51. Open homes - community houses

Make it happen at home. Have a relocator stay at your place until they find a job. Make it someone who has just got out of jail or hopped the border or is a single parent or out of work for the first time in 25 years. You need a little challenge. It helps if you already have housemates to balance out the equation. The software developer who always forgets to rotate her laundry will look like a great ally in comparison. You can certainly do it, and it will improve your community building skills for when there are a lot more people under pressure (a more serious economic downturn, natural disaster, or just transportation logistics because people can't get enough of that Alberta black gold). It's not efficient or cost effective, but the on-the-job training and community building opportunities are priceless. Be ready to be the one to move to a new place.

Re-cycle

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/SmartHome/Story?id=6201752&page=1

With all the empty apartment

With all the empty apartment towers in downtown Vancouver, I'm surprised that nobody has seriously discussed squatting as a viable alternate form of housing.

Squatters are pretty standard in many of the European cities, particularly where property taxes are such that apartment buildings must be run as loss leaders because their owners cannot afford to rent them out. And, as opposed to the stereotype of drug users and punk rockers trashing the buildings, most of the squatters are responsible young working poor people who cannot afford to live in their own cities otherwise.

I've seen some very workable and amiable landlord/squat arrangements where there were agreements over custodianship and care of the property.

Anything that has remained empty and useless to the community for over six months to a year should be fair game for the homeless.

Squatters...

Sally Bowles wrote:
"Squatters are pretty standard in many of the European cities"

yes and Sally there are folks who can drink wine all day in France or beer in Germany and somehow not turn into buffoons at public celebrations. Not so in Vancouver.

Moreover the English common law that we use, unlike the French or Belgians, takes a very dim view of 'squatters' or of common community property suddenly coming into being simply because it 'appears' to be unused.

If you want that sort of approach to be taken then expect the property owners to sue the municipality for not enforcing the law, or worse the number of security companies will explode the day after any municipality accepts that such an action can take place. Then these 'empty' properties will be put under guard and the instant someone starts to 'squat' they will be evicted...legally...under our system.

Not a great option in my view and one that only will either start or accelerate a downward spiral anywhere it is attempted.

50 responses...

1) Great, another mouth to feed from the tax trough.
2) Tax break and development incentives to kill red tape! Sounds great...now how are you going to get this past COPE or the other anti-'gentrification' crowd?
3) Once the local neighborhood gets wind of this idea expect a BIG PUSH BACK against such a plan. Property values around rooming houses drop.
4) OK, who pays?
5) see #1 only multiply it by another bureaucracy.
6) provincial responsibility...maybe Gregor should have run for Premier?
7) OK, who pays?
8) How about permitting the same 'chairitable' status as political parties get for donations to such organizations?
9) sounds great - 2 parts: who pays? and I think that the 'issue of ID cards' will be refused by many of the 'homeless'.
10) again sounds great, see #8
11) who will pay for the renovations needed to achieve this?
12) how do you determine this? More bureaucrats?
13) once you have a functioning society that can take in donations like political parties do then the establishment of women only locations becomes easy.
14) all it takes is to have 'room and board' as the standard.
15) this is a twister...as there are many who rent now and cannot have a pet. by extending this out and I recognize the humanity of the gesture you will be spitting in the face of those whom have already managed to break free from the homeless life. I recognize the humanity, and disagree with the policy. We must start to choose, pets or the homeless people you are trying to help. In the end if you want BOTH, then both are achieveable, just not in the densely populated areas.

Having a further thought about reviewing more of these items...keeping such a group confined into the city seems such a waste.

Why not offer the opportunity to really break free? There are a number of communities in the north of the province that are facing challenges with folks leaving, yet the future of work in these locations remains...there are homes that will likely be sold at tax sales in the next year...many of which are vacant right now. Their owners have no plans to redeem the back taxes, they cannot sell the homes for enough to cover thier debts.

All it would take is for the Province to 'redeem' the taxes on the properties for itself and turn them over to this 'homeless czar or bureaucracy' and move the homeless into them. This does mean moving from the happy-go-lucky bohemian lifestyle of Vancouver streets to the clean fresh air of places like MacKenzie though...

Oh and it may mean actually having to work at something, like maintaining your home, or repairing streets or any number of other civic tasks that places in the north cannot get done now for lack of workers to do these things.

I know now it is starting to sound like work-fare.

There ain't so such thing as a free lunch.

