Federal, Municipal, Provincial

Flummoxed.

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There is a property in Abbotsford that has two underground oil tanks buried on it, probably left from the time in the 1940 – 50s when it was a gas station. The property is so contaminated that not only do you smell the oil, you taste in your throat.

It sits on the corner of Sumas Way and 4th Avenue just north of the Canada/USA Huntington border crossing. To improve traffic flow across the border major road construction was done involving 4th Avenue.

As a result of this work, every time it rains, this corner property is flooded 5 – 15 cm deep in rain water runoff. The rainwater is contaminated when it runs onto the property, leaving an oily sheen on everything it touches.

Unfortunately for the environment and the neighbours most of these contaminated flood waters do not remain on the property in question but runoff onto the neighbouring properties and into the ditches spreading contaminated water over a wide area.

Governments at the municipal, provincial and federal levels have all been informed of this problem. The result? Nothing. Nada. Zip. No government or government agency at any level seems interested in taking action to remedy this spreading environmental pollution.

Since governments had failed to respond, much less act, a number of well known environmental non-profits were contacted, informed of what was occurring and asked for help/advice. The result? Nothing.

I was not totally shocked when governments at all levels tried to avoid the cost of dealing with this contamination, leaving it to some other level of government to take appropriate action – and get stuck with the bill. But these from organizations that are about protection the environment?

I suppose there is just not enough potential for publicity and/or fundraising in this small environmental contamination. But still one would think …

The property sits there ignored while every time it rains the surrounding environment becomes more contaminated and the contamination spreads further and further.

I am fresh out of ideas on how to get this contamination dealt with; it just leaves me totally flummoxed.

Consider

Poverty and homeless Pimp.

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Reading Mr. Rushton’s poppycock of Tuesday June 3, 2008 about the people on the traffic islands with the begging signs was an experience containing incredible irony.

Irony abounds in the fact the homeless themselves distain these individuals with their signs seeking handouts because it re-enforces the prejudicial stereotyping of the homeless by the public, pundits and columnists.

It is also ironic that in rushing to make his sweeping and sophistic assertions, Mr. Rushton becomes the answer to his editor’s question with which he began his column.

Yes Ms. Editor, there are poverty (or homelessness) pimps out there; people who exploit the poor and homeless for their own economic ends and advantage, earning their thirty pieces of silver catering to the public’s uninformed view of the poor and homeless to fill their newspaper column space – without the need to think.

I do not suggest that Mr. Rushton pimps the poor and homeless to the public because he came down on the people with the signs. Knowing the story behind many of these individuals I too wanted to kick their asses out of there or stand there with a sign saying “Does not deserve your generosity”.

It is his broad, careless and misleading statements about how easy it is to find employment that, together with his apparent failure to apply any form of analytical thought process to these statements, render him a poverty (homelessness) pimp.

Try applying for a job when you are homeless and watch the employers reaction to that information – don’t call us we’ll call you. How does an employer willing to take the chance and hire the homeless contact the homeless person? Smoke signals? Jungle drums? Homeless and broke how do you manage personal hygiene, clean clothes etc to remain presentable enough to keep your job? With a job and thus unable to get to the Food Bank or the Salvation Army, is it Mr. Rushton’s belief that you pretty much starve for the three weeks until you get your first pay check?

Just how good a job of grunt work are you going to be doing on an empty stomach, at the end of the first week? Second week? Third week?

Jobs abound? Really? As I sit here I cannot think of any job that is available within the area I could walk to and from work. You are homeless, without transportation, living in Abbotsford a city where transit is of limited use – even if you could afford the $3 a day cost.

Here is an interesting problem that some Abbotsford citizens may already be facing and that more and more will face as gas prices continue to rise. You commute from Abbotsford to Vancouver daily. Lease or loan payments, insurance, repairs and maintenance and gas with its soaring prices – one may well find oneself spending more to get and from work than one is making as take home pay.

The job is there … or is it really there if it costs you more to commute to work than you make at work? A little conundrum that increasing numbers of commuters may face as gas spirals upward in cost.

Conundrums are what many homeless face in seeking employment.

Despite the baseless assertions to the contrary, finding employment for the poor and especially for the homeless is to run into barrier after barrier after barrier after barrier ….

I recently heard from someone who was on the verge of homelessness after a year of fruitless job searching having been repeatedly told she was “overqualified” for the job she was applying for. I know others, including myself, who have a stack of rejections on the grounds of being “overqualified”.

As for the woman seeking money for dog grooming tools, consider the following scenario. You’re poor and cannot afford new clothes; you have a job lined up but in order to meet the office dress code you need two pair of Khaki pants; so much for that job because you cannot get those pants – unless you can find someone of charitable consciousness to buy you those pants. This is not some impossible scenario – it happened to me.

When one is poor and/or homeless the statement “jobs abound” is often false and what abounds is multiple barriers, multiple layers of barriers, between employment and you, between housing and you.

