Homeless Strategy Input

[common_sense_guy]

I guess I should add a few things for the people who just like to poke holes in ideas. People should also realize not everything has been thought all the way through because it's just the basic idea start. You don't need to comment" well what about this and what about that" I'm just trying to come up with reasonable ideas to help at an affordable price. There would need to be a bathroom indoor. That could be as simple as a propane heated enclosure with porta potties in there to start.. I am lucky enough I can leave my camper at a friend's property and stay in it during the winter at a cost of a 20 lb of propane for about every 4 days during the Cold Snap. that was for heating it and the occasional meal in the oven or stove. For the lights I just have a battery with a small solar trickle charger. So they could be perfectly self-contained but it would be cheaper to run Central propane to each one for cost-effective.. let's add to good ideas instead of picking good ideas apart

[Jonrox]

Segregation is rarely the solution to anything. Disguise it as "giving them a place to live" all you want... it's still segregation. And pushing these folks out to an "empty area" away from the rest of us isn't going to help. How anyone thinks forcing people suffering from mental health and addiction issues to all go live together is a good idea is beyond me. It's a recipe for a disaster of epic proportions.

We're not going to ever "solve" homelessness. It may sound counter intuitive, but giving someone a home doesn't fix the problem of homelessness. It's putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. Giving someone a home to live in doesn't solve the underlying issues of addiction and mental illness. You might feel better about yourself because your "homeless" rate falls, but you've still got people suffering and the likelihood that they'll be able to maintain their new "lifestyle" is almost nothing.

It treats a symptom, but doesn't cure the problem. Not to mention, the logistics of creating a maintaining the "slum" you're suggesting would be next to impossible to pull off.

All we can do is mitigate the impact of homelessness as best we can. Increased hiring and funding for mental health and addiction treatment is the best place to start helping these folks.

[Jflem1983]

Segregation is rarely the solution to anything. Disguise it as "giving them a place to live" all you want... it's still segregation. And pushing these folks out to an "empty area" away from the rest of us isn't going to help. How anyone thinks forcing people suffering from mental health and addiction issues to all go live together is a good idea is beyond me. It's a recipe for a disaster of epic proportions.

We're not going to ever "solve" homelessness. It may sound counter intuitive, but giving someone a home doesn't fix the problem of homelessness. It's putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. Giving someone a home to live in doesn't solve the underlying issues of addiction and mental illness. You might feel better about yourself because your "homeless" rate falls, but you've still got people suffering and the likelihood that they'll be able to maintain their new "lifestyle" is almost nothing.

It treats a symptom, but doesn't cure the problem. Not to mention, the logistics of creating a maintaining the "slum" you're suggesting would be next to impossible to pull off.

All we can do is mitigate the impact of homelessness as best we can. Increased hiring and funding for mental health and addiction treatment is the best place to start helping these folks.

Medicine Hat has had success. They litterally gave people places to stay. Actual homes. One guy they had to bring back to his home 75 times. They tuffed it out and he got himself sorted out i think.

[Ken7]

Buy up all the truck campers you can find for $500 and less. There are many nice ones. Take them all to an empty area give a tax break to the owner for allowing the campers to be moved there. Every camper would have their own propane furnace in it already. Connect it to electrical for the lights. They have a home they can call their own now. The social services can all come to one place to help and deal with them. And hire 24/7 person to live there as well to basically keep the peace and enforce the rules. If they don't like the rules I can go back out on the street. Biggest cost would be the person you hire to stay there 24/7. But you could probably get someone for free if you're giving them their own free camper and place to live. Next biggest expense would be paying for their propane and electrical and the tax break you give the owner of the property. If I was homeless I would probably jump at the chance to have my own camper.( think of it as tiny homes which are all the rage it seems) I would guess a good amount of them would have some feeling of ownership and would feel safe and might actually take the next step to turn your life around with something as simple as a home that they can call their own. It wouldn't be much different than the homeless camps that they set up themselves now but are usually eyesores and nothing but tents and garbage and never in a good place to not bother everybody else

I think you need a large facility, draw them in and ween them off their drug of choice and get them back to being healthy mentally and wanting to be a contributor to society instead of a pimple on the A$$ of society!

[southy]

This thread definitely shows how empathetic people can be. Pimple on the *bleep* of society? Come on Ken thought you were a tad more aware than that statement.

[Scrobins94]

I would really like the City step up and offer them jobs. Even if they are odd jobs like garbage collection, odd labour jobs, etc. Pay them a fair wage too. This helps in 2 ways, it gives them money for food/shelter and also a sense of purpose and community.

[StraitTalk]

I'd be very curious to hear peoples opinions on national universal basic income as a strategy to combat homelessness and the effects of unemployment.

[normaM]

Providing stable shelter is not a band aid solution - not much point sending someone to rehab only to see them back out on the streets in a few months. Same with treatment plans, hard to keep contact with clients when they have no perm address. Difficult to implement a workable case plan, etc.
The "labs" are for people to brainstorm - the camper idea ( not fleshed out an idea) not a bad one at all.
Heck even a tent village beats sleeping outdoors exposed, plus any type of community means hopefully others watching out for you, like my neighbourhood.
We keep talking about why people are homeless, with doesn't address the fundamental issue of why we are not providing housing.

