There is a lot of bullshit associated with being poor in Canada-one of the world's richest countries. Its a big topic but I will concentrate on people who literally live on the streets.
I lived in Victoria, BC for several years and the climate there allowed people to live on the streets and in the parks and in their vehicles for most of the year. The locals, while aware of the people living and sleeping on the streets, were not generally aware that people were also living in their vehicles. The reason was simple enough - you could see the people living on the streets and you usually didn't notice the people living in their vehicles. There was one case where a man died in his vehicle trying to heat it with a propane heater in the winter months and that did get into the paper.
The life on the street is a tough one with drugs and booze, disease and assaults being regular fare.
There are great arguments that claim the low unemployment rate allows anyone that needs a job to have one. There are other arguments that people hooked on drugs are just about useless that no employer would want them and that they are destined to live on the street because they are too screwed up to do anything else. There is another argument that since the mental hospitals were closed down and the nut cases re-integrated with society that there are a lot of people of the streets with mental illnesses. There are various shelters with varying rules that provide basic shelter services for these people. Some are religious based some are not.
But for whatever reason -in Victoria and several other Canadian cities you still find people living on the streets or in local parks or in their vehicles. If we were a developing country or third world nation then poverty IS a fact of everyday life but in Canada we are basically stinking rich as a nation and we have one of the strongest economies on the planet so we do have the resources to solve the national poverty problem. If we want to.
I have a solution.
I suggest that it be the right of every Canadian citizen to have a shower once a day. I suggest that if they have that shower that they then have a right to a bed with clean bedding. That they have a right to do their laundry. I further suggest that it be the right of every Canadian who has had a shower and has clean clothing to have a basic nutritious meal. We can afford it. It shouldn't be such a big deal. And nothing fancy. No TV in the rooms, no designer furniture, no added extras no "hotel room". For those things they need to work. But for the basics - it should be the right of every Canadian citizen to have them.
Before automatically dismissing this as foolishness consider when you went several days without getting washed. Possibly you were out camping. Or the power was out. Or you were in a country without running hot water or whatever. Or you were on a stinky bus on a hot humid day. Likely everyone has been in this situation at least once. Remember how horrible you felt and how much better you felt after getting washed. Your entire attitude could change with 10 cents of soap and 20 cents of hot water. But putting that freshly scrubbed body back into filthy dirty clothes quickly gets you back to a bad mood again. So wash your clothes!! Now YOU are clean and your clothes are clean. The point is that extremely basic and inexpensive things can make a huge difference in your state of mind and body. Most humans clean up surprisingly well. But do we do it? Hell no -our poor street people often stink like a poorly maintained toilet and they tend to repel anyone that comes close to them. Not much hope there. On with the plan!
If a person refuses to wash or clean their clothes they don't get the clean bed, They are on their own. They have no right to smoke in the rooms or take drugs. If they do they go to jail and get enrolled in a work and rehab program. We don't just leave them on the street until they kill themselves. We look after them because they are fellow Canadian citizens. But we keep it simple so that the rules are perfectly clear.
Inside a week there would be nobody living on the streets and the drug problem would be solved. Crime would go down as desperate people once smelly and looking for something to eat or steal now have a place to sleep, a clean body and a full tummy and clean clothes. That's a good start to a happy day.
Today- we treat our poor like crap. Its disgusting. And a lot of the people on the street have become disgusting. In some cases they have taken over the streets and ruined entire city blocks -which have become disgusting too with people pissing in doorways, defacing private property with graffiti, and generally making a mess of what was at one time a pleasant neighbourhood . Again, in Victoria, I have seen young kids on drugs sleeping on the streets. Its bullshit. There is nothing more pathetic than a 15 year old girl huddled under a blanket in the middle of a Victoria sidewalk where day workers step around her to get to work. It happens and its wrong! And the media is loath to cover that for fear of offending their advertisers in the tourist industry.
Will this simple solution ever be implemented? No! Not a chance. There are too many people, organizations and departments making good money and careers off our street people. They have become the base for a huge social welfare industry where most of the benefits seem to go to the administration and we adapt to rather than solve the problem. In fact if they solved the problem they would be out of business!
The accommodation could be constructed with surplus sea containers. Its not a new idea. The showers are pretty easy too. It could look a little like a refugee camp but so what. We are not talking bachelor or studio apartments here with trendy paint jobs and ikea furniture. We are talking bunkhouse basic no frills, clean and simple. They could be refurbished by prisoners in our prison system. In Canada we have over 35,000 prisoners sitting on their thumbs while they cost us approximately $250,000 a year each to keep. Lets see them earn their keep. We missed our chance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We should have entrenched those rights in there at the time. We went for the higher falutin stuff that means nothing when you are living on the street under a blanket.