50 stupid ideas from free spending socialists

Here we go again, supposing that the people of Vancouver wish to spend all their resources on the homeless to create a socialist utopia that insults hard working taxpayers. I like the way Murdock thinks- practical, avoiding social engineering. I'll continue his comments along with my own selection of attacks on these insane proposals.

15) Sure and along with pets we should provide bed turndown services to the homeless. I thought we were running a welfare service not a hotel.
16) and 17) And don't forget valet parking.
20) How can you impose this on private property? Who wants to rent to the homeless anyway? They'll trash a building.
21) You must be joking- no one wants a homeless squatter in their condo.
23) Sure, violate all property laws. Why buy a house when you can be homeless and get free housing?
30) Rest of us can't even get house calls so why should the homeless?
38) Don't threaten the rest of us with militancy or you'll receive no support at all. No one owes the homeless a home or a living. Don't forget the rest of us work for a living.
32) You must be joking- nicer housing for post detox? When will we get the money for this Club Med Welfare.

None of these proposals make sustainable fiscal sense. Most of the homeless are drug addicts or mentally ill and should be treated as such. The citizens of Vancouver can't afford luxury treatment for the homeless. Better to execute ideas that can be affordably done than to dream of homeless heaven.

To Murdock

On cost - We are already paying for it in spades. Don't you know it costs almost twice as much to leave them on the streets? This could be called a cost saving measure if properly managed. I like many of your points. There certainly are wrinkles to be worked out. I'm a bit skeptical about moving them to the north. It may just cut them off from addiction services, employment opportunities and cost more to support them up there should they remain in the system. May be more likely to remain in the system if put in a community with limited employment opportunity.

Travel more

Perhaps some of these advocates should travel more, perhaps get a different perspective? Japan, for instance, has tent cities in public parks that are well managed, relatively clean and unobtrusive. They include public showers, for instance. France has public housing and a good social security system (has its faults, but it's still pretty good). Other countries have various solutions to a problem that we're only now tackling.

Unfortunately, unless Vancouver acts in concert with other cities in Canada, the others will just be tempted to dump their homeless onto Vancouver and cut their own costs. Calgary, for instance, has already done this in the past, and will probably do it again.

This suggestion would compound the injustice

>>>23.) Seize grow-ops. Just as some law enforcement agencies seize vehicles, explore the possibility of seizing grow-ops and drug houses, renovating them, and converting them to rooming houses. Let the former owners sue for the value of the (usually trashed) property seized.<<<

You think taking someone's home because they are growing plants inside is legitimate? Thats a police state, Monte, which you are gladly endorsing. And what difference does it make if their own home is "trashed"? Why does an unemployed homeless person deserve the home of those who are working and generating needed revenue for this province?

If this is how homeless advocates want to solve this problem, by adding further injustice, then screw them. It would seem these social engineers want to rob many of their property, vest it in the shaky and dubious hands of local and provincial government, so that alot of white middle class bureaucrats can expand their own employment opportunities managing the relentless army of unemployed and homeless. And we are going to see thousands more homeless in BC by next winter.

Do you know the BC provincial government claims to spend $400,000,000 on "homelessness", there are about 40,000 homeless in BC, so that's $10,000 per homeless person -enough to pay the rent on a nice place for every last one of them, but they are all still homeless! Where did the money go? See the brilliant people who wrote up your 50 "suggestions".

Sounds like a good start...

to me. It will have to be a "living document" program. Some things will work well, some not at all. They will need to be flexible.

At least it's a concrete plan, which is more than I've seen to now.

Squatters are quite common

Squatters are quite common now throughout most of Europe, including Great Britain, btw., and squatters' rights evolved out of necessity, since the cost of leaving people homeless began to outweigh the cost of letting them occupy unused buildings. At this juncture, squatting might seem like an "extreme" measure, but if our economy tanks to such an extent that the consequences upon our population more closely resembles the effects of the Great Depression---and it does seem to be heading that way---with its homelessness, scavenging and starvation, just watch how quickly attitudes will change toward the sense of entitlement over property ownership, particularly unused, underutilized and secondary ownership.

As for the creation of more security companies, great! Someone else with employment/a roof over their heads.

Move 40 to 1

This ...

40.) Include the homeless themselves, along with the under-housed, on every committee and as part of every project.

... should have been in the number one position. And by "include" should be meant that representation of the "under-housed" or "homeless" on committees, projects, etc. be 50% + 1.