[Jflem1983]

I'd be very curious to hear peoples opinions on national universal basic income as a strategy to combat homelessness and the effects of unemployment.

Im against it. Too many people are too useless they do not deserve a leg up. Food and shelter is more than enuff to provide them with. No one provides me or u with anything

[CapitalB]

Im against it. Too many people are too useless they do not deserve a leg up. Food and shelter is more than enuff to provide them with. No one provides me or u with anything

Any suggestions on turning them into productive members of society then? I mean you (I assume) and I have a plethora of safety nets that people on the street don't have. I mean I personally would never end up on the street just by having people I know who would give me a place to stay before it got to that. Just having friends and family that care about your wellbeing is a huge factor in keeping people off the streets. Usually the street people have no family and friends or have driven them all away by their self destructive lifestyles. After a point even if they want to change and go back to before it can be almost impossible to turn that corner. Especially people locked into a cycle of addiction.

Just being a regular productive person it can be hard to do the things you need to do to better your life sometimes. Imagine if you were in the god awful pit of homelessness. Each day would start and end terribly, with mostly awful in the middle. I've been depressed before and making myself do what I knew I had to was hard, I can't imagine how difficult it would be from that far down.

[Jflem1983]

Spent quite a while more or less homeless. I always worked. Lots of times i was in a camp or a hotel. But i had nowhere to go. Im not sure what you mean. There are a lot of jobs to be had rite now. None of them get filled. Yet we have people who wont even work.

Its a problem with a lot of things. Schools. Healthcare. Wasted money on studies. Etc.

I do support giving a roof and food. The rest i think needs to be driven by the person. Even the roof and food sounds awefully rich honestly.

[Grandan]

Providing stable shelter is not a band aid solution - not much point sending someone to rehab only to see them back out on the streets in a few months. Same with treatment plans, hard to keep contact with clients when they have no perm address. Difficult to implement a workable case plan, etc.
The "labs" are for people to brainstorm - the camper idea ( not fleshed out an idea) not a bad one at all.
Heck even a tent village beats sleeping outdoors exposed, plus any type of community means hopefully others watching out for you, like my neighbourhood.
We keep talking about why people are homeless, with doesn't address the fundamental issue of why we are not providing housing.

The camper idea is a non starter. They are not insulated properly and do not have adequate vapour protection.
As a result, someone living in a camper will soon have a mold problem on their hands followed by serious health (lung) issues.
The cost of heating with propane is high compared to natural gas and the poorly insulated camper will drive the cost up even more.
A more efficient and humane way to house homeless people is to provide basic housing with proper sanitation and heating systems. If a homeless person is happy with a 6ft x 10 ft camper they should be thrilled with a 200 sq ft apartment with basic facilities like hot and cold running water, a fridge and stove and washroom and laundry.
One issue with building bylaws is that they dictate the size of living space that people need for basics. There may be a case for more basic housing which could include smaller spaces with fewer amenities so as to not attract miscreants from arriving in droves to fill up all the available spaces.
The world over, millions of people live in individual rooms with only a common washroom and cooking facilities, surely we should provide something for those who are out in the street and indeed we do and they are on the social services rolls by the thousands.
Homeless people are those who often do not want a permanent home where they have to follow rules for a variety of reasons.

[Poindexter]

The math is in and it shows that providing housing and care vastly reduces what we spend on the chronically homeless. Our current solution only serves those who want to tackle the issue too linearly, thinking if you reduce services you reduce the cost of the homeless. Fact is all you're doing is transferring the cost down the line to either policing, the prison system, and probably the most costly, the health care system.

One homeless person costs $171,000 a yearhttps://bc.ctvnews.ca/mobile/one-ho ... r-1.365403

The Business Case for Ending Homelessness: Having a Home Improves Health, Reduces Healthcare Utilization and Costs

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4046466/

[Jonrox]

Medicine Hat has had success. They litterally gave people places to stay. Actual homes. One guy they had to bring back to his home 75 times. They tuffed it out and he got himself sorted out i think.

Medicine Hat has had success providing shelter, but they don't segregate their homeless in empty areas. It's also a relatively small city, so can handle its program without an army of support staff.

I'm not against helping to provide shelter, but shelter without support and treatment is a bandaid. And segregating this shelter is a terrible idea. The problem is that people pretend they want to help as long as that help isn't in their neighborhood.

It's also not a program without it's problems... quote from a NY Times article about the Medicine Hat program:

Indeed, Mr. Remple, sitting in his sparsely furnished apartment, said this was the fifth place he had lived in during the five years since he connected with the housing first program.

“I kept taking in homeless friends,” he said blankly. “I’d have two or four people living and drinking and partying with me until I’d get evicted.”

[normaM]

Pretty sure sleeping outside on a store doorstep not very healthy either.
We can provide shelter and not some of the BS models I've seen on the past .. zero tolerance for drinking/drugs, etc should be encouraged/
You can provide structure and still get results.. you know like hmm SCHOOLS. Kids have to follow rules. Routine and rules are not some weird concept.
One of the problems is that we can't understand each others reality :(
Second problem is we clump all Homeless?
- in danger of being homeless under same umbrella
We ( those who are not homeless) probably living better than any other time in our History.. so why do we grab our pearls and tsk?
Without a stable place to live everything else quite useless. Provide people hope.