens don't need a mayor on a national crusade for the homeless- there's lots of other issues for the mayor to deal with. A mayor should stick to his practical duties and not engage in social engineering. If he wants to change the wold then run for the federal govt.

Providing housing on demand will only make Vancouver a magnet for the homeless from all over the country. Homelessness will never come to an end. It will always exist. There'll always be destitute addicts and mentally unstable people on the street. Devoting an inordinate amount of our resources to eliminating all homelessness is an impossible endeavour.

Advocates bat around their simplistic math without considering the real world of addicts. Simply giving housing to drug addicts will result in trashed housing units and ghetto formation. Drug addicts need treatment in cost effective centres located in cheaper areas outside of Vancouver. These institutions would be designed to house and treat addicts- they may not be a pink house with a white picket fence, but we should solve the roots of homelessness.

And those roots aren't Vancouver's high real estate prices. If you're mentally unstable or an addict there's no way you can afford Vancouver housing even if prices fall by half. Why? Because they are incapable of holding down a job.

Of course it would be soooo nice for health care providers to treat addicts where they are living- such a luxurious service level isn't even available to others. 'Old fashioned' house calls- how ridiculous. Centralize BC's drug addiction treatment so professionals would not waste time and money travelling. Stop trying to integrate addicts and homeless into our neighbourhoods in order to teach us about community values. We don't need morality lessons. We don't want addicts and their drug dealers- in BC's liberal drug market around our kids and properties.

Robertson needs to quickly come to grip about what he can achieve within his boundaries of authority otherwise he'll worsen Vancouver's homeless problem.

Those are good ideas...

Here's another.

I don't live in Vancouver but I have a 30 year old daughter who does. No one knows what exactly is wrong with her. She has a
multitude of mental, emotional and physical problems. Doesn't drink, but periodically falls off the wagon and does drugs to self-medicate herself. She cannot work; exists on a pitiable disability pension.

Sometimes she is able to get it together enough to find an apartment. But she never keeps it long; can't pay the bills. Her
life is a revolving door of a few months in an apartment and a few days on the street before she can convince a friend or
acquaintance to let her stay for awhile, usually bunking with someone who has some dumpy place through BC Housing.

All she wants is a place of her own where she can keep her stuff that she can afford. Here's a progressive solution the Americans have started with.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2008/12/07/gutierrez.us.tiny.house.cnn

It would be cheap to build a bunch of these for the homeless, place them on Vancouver-owned land and pay someone to ensure that the grounds stay relatively pleasant looking. What a great idea!

Some ideas for consideration

Campbell was asked by Bill Good in Dec. /07 (when he was en route to Hawaii) if he would re-open Riverview. The answer was "No" and gutless Good did not pursue this. Instead of using these buildings for filming (and revenue) this facility should be re-opened. Murdock your attitude to homeless persons is appauling. In 1996 I got a facility opened in the old Marpole Correctional facility as a shelter for the homeless. Lookout and Al Mitchell ran it to 2002. NO ONE IN THE NEIGHBOUR EVER COMPLAINED.
Libs came to power. End of facility. Where are the 14 hotels bought for housing? What about the closed down buildings in Gastown that Geller talked about restoring as art galleries? There is space around. Let Roberston get on with it and quit the complaining.

Japanese example

In Japan, there are many homeless communities in public parks. Far from being centres of crime or addiction, these are often people who have little or no work and can't afford to rent or buy, but still manage to keep their areas clean and tidy. They use public bath houses to keep themselves clean. Yes, I know it's a very different culture, but there are lessons to be learned there should we but look.

So it's possible that not all homeless would trash their place. It's just likely that if you concentrate ALL the homeless into a few residences, without taking care of the underlying issues (mental illnesses, including addiction being the main one it seems), then you're just asking for trouble.

homelessness

Been there and done that in my now 28 years on the Wet Coast.
I came armed with 5 years of university and big hopes to become a Yuppie after years of living in rural Quebec in a sweet little eco house on my own % acres with my 2 children.
I thought they needed for their teen years, a more urban existence. And I needed a a fat salaried job. That didn"t happen. Every year we had to move, Sometimes twice.
I could go on at length, and having experienced for a period the shelters, I have some suggestions.
One thing is obvious: buy a bulk order of tobacco.
The other: people lose their life skills out on the street. A rom in a hotel style accomodation won't help much.Its just a disguise.

Good Luck

good luck on getting the Feds involved! do not forget Mr Harper is so busy trying to save his skin
he wouldn't and never has cared about any homeless people. When you have a prime minister who
has increased the size of his motorcade to satisfy his ego you should not expect him to care
about the homeless. BUT if we all make it an issue that could cost him his ego (PM job) then
perhaps we might have a tool after all.

Bedbugs

It's important to remember that, if the goal is to get people indoors, the housing needs to keep the bedbugs down to a dull roar. Most of the hotels in the Downtown Eastside are ridden with these horrid pests, and some people would rather sleep outside than in these bug-infested rooms.

