Category Archives: Homeless

Homeless, Municipal

Crime Wave – Part II

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I had to laugh at the letter in the March 23, 2006 Abbotsford News as last Sunday I was talking to people while waiting for the church group to arrive with lunch. Apparently several members of our luncheon group had recently been hassled by the local police. For the homeless being hassled by the police in neither funny nor is it something new, but in this case I had to laugh. They were being hassled because citizens in some residential areas have begun to suffer from a petty crime wave. Anyone who has been reading the articles on these pages is aware that I believed that such a crime wave would be a result of the City’s policies of driving the homeless out of the downtown area and away from their food sources. This also applies to the attempts to prevent church groups from being able to feed the homeless in the evenings.

The point is that people are not going to sit there quietly and starve. They are going to steal food or they will steal goods they can turn into food. That is human nature. Anyone who thought about ……. OK, I concede perhaps it was naïve of me to think that a) the City might give some thought to how to approach the homeless problem rather than just rely on the labels given to the homeless and knee-jerk reactions, and b) to expect someone in the City administration to be capable of and willing to think. Any normally intelligent human being able to put together two coherent thoughts had to be able to predict that chasing the homeless out of the downtown area into the residential was going to cause a new set of problems. Still, I for one have no expectation that the City will re-think its current actions and approach the homeless problems rationally.

I say problems because the reality is that there is not one homeless problem, there are linked groups of people and problems that get lumped into one big pile and labeled as one homeless problem. Then they try to solve ‘the problem’ and wonder why it does not work. There is no one, neat, easy solution. What is needed is a series of initiatives aimed at the specific groups of people and problems that make up ‘the problem’. This approach does not promise fast miracle cures – but it will begin to address and solve parts of the problem. We may not be able to totally solve homelessness, but we can address many of the issues and problems that have put so many homeless on our streets and help many of these people to get back on their feet. Or governments can continue their current thoughtless, wasteful course of action, accomplishing nothing but to add to the problem.

The police were hassling the homeless downtown, in part I suppose because that is where they are use to hassling them. But those homeless downtown have food and their territory and no reason to go wandering into the neighbourhoods that are suffering an increase in theft. Rather the police needed to be looking for those their harassment had caused to relocate to the residential areas of the city. But that is what happens when you use labels and stereotypes in setting your policies. You end up solving nothing and with an additional set of new problems.

As for those homeowners who are currently suffering, yes the homeless are part of the cause. But if you want to know who is responsible speak to your City politicians and administration for it was their actions that led to you current situation. And above all be sure to insist that in addressing the problems that arise from homelessness that they use common sense and thought. Or nothing will be accomplished but more wasted City resources and the creation of a whole new set of problems.

Homeless, Provincial

Nice work if you can get it …

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“I don’t think there was any recognition of that in the budget. The best way to help the homeless is make sure they have the opportunity to find a job” Dave Hayer, MLA for Surrey-Tynehead, said Thursday the budget focuses on giving people opportunity to grow out of the lifestyle of living on the streets.

I sent the above quote to our Abbotsford Mal’s Mr. De Jong and Mr. Van Dongen asking if this was in fact the government policy and whether they agree with this policy. At this time they have not extended me the courtesy of a reply, perhaps it is that they do not view the homeless as constituents. Now I had planned to point out the ideological government doublespeak in referring to homelessness as a ‘lifestyle of living on the street’. The idiocy and ignorance of suggesting that homelessness is something one can ‘grow out of’. That before throwing the word opportunity around they might want to look up the definition:

Opportunity n. a possibility due to a favourable combination of circumstances; “now is your chance”

Chance n. 1. the unknown and unpredictable element in happenings that seems to have no assignable cause; 2. a favourable set of circumstances; an opportunity; a chance to escape.

Apparently this government’s ideology is so bankrupt of ideas that to get back onto their feet the homeless are to rely on ‘the unknown and unpredictable element’. Although how they are to take advantage of ‘a favourable set of circumstances’ when faced with barriers such as no fixed address, no telephone, no access to bathing for personal hygiene, no laundry for clean clothes, no transportation, etc I do not know. Maybe, since chance implies luck the government expects the homeless to be walking out of (their once in awhile access to) a shower, in clean, presentable, donated clothes and have an employer bump into them and exclaim “You are just the man/woman I am looking for! You’re hired!” Fat chance. I guess the homeless are just on the wrong side of the Liberal’s ideological spectrum.

But forget all that. I was reading Vaughn Palmer’s column in the Saturday March 11, 2006 Vancouver Sun about Partnerships BC. The person heading up Partnerships has a base salary of $329,000 and with bonuses can make nearly $600,000. His last salary reported by the government was $499,134. Fat cat. There are 38 employees at Partnerships BC and the budget is for an average salary of $160,000. Nice work if you can get it. Obviously these people are on the right side of the government’s ideological spectrum.