The homeless derive no benefit from their homelessness. Benefits accrue to those who chose, by their behaviours and actions, to be poverty and homelessness pimps – a rather shameful irony.

Homeless, Municipal

An Anonymous letter writer shares:

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Below is a letter sent to me via www.homelessinabbotsford.com by Anonymous.
What the letter has to say is important as more and more citizens are finding themselves in Anonymous’s circumstances. It is also important because it paints a very different picture of who the homeless or those teetering on the edge of homelessness are, a very different picture than that most people carry in their minds.

I have included my comments in brackets in hopes the Anonymous writer visits and has an opportunity to read them and know she is not alone, there are far to many of us in similar circumstances who understand and who are suffering the same indifferent fate at the hands of the government and fellow citizens.

Since the letter was Anonymous and I could not ask permission to share it I have edited out any references I felt may contain clues to the writer. Otherwise it is included as written. I have highlighted the letter in blue to make it clear which is the letter contents and which are my comments.

Many people are a month or so away from homelessness and nothing will save them but a ‘miracle’. I can testify personally to this after over a year of 24/7 job hunting in Abbotsford which yielded zero results. (I’m highly qualified and experienced in corporate communications and office administration and ran my own successful business for almost 8 years; too qualified, was the excuse trotted out if they bothered to respond at all, but not qualified enough for other things.

(I too have been told I am “over qualified”, an incredibly frustrating experience – especially when my having dealt with mental health issues makes them very nervous about hiring me for those positions I am qualified for.)

I, too, am staring homelessness in the face. I am trying to move to Vancouver (where I know no one) but where there are more job opportunities and I think possibly more support. Abbotsford, a closed society, is no place for the desperate. To say it’s scary is an understatement.

I, for one, haven’t a clue how to manage being homeless, in Abbotsford or elsewhere. I have a small income, enough to feed me and buy necessary toiletries, etc., but not enough for rent, hydro, phone, internet — the necessities of life which allow you to look for work intelligently and to actually report for work, once hired, looking and acting like a professional. And you won’t be allowed in a supermarket if you’re dirty and stinking because you couldn’t do laundry or bathe, so where do you turn …

(I have repeatedly posed those types of questions to the Ministry (and minister) of Employment and Income Assistance and gotten no intelligent answers. Perhaps a more accurate name for the Ministry would be – Employment Barriers and Inadequate Income Assistance)

I certainly cannot be only one in THAT predicament, so I think words of wisdom on how to be ‘successfully’ homeless would be well received by many.

(You definitely are not alone in your situation as I have met many people suffering the same government indifference and lack of help.)

The ranks of the homeless are going to swell exponentially. It is unfortunate that so many are mental patients and/or addicted to drugs or alcohol, because they have little to no hope and make the whole situation even more terrifying for those of us who are not.

(While they may make the possibility of homelessness more terrifying for you, they are also victims of lack of care by their country and government – and from their fellow citizens for not demanding that the government intelligently and with will and intent address homelessness, mental health and addiction. It has been demonstrated in other very similar jurisdictions (Portland and Seattle) that all that is required to help the addicted and mentally ill is realistic and intelligent decisions. It is the waste of human lives and the current immense waste of government funds, funds that could build the system of care needed to deal with these social ills, that has me advocating for these people (many of who are friends).

NOTE: any system that has the capacity to help those most in need will have the capacity to help people in less dire circumstances.

The rest, those of us who would like to work and live decently, need somehow to band together and cooperate with each other, watching each other’s backs, so to speak, and forming a mini-community somehow, each bringing something to the table others lack, and perhaps somehow getting people in the group working and living in decent housing. Just a thought and probably an impossibility.

(Nothing is impossible has to be ones mantra if you are going to bring about positive change. This is a free country, by definition we can bring about change. We just need more sane behaviour from people. If you are complaining about government all the time why keep voting for the same old parties? Repeating the same action over and over hoping for a different outcome is the AA definition of insanity. People can choose who ever they want to represent them. Maybe it is time that rather than stick with the same old choices citizens banded together to get other independent people to run for office and /or to exercise their right to “write in” whoever they want to represent them.)

(If you feel such a group of people looking for work is needed to cover each others backs and help each other – create it. Co-operative ventures have a long and distinguished history in Canada.)

There would be only opposition from the powers that be in Abbotsford however, so better to find out what’s available in more progressive cities like Vancouver or Kamloops.

(While I agree that Abbotsford is hide bound and continues to behave as though it were a small country town, remember that the provincial government is miserably failing to meet its Duty of Care to those citizens finding themselves in your circumstances and in need of Assistance – not more and higher Barriers. Remember that in November you, all the citizens of Abbotsford will have your chance to send the current council home (taking away their part-time salaries that are higher than many citizens earn full time) and replacing them with competent people with caring and vision for all citizens and Abbotsford’s future)

(Whatever you do, don’t give up and let them win – remember the best revenge is a life well lived.)