Without direct involvement of "the homeless" in identifying the problems, and proposing and carrying out the solutions, whatever solutions are put in place are likely to fail. With the rarest of exceptions, the so-called experts never fully, meaningfully include the target population.

--

I quote the terms 'homeless' and 'under-housed' b/c these are applied almost exclusively by others, not by the target population. Among 'the homeless', one will find some who prefer not to live in homes of bricks and mortar, but instead WANT to live in tent cities. But then, those aren't acceptable to the housed, now are they?

Want to know what some of 'the homeless' think about the interventions imposed on them and the people who force those interventions? Then read the first post in this discussion, courtesy babble.

Have heard exactly the same frustration expressed over and over again among my acquaintainces.

Fine Ideas, Monte

But why don't you open you home to the homeless?

All new spaces for "homeless" in Vancouver have, and rightly so, a no substance abuse policy. That kind of limits who can enter the places.

Someone who is damaging themselves an society as much as a multi-addicted homeless person needs 24 hour institutional care. Build hospitals, Section the addicts using article 15 of the Mental Health Act and then help people who really want to be helped, not enabled.

"-enough to pay the rent on a nice place for every last one of them"

It is enough. But there is a hard core of "difficult to house" that will just make the place into another crack den. Such statements show nothing but delusion.

In reply

This is the response of one well-known anti-poverty activist (whom I won't identify): "I know this is what the city can do, but I'm disturbed that it doesn't
involve getting $ from feds and prov for new housing. The focus is
definitely on ending street homelessness which needs to be ended. But
after the folks are in shitty rooming houses with a bathroom down the
hall, what then?" Indeed. And, for the sake of argument, let's assume that Vancouver is primarily comprised of compassionate human beings who really want to help the homeless, not of Scrooge types who essentially write "are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?" or "why should we help them?" or variants thereof.

Homelessness herbergere

With the 2010 Winter Olympics on the horizon, the powers in charge might consider invoking the Atlanta/Sydney games solution.

Move all the homeless out of the downtown areas and into the suburbs, cancel their freebie transit passes, cordon off the area from the recidivist homeless types, draw up new city ordinances (usually under the guise of the catch-all phrase “Security”) and throw new coats of paint on the downtown east side of Vancouver.

Road closures are only a faint (feint?) start.

Ya read it here first…….

Homelessness

I thought this was a very well-researched article. Solving the homelessness puzzle just requires some imagination, the will to resolve the problem, and a huge amount of money.

Not a hard problem

Homelessness is not a hard problem to solve. It just takes some cash to build or renovate some buildings and create a lot of low rent rooms. A mere fraction of the wealth squandered on idiocies like the Olympics or on military nonsense would cover it. But the greedy guts gotta have their corporate welfare, so we will wait a long time.

Few social problems are difficult to solve. It merely takes the will to do so.

rooms

A room is not enough. engaging people in gathering supplies, helping in meal preparation, constructing and repairing, is helpful.
Is this not how the Sandy Merriman Shelter developed in victoria.?
Women from the street helped build it.

How about an article?

50 ways the homeless can help themselves.

Malta (where my mum is from)

Malta (where my mum is from) has no homeless people. That's because decades ago they allowed all empty homes (which back then were worth little) to be used for social housing- called requisition. Only the owners were never compensated. Absentee landlords (not sure why the gov't had the keys to these places, but whatever...) could do little, other than charge low rents- which have remained frozen at pre-war rates!!

Fast forward to present day with the property of this now EU country skyrocketing, fuming adult children of those absentee landlords (who are now well into their 70s) trying to fight for the property back, and a housing crisis from hell on their hands if they WERE to go about changing anything. In some cases two generations of "tenants" have squatted in those homes, thinking they were safe forever, with a sense of entitlement that is mind-boggling. It's a small island and there is nowhere else to build. If justice were given to the rightful owners and their descendants, the gov't would either have to come up with millions of dollars to buy the property from them, or would see thousands turned onto the street. It's a very messy and preposterously unfair situation.

Sqatting is NOT the way to go!!!

snert

I'm not sure the shipping containers are a solution. As always, it's not about the mode of housing, it's the land the housing is on. Whether tents, shipping containers, cardboard boxes, or tarpaper shacks, if you're not on property owned by someone and specifically contracted to you, you're squatting, and there's no security of tenancy, nor any recourse to the inevitable complaints about "the eyesores".

