ABC is reporting that "A homeless couple and their two young children, all dressed for bed, were found dead from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning in a parked van that had its windows covered with blankets and a shade to block out the light outside a Southern California strip mall, police said Friday. The case comes as Southern California grapples with a rise in homelessness amid soaring housing costs." Sound familiar? This tragedy happened in Los Angeles.
Housing is very expensive in any big city - LA, New York, London, Toronto and now Metro Vancouver. Homelessness and drug addiction are two separate issues. Here in Vancouver they become blurred because the police do nothing to stop the predatory drug dealers from exploiting the homeless. As we have said before, 50 % of drug addicts on the Surrey strip want to get treatment but can't. Other than Price Pro all the treatment centres in Surrey are just drug houses where addicts do drugs. If the police won't arrest drug dealers for selling drugs in public or at treatment centres, what good are they?
We see homeless here and meet people living in cars all the time. It's always heart wrenching to hear of families with young children homeless but the same goes for the elderly. When the elderly are homeless we are all diminished.
The City of Surrey held a survey about housing in Guildford. They were of course pushing high density towers their campaign contributors can get rich off of. A million dollars for a tiny condo in a huge tower at Surrey Central is insane. Low rise apartments and townhouses for young families are a much better fit for Guildford. Affordable housing is a genuine concern for everyone.
If you want to build more housing in Guildford, take your LRT and cram it up your a*s.
I bought my apt in Newton for 159k 2.5 years ago and a apt just like it in the same building is being sold for the asking price of 399k. At the same time my nephew has a hard time paying the rent in Guildford. I was homeless off and on for 7 months (I occ. scraped enough $ together to rent a SRO for a month) I did no drugs or alcohol or tobacco. I did not steal or beg. I eventually landed a job and got on with my life. I had ppl giving me free meth and cocaine and pot in the DTES either to become a dealer or an addict or both so you are right about the predators. I just said no. Lots of homeless are career failed criminals, pedophiles and other sex criminals and booze and drug addicts. Many prey on weaker homeless ppl or just cause a general disturbance and mess. I have seen ppl defecate on sidewalks. Mayor Robertson promised an end to homelessness and spent millions of dollars on it as did the prov. govt and the problem grew worse. Execute the opiod dealers and the meth and cocaine dealers after a fair trial. Close the safe injection sites and cancel welfare for addicts and they will move somewhere else or die.
ReplyDeleteGlad to her you were able to stay strong and get on with your life. The amount of money they have spent on homelessness is evidence that what they are doing is not working. They are giving all the money to the pharmaceutical companies instead of spending money on housing and treatment. Not arresting the drug dealers is the root of the problem.
DeleteYou are going to see things get worse in Ontario if candidate Ford wins. He was promised to end taxation on foreign real estate buyers (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-doug-ford-open-to-privatizing-liquor-sales-and-dropping-foreign-buyers/).
ReplyDeleteHe is trying to claim the economic "market will always take care of itself". Sorry, but it's greed that will always become involved, especially where money is involved.
Eliminating what passes for "democracy" in the West and replacing it with a system such as Distributism (see Belloc and Chesterton) would be one of the only sound ways to deal with the current mess me are in.
Mayor Moonbean and his end homelessness was just so much b.s. to get himself elected. While he was mayor things went from bad to worse while more and more expensive condos were built and sold to people who did not live in this country, let alone in this province,. Everywhere you see new condos towers going up and they say luxury, luxury. Well that isn't for the working people of this province. Had Mayor moombean, never disliking a developer who contributed to his re election fund, put the breaks on all of it, Vancouver would have been a very different city. A city can easily decree what is demolished and what isn't. In England councils can now seize a property which is foreign owner and not occupied, renovate it and rent it out at an affordable price to locals. Now lets see if that ever would happen in Greater Vancouver. Hell, we can't even get them to put up English signs in Richmond.
ReplyDeleteNew Westminster made the first step when it changed the by laws which stipulated towers had to have a % of the units built for families. Greater Vancouver is having a difficult time recruiting teachers for the schools because of the housing shortage for working people.
The market will never take care of itself. It takes care of those who manipulate it. A vote for Doug Ford is a vote for a person with some real problems. They may not like Kathleen Wynne, but she is years ahead of Ford and his ways. Just a dumb big mouthed idiot. What could go wrong with that.????