The "grand plan" which in fact is just a simple and logical solution- would save billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and cost comparatively little compared to all the money we piss away on other things of lesser value or even all the money we are throwing at the problem now. Are we all stupid or what! I think we are. In fact I think 25% of us are too stupid to pound sand down a rat hole and I prove it on this page! I think its all...bullshit! It might be different if we were in the middle of the Depression or if our finances were in the toilet but today in Canada we can afford to fix the problem.
And maybe one more point. There are surprisingly few steps between where you are now and living on the streets or in your vehicle. What would happen if you have a stroke? You loose your job. You can't pay the rent anymore or your credit card bills. Most Canadians are three paychecks or less from financial disaster. What would happen if your son or daughter went to a party and some asshole gave them crack cocaine and in one session they became addicted? And they ended up on the street. Things like this happen. A lot. As Canadians we need to say this is bullshit and we need to solve the problem of poverty in Canada
Today, we have some fellow citizens living like third world people in one of the richest countries on the planet and too many of us don't care enough to change it. That's not the Canadian way. Everyone in society needs to participate -we can't have a group sitting back and just taking stuff while the rest of us work and pay taxes. The ones that can work need to be re-integrated into the workforce and the ones that thru disability cannot work need to be taken care of. Letting a teen or young adult waste away on the street is a big mistake. In a city like Victoria there are over 1500 homeless people.
Can you imagine walking in downtown Victoria past 1500 people all staring at you as you go to work- fresh from your shower, bacon, eggs and toast and 8 hours sleep on a comfy mattress. You have your canvas enviro-friendly lunch bag and thermos of Starbucks coffee tucked under your arm and the laptop on the other. Look at them in the eyes. They are all looking at you wishing they were you. What's that ringing in the background? Its getting louder and louder. Damn its annoying! You guessed it -its the Bullshit alarm going off! Again.
Oh gee...One last point then. In Canada we don't even know how many homeless people there are here. That clanging you hear in your head is the bullshit alarm going off. I did some research to come up with a number for you and the consensus was that nobody knows! Its not being tracked. The homeless ones are difficult to count because they don't have an address or phone. This is unbelievable! We spend all this damn money on taxes and we don't know how many homeless they are??
What do you do- when you live in a shoe...
Canada lets get the lead out and solve this one! Here is the solution -on a platter. All we need to do is act. There are thousands of fellow Canadians living in poverty every day in a grinding sprit breaking misery while we romp around in SUV's to Timmy's and Winners buying trinkets for the cottage and new towels and fancy soaps for the guest room. Its bullshit! There is no logical reason why this problem cannot be solved and solved quickly!
December 19th 2008 Update. Another tragedy on Canadian Streets today when a middle aged woman and "street person" trying to keep warm by burning candles in her shopping cart shelter in Vancouver burned to death. This did not need to happen. It is a reflection our our failure to solve a simple problem in our society and it should not happen again. We can solve it. We have some very good MPs in government that must we horrified right now as others in government move to appoint plum positions to the Canadian senate and all the opulence and wealth connected to those positions while other Canadians freeze and die horrible deaths on the street. This poor woman's story should be posted in every government office in Canada. So nobody forgets. This is NOT the Canadian way. We need to change this now! Contact your MP and demand they fix the situation.
The ideas on this page are my suggestions for a good start and we could do this in a few days with the support of all Canadians. This is not a problem that we can't fix and fix fast. It seems that we can give sudden billion dollar handouts to banks and industry so we can fix a problem like this even faster. That poor woman was a daughter to her parents, a friend to those that knew her and a source of income to those who were tasked to look after her welfare. This is a very sad story. Maybe we could name the plan to fix the situation after her. Because if all the malevolent little ducks of misfortune lined up we could have been in her place.
December 20/2008 Reports today that a homeless man in Montreal froze to death on the street last night. Meanwhile the Prime Minister was making a big deal of a 4 billion dollar + loan to the auto industry at a press conference before returning to his luxurious digs at 24 Sussex Drive to sup on stuffed golden goose, fine free wine, crow pie, cake and cookies or whatever he eats. Its likely not sliced meats from you know where. The homeless man was a kid once and a son to his parents a friend to others on the street possibly a father and now frozen stiff because nobody cared. Merry Christmas.
