Category Archives: Homeless

Homeless, Municipal

Abbotsford: City without Compassion.

Leave a comment

With the growing numbers of homeless on the streets of Abbotsford the competition for a place to find shelter or camp is, like housing market of the lower mainland, highly competitive. So it was only a matter of time of time until some were forced to return to the wooded site dubbed Compassion Park. Since late last year a number of people had been quietly coming and going from these woods in order not to disturb the neighbours or attract the attention of Abbotsford City Hall to their homes, however so humble.

It took several months but once aware of the location these citizens resided at Abbotsford City Hall moved quickly to post No Trespassing signs followed speedily by confiscation of the camper’s meagre possessions. Making the poor a little more destitute, the homeless more homeless and robbing these people, these citizens, of what little protection they had from the terrible downpours of March.

Tents, tarps, bedding and food all gone – without offering any alternative shelter to those so ruthlessly exposed to the pouring rain and cold. One could only wish they would move as speedily on addressing the issues and needs raised by homelessness in Abbotsford.

The speed with which Abbotsford City Hall moved on this matter is hardly surprising since they undoubtedly dreaded the thought of the public and media attention possible following a “rebirth” of Compassion Park. It would highlight their lack of action, of ideas or leadership. Why, the citizens might demand the council cease focusing on building white elephants and focus, even do something, on the “mundane” problems facing the city such as homelessness, water treatment, dikes, run-away property taxes, attracting businesses to diversify the tax base etc.

Leadership, innovation, good business practices, solid management and problem solving you say? Nay, not in Abbotsford! Better we be know as a city without compassion or simple Christian charity than Abbotsford City Hall should actually have to have to think and take action on the City’s pressing issues.

Citizens are left wishing that the next municipal election were only months away so they could vote and thus limit the damage the current occupants of Abbotsford City Hall are inflicting on the City finances and the backlog of pressing problems they are causing by ignoring issues and/or failing to act.

Unfortunately for the lives of the homeless, taxpayers and citizens, Abbotsford City Hall still has lots of time to mire the City in debt, unresolved problems and to continue to inflict misery on the homeless.

Addiction

Media lack of brainpower causes suffering and misinformation

Leave a comment

I saw Mark McCardell on Vancouver’s Global noon hour news on Wednesday February 21, 2007. All I can say about it is that this is precisely this type of media treatment of important issues that dooms Canada and its citizens to poor and misinformed decision making. At a time the country faces important decisions on a wide variety of complex issues, making the need for balanced, thoughtful and intelligent information a must, the media is serving up this kind of misleading, pointless nonsense.

Mr. McCardell demonstrates his total disconnection from reality and lack of familiarity with thought in his assertions that rounding up all the current drug dealers and jailing them would, in some manner impossible for anyone with more intelligence than a amoeba to fathom, ensure that illegal drugs are no longer available. At its roots the illegal drug industry is unfettered capitalism at its most avaricious, where the laws of supply and demand ensure a continuous supply of dealers and drugs. Any one who falls for Mr. McCardell’s glib assurances that the arrest of current suppliers would prevent their loved ones from the path of addiction, in reality would face an increased likelihood of the heartbreak of addiction so many now deal with. Given the immense potential for wasted lives and damage in Mr McCardell’s statement I would say his behaviour on this matter is criminal.

His solution for current addicts is to abandon them to their addiction in hopes they will solve the problem by dying off. Although, in further proof of his lack of an ability to reason, he fails to explain how this die off would occur once his magical plan for removing drug supplies from our streets denies them the drugs to kill themselves with. Perhaps Mr. McCardell favours some form of euthanasia for those who have not, for the convenience of Mr McCardell and those who wish to live in the type of society he advocates, killed themselves off before their drug supply miraculously disappeared.

Mr. McCardell is apparently to be numbered among those who wring their hands and decry a society where people step over those in need of help and walk away. As long as the person in need of help is suffering from something the Mr. McCardell deems worthy of help. I have no desire to live in the type of society that would grow out of adopting Mr. McCardell’s spiritually bankrupt ideology.

No. if you want to have a positive affect on these complex social problems, indeed a positive effect on Canada and Canadian society as a whole, you will not find it in the mindless demagogy of Mr. McCardell and his ilk. You will not find it in throwing drug dealers and addicts in jail; not in arbitrarily longer jail sentences; nor in ignoring the realities of addiction and the drug trade; assuredly you will not find it in wishing for the death of those suffering addiction for down that path lies corruption and darkness.

No, if we wish to find solutions we need to heed the wisdom of the great minds of the human race such as Albert Einstein. We must amend the criminal code, with draconically punishing sentence lengths, to make stupidity of the proportions and criminality demonstrated by Mr. McCardell as much against the law as it is against the public interest and intelligent thought. This would mean that at least minimal levels of intelligence will become a requirement for employment in the news media resulting in significant increases of useful information transfer to the public while cutting off the current deluge of misinformation. While an informed public does not guarantee wise decisions it at least affords a fighting chance for common sense and thoughtfulness to win out.

For as Albert noted: “The two most abundant elements in the Universe are hydrogen and human stupidity, and of the two I am not sure about hydrogen.” With the challenges facing our society, our country and our world today, we can no longer afford the luxury of human stupidity of the magnitude demonstrated by Mr. McCardell and those who foist him upon us.

Homeless

"Olympic" evictions declared illegal

Leave a comment

March 19, 2007

Vancouver – Pivot Legal Society and a coalition of advocacy groups won two low-income housing eviction- and rent-increase cases for residents of one of the Downtown Eastside’s low-income hotels today.

Two residents of the Golden Crown Hotel received notice today from the Residential Tenancy Branch that their illegal eviction notices and rent increases linked to the Olympics were set aside.

“We are pleased to be part of a process that set aside these flawed eviction notices and rent increases,” says Shabnum Durrani of Pivot Legal Society who was counsel for the tenants. “However, this is a short term solution. The only real solution is for government to reinvest in social housing.

”The eviction notices given were for March 31, 2007, to the 28 units in the Golden Crown Hotel located across the street from the Woodward’s building. The eviction notices and rent increases are linked to the 2010 Olympics as owners of the hotel have indicated that they would like to use the hotel to provide housing to Olympic workers rather than the current residents.

In setting aside the illegal eviction notice, the dispute resolution officer in the case wrote, “the ‘Notice’ given by the landlord is not an ‘effective’ Notice because it is not in the approved form and it is fatal in its deficiency because it does not inform the tenants of their [rights]…I find the ‘Notice’ given by the landlord is void from the beginning.”

The Golden Crown hotel was one of the four hotels scheduled to close to low income individuals in the last four weeks. As a result of the work done by Pivot and several other advocacy groups including the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association and the Save Low Income Housing Coalition, three of the four hotels have remained open and operating for low income individuals.

Earlier today 46 single room occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms were saved when the new owners handed management of the Carl Rooms to a local non-profit organization. Community advocates, including David Eby from Pivot Legal Society, convinced a partnership of developers, 0773477 B.C. Limited, to turn over management of their recently-purchased SRO to Atira Property Management, a non-profit property management organization. Atira is a Vancouver-based company that operates three other low-income buildings in the Downtown Eastside. The owners’ agreement with Atira includes plans to renovate and improve the building, while it remains at rent levels accessible to those on basic social assistance.