All these brainy university students who are busy coming up with cheap housing solutions are barking up the wrong tree - it isn't the technology, it's the will. They need to be allying with poli-sci and law students to figure out a place and a means to set up these shelters on serviced land that offers security of tenancy.

And no government is gonna wanna do that - homeless don't vote, and certainly not for the majority of governments in power the last hundred years.

Incidentally

That's the same crisis we owners are in now, only we think we're better off.

In 1950, the cost to build your own house (a 1350 sq ft two-storey like you see everywhere being knocked down by builders now) was about $8000, or approximately 2 times the average industrial wage (AAW). In 2000, the cost to build a Vancouver Special (1800 sq. ft.) was about $160,000 or a little under four times the average industrial wage.

But the price of the lot the house sits on has gone up from $5,000 (or just over 1x the AAW) to $600,000 today, or more than 14 times the AAW.

And yet nobody complains about that except those who can't afford to get into the market they grew up in....

One small solution

32.) Provide housing after treatment.

Already done in several places around the city, perhaps 80 units so far. Here's just one. Church supported, professionally run, non-profit.

http://www.placeofrefuge.ca/

Visiting Balnibarbi with Bobby Peru

"20) How can you impose this on private property? Who wants to rent to the homeless anyway? They'll trash a building."

Who's talking about renting to homeless? Rent to those who can afford to rent, and that would free up the cheap places (according to the "invisible hand of of Adam Smith's market") for those for whom that is all they can afford. Monopoly is illegal in business - why is it legal in home ownership? Students are moving into the DTES because that's all they can afford. Who's moving out?

Geez. The externalities of the subsidies to home ownership (including tax-free capital gains, subsidized public services spread out over a larger area for the same number of people, and tax deductions for rental expenses) do NOTHING more than distort the market. Condo owners who leave their suites vacant most of the year so they don't have to pay for a hotel when they visit get a free ride. I'd think a free-market seagull like you would know that. Nobel Prize-winner in Economics Paul Krugman does.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/06/economics_of_ho_1.html

"21) You must be joking- no one wants a homeless squatter in their condo."

See above. I'm not going to repeat myself, even though you seem to enjoy doing so.

"23) Sure, violate all property laws. Why buy a house when you can be homeless and get free housing?"

So, the city of Vancouver violated property laws when it seized properties for nonpayment of taxes in 1930-33, leading to the largest land-bank in Western Canada, and a property endowment fund that paid for hundreds of subsidized coop developemnts, and provides reduced sale prices for thousands of condos on the shores of False Creek?

Home ownership comes with a considerable number of responsibilities. Land ownership does not confer absolute freedom. Even Gordo recognized that last year when somebody staked a claim on the land under his Sunshine Coast vacation home. Only you would think that they don't include responsibilities to contribute to the community around you instead of just taking all the time.

Lost in Space

Well researched? You must be joking? Reading the 50 ways is about as hopeful as viewing the autopsy of a loved one. Almost all of them involve huge govt expenditures that will crowd out other social priorities. Don't forget that there are issues are equally important to taxpayers and people who aren't homeless.

Then some of the other proposals like seizing homes or coercing condo boards to free up empty apartments are downright undemocratic, unlawful and stupid. It's a surefire way to turn condos into drug dens. Those of us who've paid for our condos do not want drug addicts and mentally unstable drug users in our buildings. No act of city hall can compel us.

Involving the homeless in the management of govt programmes. Surely we can understand their problems without having driveling drug addicts controlling where the money is going. We have enough problems with slack drug laws and rampant drug enabling going on in every downtown street and alley. Don't compound them by asking addicts how they should be treated.

Taxpayers aren't willing to spend all and anything to solve the homeless problem. We need doable and cost effective solutions- not luxury, bleeding heart liberal programmes bent on penalizing 'the rich'. Few people aside from militant activists feel any guilt for the homeless problem- don't forget that most people stay away from drugs and work hard to keep their homes. Why should we give away our homes to them? Most of the homeless desperately need to be institutionalized- not as nice as a free condo, but certainly cheaper.

And there is no solution for the homeless. There will always be homeless. Especially in BC which is a magnet for hordes of them from around the country. If this is the best menu the Mayor of Vancouver can choose from I expect him to quickly run into a brick wall and then move on to more manageable problems like garbage collection and recycling.