The bedbug situation is a terrible and now well-entrenched aspect of homelessness in Vancouver.

Good point

"Tomorrow's list of "50 ways to help the homeless" will address finding enough homes, creating places for pets, and involving surrounding communities."

I can afford to pay market rent on my own in this city but if I hadn't found a pet friendly place I'd choose the street (well, more likely another city). Point being- devotion to one's pet cannot be underestimated.

Broken theory - not broken windows

Why do we have to go through this same wringer of lies from Rudy Guiliani every few months...broken window theory has been totally discredited...you might care to order the DVD http://www.giulianitime.com/

And learn a little bit more about the snake oil salesman, his family roots in the mafia and what 'broken windows' theory is really all about.

Unique solution

I have been researching affordable housing over the last 5 years. What I discovered is that affordable housing is within grasp of most communities, and very few public funds have to spent.

The easiest way to increase housing is to use common sense. There are many areas in urban settings where land is temporarily available at very low cost which is both serviced by sewage and water.

U install the most affordable type of structure which in some places might be the use of used shipping containers. These are very strong, and only need insulation, and some finishing, and they are cheap.

A 20'X 8'X 8' 1/2 shipping container, used in Vancouver costs about $2,500. These can be insulated and new waterproof roofs can be made for them. If you put 2 of these together and join them with a hallway the total living area is about 320 square feet. If you use 3 of them, the living area is about 480 square feet.

The total cost would be less than $100 per square foot, or no more than $48,000 for a 1 or 2 bedroom suit.

In the southern interior of BC here, there are many many trailer parks with trailers made from 1X3 inch stud frame walls, and covered in aluminum siding. The trailers are much less durable and strong than a modern shipping container. Yet because these trailers (mobile homes) pay pad rents at the parks, even though they are as many as 50 years old, worth very little, they still provide a huge amount of good housing which is affordable even though the pad rents are in excess of $300 per month.

These older mobile homes do not meet current building code standards either.

But the municipalities do not legislate new by-laws to force parks to meet the new building code. The only problem with these older mobiles is that it is difficult to get financing for the mobile if it is very old and not built to current building code standards.

Recently a School District in Spain decided to build a High School entirely out of used shipping containers. They saved a huge bundle in doing that, and you cannot even determine looking at the completed structure that it was made from used shipping containers. The High School was designed for 170 students.

Homelessness

I take exception to Rolf Auger's stance that it is more expensive to provide shelters than housing. The report he referred to says chronically homeless people cost $51.00 a day in shelters. (I find this difficult to believe. A mat on a floor does not cost $51.00 a day). The report goes on to say when policing, hospital stays and jail resources are added in the costs increase to $400 - $500 a day per person. Perhaps it would cost $400 to $500 for some chronic homeless if they are on the street. If this population is in shelters there would be a drastic decline in this $400 to $500 a day. You cannot lump those in shelters with the street homeless. Shelters are not only for the chronic homeless. Most shelter usage is for short term stays: one to three days.

This thing about recovery has to be rethought considering less than 5% of those that go to treatment are successful. The "do nothing theory" would eliminate this horrendeous exense.

As to Vancouver "experts" I would question their vision as it is those experts that have sustained the exisitng homeless situation by hiding behind political inaction rather than putting their names and positions on the line. If experts have no name then they have no expertise. These people seem to be in the business of making a simple problem into a horrendeous seemingly unsolvable problem (job description (justification) model). I have personal experience with this. For two years I advocated for city-owned Storyeum to become a shelter and all the "experts" negated this simple solution. Now Claude Richmond is saying he will work with the City if there was an available building. Although the City knew of Storyeum and the need for more shelters they secretly (in camera) it is rumoured have let 142 Water Street be leased to a highend furniture store. As we speak the City is paying big dollars for gutting the interior. The other side is rumoured to become a highend bowling alley.

If these recommendations are followed then the "experts" will be getting what they want: a logistic nightmare and chaos rather than a centralized uniform solution.

audreylaferriere@yahoo.ca

A coat of paint is not enough

I've heard one of the on-the-ground problems is that while the province bought the DSE hotels, the social service agencies don't know how to be landlords. They need to: get people who know renovation construction, gut these buildings, get rids of the pests, redo and modernize these buildings so they will be durable and secure for the tenants. Then they need some property managers used to dealing with challenging tenants.

A coat of paint is not enough!

Ending homelessness/treatment on demand

This is probably the single most important issue to face in the plan to end homelessness.It depends on the kind of treatment we are willing to include.If we take a drug free approach the whole thing falls apart before it begins.Young people need treatment,absolutely.Long time hard core addicts,especially heroin addicts will not respond in significant numbers no matter what the threat.People with long time drug addictions would be better served,as would the public by reopening the NAOMI project as soon as possible.Recent court rulings have made this possible.We already have data supporting this approach and there is much more available from Europe that shows this works with far less cost and it's humane.Forced treatment for long term hard core addicts is no better than prison.It's a waste of time,money and the emotional damage is unfathomable.