Ending Chronic Homelessness

[danbrotherston]

Funny, nowhere did I suggest that they needed to find a job or pay a bill to get a home. Just. Give. Them. Homes.

It isn't that complicated. And more to the point, for many on the street, it is being on the street which is traumatizing. Giving them a home makes it much easier for them to overcome those problems.

I'm not saying that it's a magic bullet which will make every single unhoused person a well functioning member of society, but for many it will. And for the rest...again...they won't be unhoused.

I am very strong in my opinion that housing is a human right. Food, water, and shelter. No person in our society should ever have to go without. I don't care how undeserving anyone feels they are. We feed, house, and hydrate the very worst criminals among us, certainly we can do the same for those whose first crime is poverty.

Honestly, I get very frustrated by the idea that we cannot do this. We are wealthy...we can do this. We choose not too.

Yes, I remember the Breslau hate. It's a shameful dark mark on that particular community. I didn't know they were on Ardelt, I thought that was the original location. Fundamentally, not providing them with a permanent location is fundamentally depriving them of a home. A large part of something being "home" is stability. You must be able to rely on it, for a long term.

And frankly, I know this very well. During my move I have been living with family, and in temporary housing for 5 months now. It isn't at all the same as being homeless--I am always comfortable and usually confident in my ability to house my family in the coming month--but I still feel the discomfort of being in unstable temporary accommodations. I just signed a 3 year lease and I cannot tell you how much of a relief it is to have some certainty about where I will be living in the coming years.

Well I'm not disagreeing, just stating that without structure and purpose, many of these people would quickly fall back into their vices. A home is a start, but not enough.

A proper home is obviously preferable to the streets, but without providing support in other areas they'll likely often just live in those homes doing the same things they do on the streets: drugs, prostitution, self-harm, crime, anti-social behaviour etc. And that's when they end up kicked out of those homes and back where they came from...because they need to be able to follow rules to live in those places (that's why many homeless people don't choose to utilize shelters, because they have to behave in order to utilize those services). They can also lack certain skills as ijmorlan illustrated - skills that we all take for granted or don't even think of. Budgeting, bills, cleaning, job searches/interviewing, taking medication and so on are not things many street people are used to so they are also handicapped in that respect. And to solve those sort of things such as drug addiction, mental health, criminal activity, teaching skills etc we'd require a huge amount of additional resources...from psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, PSWs, addiction support counsellors and so on - all things we have a serious lack of in Canada.

It's awful, really. As you said, we're a wealthy and highly developed nation but we do very little to help the marginalized people amongst us. And that's a disappointing reality we should all be ashamed of because what kind of country lets its citizens slip through the cracks? We need to be doing more as a nation at all levels. A top down approach from the federal/provincial/local governments who can fund and build organizations to structure everything, but also grassroots level support where we can have people who are more in touch with these sort of realities (or who have lived that sort of life) give direction to those up top and those on the streets on what needs and can be done.

More empathy from the public is also needed. Anytime there is a thread on Reddit or Twitter about local homelessness, drug addiction, sex work or whatever the replies can be disgusting. There are people out there who would be happy to see these people rounded up, executed and buried in a mass grave. They can also be seriously misjudging the problems too, thinking that they're only in their situations because they're lazy or don't care about anything but drugs, when in reality they usually do drugs because it's a coping mechanism for pain, which then develops into a physical or psychological addiction.

Either way, this is such an unfortunately complex problem but we need to do something because it's just getting worse.

Here's the key though...you can't kick them out for this. If they want to sit in their homes and get high or whatever, then that's what they do. We can provide supports, but making housing conditional means it isn't being treated as a right.

More empathy is absolutely needed.

It is absolutely a complex problem, but rarely do complex problems have such a clear and obvious way to make unambiguous and unquestionable progress.

There is literally no downside to giving homes to these people, not a single one will be worse off in that situation.