“Once we take care of the vulnerable people we’ll have to deal with the people who are there for the wrong reasons” stated Rich Coleman, the MLA responsible for BC’s extremely successful Homeless Recycling [Service Providers/government] Partnership.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I tripped, fell and fractured my left wrist and the doctor in the emergency room wanted to amputate my right leg to deal with my fractured wrist I believe, even as a lowly peon, I have the right to decline the amputation. I also believe that in choosing to remain in the waiting room until the hospital decides to deal with my fractured wrist in a manner that knowledge, research and experience have demonstrated will be effective, I am not remaining in the waiting room for the ‘wrong reasons’ – no matter how embarrassing or aggravating my camping out in the waiting room until the defective approach [amputation] is replaced by effective [immobilization] is to the government and politicians.

What does my example have to do with what is happening on the grounds of the courthouse in Victoria and the reaction of the Minister of BC’s Homeless Recycling Services?

Knowledge and the outcomes experienced make it clear what will [immobilize] and will not [amputate a leg] help a fractured wrist heal. Just as knowledge and the outcomes experienced make it clear what will and will not help the homeless heal.

The results from the services provided under the direction of MLA Rich Coleman don’t just say that the services provided are not working, they scream that the current system does not enable the homeless to achieve and maintain either recovery or stable housing. Instead the services repeatedly recycle the homeless through the system and back to homelessness.

The evidence, research and studies make it clear that money spent sending people through treatment or placing people into housing without the ongoing supports and services needed for them to reach the point they can continue on their own – is a waste. Not a 100% waste but within a few percent of 100% – total – waste.

The same number of people would achieve sobriety and/or stable housing if you did nothing.

If the government stopped wasting its money on what does not work, the government would have the dollars to fund the one – the only – approach demonstrated to reduce homelessness

The evidence, research and studies make it clear that the use of a Housing First Action Plan to provide the supports and services that enable the homeless to establish and maintain recovery and/or stable housing is effective in reducing homelessness.

In addressing and reducing homelessness we know what does not work and what does work. Yet we keep doing what does not work as though it will, after decades of failure, suddenly start to address the issues that give rise to a person becoming homeless; while we ignore the one approach demonstrated to effectively address homelessness..

Homelessness is a complicated problem because it is a problem of human beings – the homeless; effectively dealing with homelessness is a problem because dealing with homelessness involves human beings – politicians, media and citizens.

The solution is not fast, it is not easy and politicians, media and citizens know so much about why homelessness exists, know for sure – what ain’t so – that nobody likes the course of action needed to effectively address homelessness.

So you have Abbotsford City Council looking for a ‘made in Abbotsford solution’ they will find acceptable, which allows the homeless population to continue to grow when Abbotsford could have been reducing the homeless population living on the streets of Abbotsford for the past decade.

Humans.

The question is not whether the homeless are correct when they speak of being “set up to fail by the current system”, but whether it is being done deliberately with malice aforethought.

Year after year the results make it clear that what is being done does not work; for the past decade we have ignored the supports and services demonstrated to work; year after year the homeless are recycled through the system and back into homelessness; year after year the system sets the homeless up in treatment and/or housing while choosing not to provide the supports and services needed for the homeless to achieve stability in housing or their recovery; year after year the system sets the homeless up to fail.

Being recycled through the system time after time……

……. exacts a toll, physically, mentally and spiritually; it beats you down; it gives birth to a need to escape the bleakness of your life, to seek oblivion from the painful reality of your existence; it drives some to suicide; others it crushes until they die of unnatural natural causes.

Politicians, media, citizens know so many of the homeless are homeless or cannot be housed because: “They don’t want to be housed,” that they are on the courthouse property in Victoria “for the wrong reasons.”

How interested would you be to deal with circumstances that the ever increasing homeless population makes nastier, in order to jump through the hoops of a system that the evidence shows sets you up to fail?

Or would you want to stop doing the same thing over and over and over as though the outcome will be different – if only you keep repeating your behavior over and over long enough?

Wouldn’t you choose to rest and recover until the supports and services you need to be successful are offered; until the system stops setting you up to fail?

The Reality is – not the reality we want to be true, not the reality we choose to be believe, not the reality that requires the use of willful denial to see existing, but the Reality that IS what it IS – that if someone is on the grounds of the Victoria courthouse for the wrong reasons – it is MLA Rich Coleman.

For whatever the reason, Rich Colman is there to recycle the homeless, not to help the homeless reclaim their lives.