Part VI of VI
Braun said, “I know people say we are just studying this to death – no, we’re not.”
Mayor Braun you are not only studying it to death, you are POINTLESSLY studying it to death. By refusing to acknowledge the research and studies already done on Housing First Mayor Braun, City Council and the Abbotsford Homeless Advisory are preventing the creation and implementation of an effective Housing First Action plan that would reduce homelessness in Abbotsford.
Part V of VI
The actions and behaviours of the City of Abbotsford demonstrate a failure to access the knowledge and experience available about the how and wherefore of providing effective Housing First.
However, the most appalling wilful ignorance by the politicians, bureaucrats and members of homeless advisory is the indifference, the lack of character inherent in…….
It isn’t the 8 years of ASDAC work disappearing into the Void of city hall, mayor and council.
It isn’t the 2+ years prior to the creation of ASDAC where the mayor and council “couldn’t do anything until they had a committee to advise them on social issues.”
It isn’t the years prior to this when Abbotsford “didn’t have a homeless problem/issue.”
It is the LIVES wasted by mayors and councils who refused and ignored their responsibilities and Duty of Care due the citizens of Abbotsford.
It is not just the lives of those who have died or are dying or committed suicide or are incarcerated or incapacitated.
It is the lives of those who remain homeless, on the streets, still using substances as a crutch to deal with life, mentally ill, capacity challenged, etc.
If – such a little word for a word that holds so much promise, potential, recovery, wellness……..OR……Pain [mental and physical], waste and damnation.
If mayors and councils had – or citizens had demanded and changed mayors and councils that didn’t – Abbotsford would have made the switch from recycling to recovery more than a decade ago. If….. then today Abbotsford would have the housing, supports and services in place – or at least a solid foundation to build on – to provide what is needed on the journey to recovery and wellness.
“All they have to do is decide….” It is not that easy to overcome all the barriers you face in: 1) achieving even minimal recovery and wellness; 2) getting everything in line that is required to get into housing; 3) managing to overcome/avoid all the pitfalls and traps that will dump you back on the street.
I have watched people struggle and fall, pick themselves up, struggle and fall…….until they finally made it into housing and/or treatment.
Only to emerge from treatment to find themselves effectively abandoned, left to fall back into self-medication, to fall from housing and into homelessness.
I have watched the hope and life die in their eyes as they sink back into self-medication, mental illness, homelessness and hopelessness.
Knowing that we as a society have the knowledge and understanding of what is needed to provide the supports and services necessary for people to achieve recovery and wellness. Knowing that that best practices exist elsewhere that provide the help that allows those with access to those best practice supports and services to recover and become well.
Watching the struggles, the pain, the waste of lives…..Because we as a city, a province, a society choose not to provide the help that we know – that experience has shown – will help our most vulnerable find recovery, wellness and reclaim their lives.
From 2006 – 2014 the recommendations of Abbotsford’s Social Advisory Committee to City Council were, in the words of members of the committee, ‘disappearing into a void’.
Eight years of wasting the lives of the homeless.
Eight years of wasting the time and effort of the citizens who were members of ASDAC.
And people wonder why I am so cynical about City Council’s sudden creation of a Task Force with an election looming in November 2014 and the only action of significance taken by the mayor and city councillors on homelessness was telling the provincial government to take their $2.5 million dollars for construction and all the millions that would have provided the support necessary to begin to get out of the recycling of those with substance use issues and get into recover oriented housing and services, and give those millions of dollars to a city that cares..
Mental illness, substance use, addiction…….. no true progress of significance can be made until the individual is ready. Personal responsibility and the commitment to doing the years of hard slogging, to dealing with all the pain, darkness and unpleasantness you will have to slog through to find recovery, wellness and happiness.
Until Abbotsford has a City Council with a sense of personal responsibility and a commitment to doing what is needed to address these issues, however long it takes; to providing leadership and the backbone demanded by this matter……. all the increasing social issues, not just homelessness and substance use, that cities face today will continue to worsen in Abbotsford.
