The idiots who …. I mean the politicians and bureaucrats who are suppose to provide leadership, solve problems and behave with at least some intelligence, will probably cite the above ten days in trying to defend or explain their actions in serving notice to the homeless camping in “Compassion Park”. So, what are those 10 days about? The Salvation Army has received funding to enable it to open all the beds in the emergency shelter, doubling the beds available to 20. This was desperately needed as many nights people seeking shelter were turned away due to a lack of beds available. Ironically, the people turned away had to go to “Compassion Park” to find shelter (spare tents) for the night. Now with the City choosing to close down the “Park” before they have taken any useful actions to address the many pressing issues, as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of the past month, the residents of the “Park” will have to seek shelter at the Salvation Army. But they only get 10 days which, while double the normal allotment of 5 days, just delays them returning to living on the streets – and provides the City another smokescreen to cover their actions and a demonstrated lack of ability to begin to address the issues raised by homelessness, poverty and lack of affordable housing.

One cannot fault the Salvation Army for the decision to limit their stay to 10 days (or even the usual limit of 5 days) as this limit has been demonstrated by experience to be necessary in order to be as fair as possible in providing all with access to the emergency shelter. This is after all, suppose to be an ‘emergency shelter’, not a shelter to serve the Homeless of Abbotsford on a longer term basis. This conflict between its purpose as an emergency shelter and the overwhelming need of the homeless on the city streets for shelter is a result of the failure of leadership, ideas and ideals on the part of Abbotsford’s politicians (local, provincial and federal), the bureaucrats and other supposed “civic leaders”. In their wilful blindness on the issue of homeless they have failed to provide the longer-term shelter, other facilities and services so badly needed if one wants to help reduce homelessness and aid the less fortunate citizens of Abbotsford.

They will probably also claim that the Salvation Army will help them find homes, jobs and anything else they need, as if they have not had access to and contact those services for the past month. Another attempt to hide their failure to fulfill their ‘duty of care’ to these citizens. The real problem appears to be that the politicians wanted a ‘quick fix’ to plaster over the problems. Reality is that this is an issue that has grown over time and has no fast, easy solutions. It requires commitment, leadership, thoughtfulness, creativity, innovation and intelligent. All qualities that the politicians, administrators and civic leaders demonstrate a total lack of, at least on these pressing social issues.

On June 1, 2006 the forces of the city government descended upon “Compassion Park” in force to serve notice to the homeless camping there that the pointless game of tag, previously waged by the City, was about to begin again in 48 hours. Once again the taxpayers dollars are to be wasted in chasing the homeless around the city, as opposed to investing these funds in actually addressing the issues and causes of homelessness, the city government choosing to waste dollars in behaviour that accomplishes nothing. They might just as well build a bonfire in front of City Hall and shovel a pile of taxpayer dollars into it. As a demonstration of their commitment to wasting the taxpayers hard earned dollars, they dispatched a department manager, bylaw officers and police officers to deliver this notice. I am sure they could come up with some excuse for this wasteful overkill, but the fact is that all that was needed to deliver the notice was 1 person. Makes me wonder in just how many other ways the city is squandering money.

But then anyone who talks to management in that Tower of Babel called City Hall soon realizes that the people responsible for planning, budgeting and spending their money have no real sense of economic reality. This is probably why they are so over-paid, as they require exorbitant salaries to offset their total lack of economic sense. I had the displeasure of witnessing this total lack of any basic understanding of reality in a discussion with one of the city’s department managers. He stated that there was no money available to act as seed money for undertaking the complex task of beginning to deal with homelessness. When asked if some of the money that would be saved by not pointlessly chasing the homeless around the city could not be used in order to actually accomplish something, it was stated that there would be no such savings. I cannot remember all of the convoluted argument the minions of the city used, but apparently a dollar saved by not being stupid is not a dollar available to be spent intelligently.

The police spend countless hours chasing, harassing and generally dealing with the homeless. All these hours add up into hundreds of thousands (a million+?) of dollars in salary. So much so that the police needed millions of more dollars (driving the tax increases into the stratosphere) in order to meet other policing needs in the community. This argument also applies to the all the salary dollars of city employees engaged in the fruitless pursuit of the homeless, more thousands or hundreds of thousand dollars. From my business/economic point of view, if you do not spend all those dollars in a wasteful pursuit of the homeless, then you have saved those dollars. True, the city may decide that the money should be spent in other ways rather than in reducing the city taxes, but they owe it to the taxpayers to clearly state what they will be spending this money on so that the taxpayers can evaluate this spending – otherwise what is the point of bothering with a budget? So it would appear to me that if the city adopted a sensible approach to the issues of homelessness and poverty, stopped wasting all those taxpayer dollars, there would be several hundred thousands of dollars available every year to help fund facilities and services to address these issues. Not to mention that a portion of these savings would also provide the ability to either address other pressing needs or some tax relief.

No, I do not think that the city should or could be solely responsible for providing funding to address these types of social problems. However, using money saved by adopting intelligent behaviour as seed money to provide leadership in this crucial area seems sensible to me, if not to the politicians and bureaucrats of City Hall. Of course sensible action on the question of the homeless seems to be somewhat lacking at this time.