Mr. de Jong. Mr. van Dongen. Mr. Hayer. Never mind about programs that would help me and other homeless be prepared to take advantage of opportunities to get employed and back onto our feet. Forget that. How do I get one of those Partnerships BC (or similar type) jobs??? Who needs a little help when they can belly up to the public trough and pig out on fat salaries $$$,$$$. I am positive that with even an average salary of $160,000 I would have no trouble ‘growing out of the lifestyle of living on the streets’. Better yet I would not have to depend on the unknown and unpredictable whim of luck or accident. Just hand me a Partnership BC salary opportunity and I will seize the opportunity for lifestyle chance.

Carpe Diem! Carpe Pensio! Carpe Spolium!!!

Homeless

Pews are full but the coffers are empty as First United struggles after 120 years

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by Pete McMartin

At 11AM on a rainy Wednesday morning, a small dark-haired woman enters the sanctuary of the First United Church and, in front of the alter, begins to change her clothes.

She is carrying a towel. She looks like she has just had a shower. She slips out of the sweatpants she is wearing and puts on a new pair, and then she slips off her sweatshirt. She has a thin bare-shouldered chemise on underneath. she is thin herself. There is a small tattoo beneath her right shoulder. Her hair looks wet and she begins to comb it slowly, which, given the location, is an oddly affecting display of vanity. She takes the towel, and a quilt she has, and carefully rolls both of them up. Then she puts the wet towel in a plastic bag and places the places the towel and quilt in one of two cardboard boxes she has with her. She unearths a roll of masking tape and tapes up the box. the tearing sound of the tape echoes through the sanctuary. Then she applies underarm deodorant.

While she does this, a man sleeping near her on the alter platform wakes up and watches her. He looks to be in his 30’s and appears to be fairly well-dressed, and he wakes up groggy. He has kicked his shoes off to sleep. He doesn’t move, but stays lying where he is, and with no particular look on his face regards the woman with mild curiosity. Then he closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

All around her there are men sleeping and women, too. They are sleeping on every one of the church’s pews and on the hard linoleum floor of the sanctuary and on the steps of the alter. The sanctuary is filled with a stifling, overpowering smell of body odour and stinking feet. One man is in a pew eating a cheeseburger and another is rolling a cigarette from the butt ends he has collected. Some people are sleeping in the pews sitting up, and some are sprawled in a nest of clothing and blankets. Some have backpacks and some have boxes and plastic bags and some have nothing at all. One man is sleeping at the foot of the church organ. A man and woman are sleeping together just off to the side, he, bare-chested and on his back, she lying on her side and curled up under the crook of his arm. She has pulled her quilt tight up against her chin as if to keep the world out.

Meanwhile, the world outside hums along. The housing market has gone mad and so has the economy, and the government bribes unions with a billion tax dollars to sign fat contracts.

First United, on the other hand is enjoying a boom of a different kind. For years, the mission a block east of the corner of East Hastings and Main has opened its sanctuary to street people so that they might sleep there and be safe during the day. They are allowed in at 8:30 a.m. and asked to leave at 4 p.m. – the longest the church can afford to keep the sanctuary open.

“For years” said Rev. Ruth Wright, the church’s executive director, “if we had 15 people sleeping in the pews we thought that we were really busy. But now, 80 or 90 people sleeping in the sanctuary is not uncommon at all and more and more of them are not the kind of people we would see before. Now we’re seeing the unemployed looking for work; a lot of forestry people, for example, whose jobs don’t exist anymore and have lost their jobs to mechanization; people who have low-level paying jobs who can’t afford rent in a city like Vancouver and are sleeping here while they try to get on their two feet; people who come to Vancouver thinking there’s lots of work but can’t get their tickets. And we’re seeing more women.”

But, Wright was asked, why aren’t these people landing jobs in this hot economy? Why aren’t the sanctuary’s numbers shrinking instead of growing?
“For some people(in the public), there’s that mentality of, ‘Why can’t these people pull themselves up by the bootstraps?’ But a lot of these people don’t have boots to pull up. Some don’t have the qualifications. And, of course, mental illness is a huge problem down here.”

The growing numbers have put a strain on First United. Last year, the church recorded a $260,000 deficit, and is predicting a similar deficit for 2006. This is a dire situation for a church that has been at that location for 120 years. Its regular congregation – most of whom travel from outside the area to worship there – has shrunk to 30 people. Its traditional sources of revenue – bequeathals and donations from people who admire the churches activism – are not what they use to be. The situation has got to the point where the church, to raise donations, is hoping to recruit 100 people to run on its behalf in this years Vancouver International Half Marathon. (To register for the run or to make a donation to First United, go to www.firstunited.ca or call 604-681-8365.)

It is money First United is going to need. On Wednesday morning, there are 85 people sleeping in its sanctuary. Business is booming.