Reality will be reality, truth will be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief, or ignorance on the part of anyone.
The failure to pay attention that results from the mayor and council’s wilful refusal to acknowledge any reality they did not want to see has cost – and continues to cost – Abbotsford taxpayers dearly. As recent media reports have highlighted one of the major costs of council’s refusal to see anything but what they want to see is the $23 million dollars squandered on the Heat debacle and the $100+ million spent on a building that is empty because it was not needed……..except in the fantasy world that the mayor and members of council dwell in.
‘Learning more’ is a time tested way for politicians to avoid applying what we already know. Any good general, any good leader, can tell you that the only thing that constant analysis achieves is paralysis.
I have spoken with several members of the task force, including previous members of ASDAC who feel they need to give Abbotsford’s mayor and councillors a chance to show that the task force is not simply cover or camouflage for mayor and council who have failed to address homelessness with any effectiveness – or thought.
In thinking about the task force and its members it occurs to me that, should they so choose, the members of the task force can choose to act in the best interests of the homeless and the city – no matter what the mayor and council’s purpose in forming the taskforce was.
Should the members of the task force choose to take the bit firmly in their teeth the first order of business is to declare that it is time to stop recycling people through the traditional system of treatment and implement the services and supports that research and outcomes show to be effective in creating recovery and wellness.
The reason Housing First is part of addressing homelessness in those communities committed to reducing homelessness and dealing with mental illness and substance use in a long term and effective manner, is because Housing First was developed to be about recovery and wellness – about breaking the ‘business as usual’ cycle of recycling people through the system..
Abbotsford Community Services Housing First proposal was the right proposal, in the right location, the best choice as a first step to changing from recycling to recovery and to begin to put in place the resources, services and supports necessary for recovery.
If members of the task force intend to ‘damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead’ and be effective in dealing with homelessness in Abbotsford then their first order of business must be to stand up and tell mayor and council that the most important first step in addressing homelessness is to commit to getting out of recycling and into recovery and that committing to recovery requires council to approve and support the ACS housing proposal.
Let’s make it clear where the task force, mayor, city councillors, citizens – everyone – stands on the nitty gritty reality of homelessness:
Are you prepared to commit to taking the necessary actions, the actions that have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing homelessness, recovery from mental illness, substance use and addiction?
Or are you committed to saying the right things while opposing what has been proven effective around the world in reducing homelessness and fostering recovery and wellness?
It is time to stand up and be counted. Because the task force, best practices, beginning to effectively promote and support recovery and wellness will accomplish NOTHING unless we, as a community are prepared and committed to taking effective action(s).
Do, or do not. There is no try. Yoda
At the Abbotsford City Council meeting on Monday February 17, 2014 Bruce Banman stepped up and delivered yet another blow to democracy in Abbotsford.
When Simon Gibson was elected as a Liberal MLA in the provincial election of May 14, 2013 Mr. Gibson, mayor and council decided democracy for the citizens of Abbotsford was not worth the cost of a by-election.
If Mr. Gibson, mayor and council had not decided that saving a few thousand dollars was more important than the democratic rights of the citizens of Abbotsford, the citizens of Abbotsford would have been going to the polls to elect a new member of council last Fall [2013] as did every city where a city councillor had been elected a provincial MLA.
Every city except Abbotsford, where it was decided the cost of a by-election was to high a price to pay for democracy.
A by-election in the Fall of 2013, when the details of the Abbotsford Community Services housing proposal were before the public for their consideration; a by-election that would have permitted the citizens of Abbotsford to express their opinion on the housing proposal. But no, the cost of a by-election was to high a cost to allow the citizens of Abbotsford to express their will on the ACS housing proposal – or was it the cost to council and special interests that was to high to permit the citizens of Abbotsford to democratically express their views?
Keep in mind Abbotsford City Council was aware of the proposal and of the proposal being made public once all the Ts were crossed and all the Is dotted. Council knew that not holding a by-election would deny the citizens of Abbotsford the right to democratically express, through the ballot box, the citizen’s position on the ACS housing proposal. Council robbed voters of their right to vote, but hey – they saved taxpayers the cost of a by-election.