This problem could be solved in a matter of hours if people in Canada demanded it. But not enough people care and the street people continue to die in the cold weather. Word now is that Vancouver is pondering how to compel street people to come into a shelter in times of extreme cold. Here is a solution. Get an old city bus with a good working heater, drive it around with a team of big strong lugs and toss the rascals onto the bus. Drive the bus to an emergency shelter and march the rascals off the bus. Keep them in the shelter until it gets warmer. Problem solved. It's not rocket science. Get them cleaned up, a fresh haircut and a warm meal in their tummies. Get their laundry done. Suddenly life is looking and smelling a lot better. And how much did it cost? Not very much is the answer.
Update September 1st 2009 A lot of people from all over the world have been viewing this page. It has started some people thinking and talking and comparing the suggestions here to their own experience and ideas. Lets take it to the next step. We need a pilot program to prove it would work. The ideas and concepts are deceptively simple but they are not stupid. I am sure they would represent a huge improvement over the existing situation. Someplace out there we need a commitment to try to them out. We need some innovators and leaders to commit to helping our homeless people suffering from poverty. It won't cost very much money either but funds will be needed and people will be needed to administer the program. I would be happy to showcase these implementations here or on a separate website to assist to implement the ideas on a wider basis.
Canada is a great country. One of the best on the planet. Our soldiers didn't fight and die in battles for Canada to have fellow Canadians die living on the streets and freezing to death in cold weather. That is not the Canadian way. They didn't die so that some 15 year old girl could sleep on a sidewalk chock full of drugs and donuts. We can do a hell of a lot better than have people living in parks and scrounging dumpsters for food. We need to raise the bar. Being Canadian should mean that you have both rights and responsibilities. On the rights side you should have the basic rights I have outlined above. On the responsibility side we all are on this one way journey around the sun together and we need to look after each other. Nobody knows how many spins around the sun we have so we all need to make the best of that time. We can start today!
Update September 8th 2009 I have decided to add two additional rights to the very short list above. The right to have a permanent mail address and the right to have a permanent email account. At first this may seem a departure from the idea of very basic rights but think about it. First of all the costs to do this will be minimal and secondly it will give everyone a contact point which is needed for employment and to exist within our society. The address could be permanent even for people who may move around a lot because it could follow them. The good people at Canada Post will be able to figure out a system based on their post office box system and postal codes. As far as an email address goes that could simply be a g-mail account and people could check their email or send messages at public terminals. In both cases a small expenditure would give our poor access to the mail and internet system. Things are begining to look up. We now have a person who is clean, sleeps in a clean bed and has clean clothes and has a nutritious meal and now they have mail. This IS the start to a happy day! Lets do it!
Please do our homeless a favour. If you know anybody that can help send this page to them. If enough people do that the problem will get solved. If good people do nothing evil will win.
I didn't get to where I am today by not doing anything when something needed doing. Check out the Marcie Party for the next general election. This will stir things up! Ending Poverty is part of the platform!
January 17 2010 Update
After reviewing the page I realized that some readers from outside of Canada could infer that here we just cut our poor adrift and offer them no help. Of course this is not the case. Canada does have an extensive social welfare program where citizens without resources or income are given basic support in the form of housing, food, health care and cash payments via the unemployment insurance program and or welfare programs. There are many government and non government organizations that make up this support. The point I am making here is that despite all these programs we still have thousands of Canadians living in abject poverty many living on the streets. Somehow the entire system allows them to fall through the cracks. So the idea here is that we approach the problem from a different direction. Rather than trickle down support we establish certain rights that all Canadians have and so we work from the other end. We maintain responsibilities too. As an example if someone wants to use drugs, and or get drunk then they loose the right to a shower, clean bed and nutritious meal. A form of tough love perhaps. With the trickle down approach people are given welfare cheques and they can use them on whatever they feel like including smokes, drugs and alcohol if they wish. I hope that clarifies the ideas presented here. We still need our social welfare systems but we also need to solve the problems that these systems have been unable to solve.
Canada's great wealth includes the potential for every Canadian to live a good life. Lets bring those living on the fringes back aboard our ship as we steam through the mysteries and adventure of life with our one way tickets and great expectations! A good sailor will tell you that you don't embark on a long voyage with a leaky hull and these ideas are an attempt to plug some of those leaks! If we all get together on this we can do it! Ultimately we need new laws which will make these basic rights legal and so we need the support of citizens and legislatures to put these laws into effect. Amendments to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be a likely candidate. We can do it if we want to do it! That 15 year old kid living on the streets with stinky clothes and an empty tummy could be your daughter or niece or neighbour or you. And how sad would that be! That is not the Canadian way!
LINKS
Study supporting the concept that providing housing would actually reduce costs (something I tried to make the point here!)
Sea Container Housing - an interesting article from CNN on using recycled sea containers for houses.
SG BLOCKS - an American company with experience in converting sea containers to housing units.
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