(HP) Homeless Press

No, this does not stand for Excessive Social Pressure. That course would require the News to become an active participant in: a continuing community wide dialogue on homelessness and its associates (poverty, mental illness, unemployment, drugs – to name but a few); an exchange of ideas on lines of attack; community wide tackling of these issues. This seems highly unlikely given that contentious issues or positions, no matter how well they would serve the community, have far too much potential to cause a reduction in advertising revenues.

No, I am no mind reader myself. It is clear from the language used that the News can only be advocating the use of Extra Sensory Perception in dealing with homelessness in Abbotsford. Psychics would, one assumes, be used to determine who in our community was about to become homeless. Remedial actions could then be undertaken to prevent this homelessness from occurring, thus avoiding the creation of additional members of the homeless community. One would presume that once this use of clairvoyants proved proficient in averting additional homeless, the News would call for additional seers to be employed in addressing the needs of those currently homeless. How foolproof! Using psychics to divine the specific set of actions that would enable each and every homeless person to deal with and overcome the maze of issues that have reduced them to a life of living on the streets. No failures, no relapses, no need for community involvement … only correct actions need be undertaken under the guidance of the paranormal practitioners. Brilliant … or sheer lunacy

“NO!” That was the almost unanimous answer given by the homeless surveyed on the question of whether the use of psychics would prove successful in resolving homelessness. It needs to be noted that some of the more dedicated practitioners of chemically altered reality did feel the News may be onto something with this approach of dealing with current problems by fortune telling the future.

No, Oh No. One can only hope that there are enough thoughtful citizens aware of the complex reality of homelessness to, in voting no, counterbalance those looking for a neat, quick, easy solution. Otherwise the fairytale illusion championed by the News in their Question of the Week:

Do you believe (take as true) homelessness can be
averted (avert: to keep from happening; ward off; prevent)
in communities that establish special committees to tackle the issue?

– will permit this community to continue to avoid the grim, harsh, despairing reality that populates its streets.

I sit here shaking my head, dismayed that this piece is what the News considers an opinion worthy of expression on such a complex issue.

Anyone reading your totally misleading “reporting and opinion” on the British success in achieving a 35% reduction in crime, would come away with the thoroughly erroneous impression of what measures the British used in accomplishing this notable reduction. Only those who had seen balanced and fair reports of Mayor Watts’s trip from other sources would know the British had wisely decided to try the unique approach of focusing on addressing the root causes of their crime problem. As with any weed, you can waste all the time and money you want on the symptoms of the problem (the leaves) such as car theft, B & E, prostitution and drug trafficking, and it just grows back. In fact, this approach often permits the weed to flourish and spread. You want to kill off the weed, you better get at the root.

The British, recognizing this reality, chose to focus on Cause rather than the effect. Not that anyone reading your “reporting” of the British experience would learn this. More accurate reporting elsewhere made clear that the British used innovative social programs and approaches to help the people involved, their fellow citizens who were in need of assistance, to address their personal problems and issues in order to permit these marginalized people to begin leading productive lives.

With all the innovation involved in the British approach that achieved these highly desirable results, the News chose to report and focus on the old and trite surveillance camera red herring of a “plan”? Further we are suppose to be amazed that citizens are complaining and upset about the activities in Jubilee Park? I suppose the News would favour using the ”miracle of surveillance” to drive these people out of the Park. Then in a few months the News can “report and opine” the problem some other area of Abbotsford is having with those previously displaced from Jubilee. Then repeat then process over and over and over as is the current policy.

Then blundering onward to the subject of transition housing regulation, you give any of the public depending on the News for informed opinion the entirely wrong impression that this is an easy question to deal with.

You offer a few misleading lines on issues that, to even begin to give the citizens of Abbotsford a basis for thinking about and making decisions on, need as series of articles (for each point/issue) to convey the many complexities of these problems.

The News wagging a finger at the council, no matter that the council fully deserves to be severely chastised for its lack of imagination and action, is the pot calling the kettle black. It is hubris to point a finger at the council for lack of being proactive when the News itself fails to invest the time, space and writing needed to be act in a proactive manner by informing the community of the intricacies of these issues, fermenting debate and involving the community in a situation that can only be addressed and solutions derived with the involvement of the entire community. Enough “drivel”, let us have some “meat and potatoes” from the News.