Ironic, coming from a council that willingly spends millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars every year to subsidize the ownership, by a few privileged business people, of a professional hockey team.
A few thousand of taxpayer dollars? Far to high a price to grant taxpayers a democratic say in the actions, the governance, of city government.
Spend millions of taxpayer dollars to protect council’s ego by buying a tenant so council’s Great Folly [aka the Great White Elephant] did not sit there empty – no matter how many millions of dollars an empty Folly would have saved taxpayers? Council has no problem squandering however many millions of taxpayer dollars are required.
“It may be irrational, but that doesn’t matter,” said Councillor Smith. A statement that, while warped, makes perfect sense when you consider all the other irrational decisions made and/or supported by Councillors Smith, Barkman, MacGregor and Mr. Banman.
With a municipal election this November 2014, having run twice for council and lost one begins to wonder if the citizens, as mind-boggling as one may find it, want a council that is financially reckless and irresponsible.
What else would you call it when, after years of calling on BC housing for funding and BC housing steps up with $2,5 million, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for support programs for residents, council tells them to take their housing and their money and shove it?
When council tells the Finance Minister to take his $$millions$$ to a community that wants to do something – besides whining – about homelessness in their community?
When the mayor, with visions of sugar–plums [or something] dancing in his head, expects Fraser Health to step up with millions of dollars to fund housing in Abbotsford; the same Fraser Health that is under scrutiny for its inability not to go $50 million over budget every year. Fraser Health, when Fraser Mental Health must make a special funding proposal to the provincial government for funding to undertake new, and needed, services.
Only reckless and irrational dreaming would have anyone thinking that the Finance Minister is going to give Fraser Health extra funds to spend on housing in Abbotsford after the mayor and council told BC Housing, the Finance Minister and the government to take their money and give it to a community that cares.
One begins to wonder if the citizens want a council that ignores reality, facts and experience and behaves irrationally when dealing with social issues such as homelessness.
A council that deployed chicken manure in its war on the homeless. An action one Abbotsford citizen heard about when surrendering their passport as they checked into a hotel in Scandinavia where the front desk staff, upon seeing they were from Abbotsford BC informed them they were from the city that dumps chicken shit on its homeless citizens.
A council that chases the homeless around the city never answering the question “where are the homeless suppose to go?” A council that, as it pointlessly chases the homeless around Abbotsford, ensures there is no place for the homeless to go by voting not to permit ACS to use the housing first model to build housing to help the homeless transition off the streets.
A council whose action in rejecting homeless housing provide proof to the courts, for the ongoing homeless related litigation, that not only is the City of Abbotsford not doing anything about affordable housing and housing for the homeless, but that the City is actively preventing the building of homeless related housing projects.
But then Mr Banman stated “Council has to ensure that any changes made to our bylaws are made for the greater benefit of the entire community……. we also need to make sure the interests of all residents are considered in our decisions.”
A statement which brings to mind a notable prior assault on Abbotsford citizens by Mr. Banman and Councillor Smith when, after council voted not to approve the rezoning of the Mahogany at Mill Lake, Mr. Banman ambushed council and citizens by sneaking Mahogany at Mill Lake back before council at a time when one of the council members who had voted against the project could not attend the council meeting, allowing Mr. Banman and councillor Smith to have the project approved against the wishes and interests of the citizens living in the area.
An assault on democracy made worse as both Mr. Banman and Mr. Smith had accepted campaign contributions from the developer.
Mr. Banman is right, the citizens of Abbotsford need people on council who are concerned about building a community, people concerned about considering the interests of all residents not just the well connected and moneyed, in decisions; people who don’t make reckless, irresponsible, fear based or irrational decisions.
It is clear that the majority of the citizens of Abbotsford, those who are not among the well connected and/or the moneyed, need new blood on council to protect their interests from irrational, irresponsible actions such as Mr. Banman, councillors Smith, Barkman and McGregor rejecting the desperately needed housing proposed by ACS.