Zalm

You are right about the land of course. However in the community where I live there are several vacant lots waiting for the right timre to be developed. Arrangements could be made to lease these lots on a temporary basis and it's here that the containers com into their own.

They can be used for temporary modular residences that can be moved from place to place with little difficulty. Creative arrangements could be made between land owners and municipal governments to ensure no financial hardship to the landowners.

I hear that FEMA has a whole bunch of unused trailers that only need to be aired out to get rid of the formaldehyde smell.

snert

Why go to FEMA for containers? Just have a look at the pile on Mitchell Island as you cross the Arthur Lang. But let me remind you of what Latarnik said on another post about demolishing a housing project in Baton Rouge. I have no idea if it's true or not, but if there's one thing we surely all agree on, it's that housing projects like these are surely the worst form of warehousing people, guaranteed to lead to more social problems than they solve. Doesn't that pile of shipping containers remind you of same? Why repeat history? Why not learn from it?

And it's not the financial hardship for the landowners I'm worried about. All these places still require water, power, sewer, fire protection and access, policing and security, to say nothing of being closer to health services than Cape Scott. Who pays for that? Last I heard in Vancouver it was $80,000 a lot, including the pro-rata share of GVRD services, and that was a few years ago. I've no idea where you live, but I would hope that such is available there, preferably within a couple miles walk. But if it's not near to where the homeless can pick up their bottles and attend their social events at the church-run drop-in centres, then I wouldn't be surprised to find it poorly utilized.

Let's not just think about housing them - let's think about how they live their lives. Not really so different than you and me.

Heavy emphasis on the words "how they live their lives."

The biggest mistake being made is lumping the "homeless" into one big ball of wax. It just ain't so.

There are people with long term disabilities, mothers on welfare etc that can benefit from stable cheap accommodations.

On the other hand there are the mentally ill and the substance abusers who require a completely different set of solutions.

And then there's the homeless by choice minority who think it's their right to live where ever they bloody well want.

...

The only people whom I have heard using the term "uber" as a prefix are/were far-right ideologues.

As for addicts being "druggies," why not go all the way and call them "junkies?" And the mentally disabled as "mentally unstable?" Why not just call them "crazies?"

Surely using these descriptors would make your case more convincing to not help the homeless at all.

back to what is needed, please

I've worked briefly in a shelter, the midnight shift. For being a bum in a seat for hours, I was paid the sort of money I'd have walked ten miles each way to get when I was on the verge of homeless.

Back then I got $9/hr for picking up used condoms, needles, bloodied rags, and garbage in an dimly lit parking garage under an apartment house. A couple of hours here, a couple of hours there. To get paid, I had to knock on the super's door again and again, as if nuts about the creep, who liked me to go in and wait and wait, while people thought what they thought.

In the shelter, when I was a well-paid person in a seat where the light was on all night, I wondered if I would sleep there. No fresh air, a noisy heater that came on and off, and no coffee, just tea, in the morning. Apparently the showers and plumbing were iffy. On a person to person basis, it was well run and respectful.

Sleeping outdoors, to some is vital. Many old houses have sleeping porches, a truly lovely idea and lifestyle.

I've wanted to sleep outdoors since I was in my mid-teens and built myself a driftwood cabin with no door in the doorway or windows in the windows. It was so wonderful. My brothers built themselves one, too. We weren't runaways.

I think lots of people who've lived in tents for bush work, or in the military, resent sleeping indoors. I slept outdoors most of the years I was a highschool teacher, lucky to have a fairly private place where I could do this. I had indoors for breakfast and entertaining etc. The best possible situation.

The right to fresh air, stars, and the night, is really important to people who have experienced this.

People who have slept outside tend, in my opinion, to consider this one of life's luxuries. A safe place to sleep outside.
At least as if outside, with a door or a window open.

On this, we are a very divided population. Some can't sleep if all the doors and windows aren't "securely" locked, ha, you only lock out your friends.
Still, this is the stuff of air conditioners and the American way.

Unfortunately, doors and windows locked people tend to feel they can call window wide open people lunatics.

So fresh air doesn't seem to be an issue when planning housing or shelters for the homeless, people who have enjoyed the actual luxury of sleeping outdoors. Yes, Virginia, the best things in life are free.

It is not always an improvement to provide people, who've been sleeping out in plastic and newspapers, with a secure airless box of an apartment or shelter.

I think tent cities, or their fresh air equivalent, must be an option.