Four Approaches

 Hi Kerry:

It's me again.  I am still noticing people sleeping on the sidewalks here in our dear city of Vancouver.  This morning when I was setting out to go to church (Anglican if you must ask) I noticed a sleeping bag just next to the front door of my building with what appeared to be a human being zipped up inside.  These encounters for me are particularly resonant because as you know I was myself homeless, not street homeless since I had a lot of friends and some family (my father) at the time with whom I could couch surf, but it was still scary enough.

I suffer from survivor guilt.  I might have mentioned that I worked for a brief time, one year, at Lookout Emergency Aid Society in their homeless shelters.  This was for me an interesting, challenging, difficult and ironical transition back into the work force, given that just three years before I was myself homeless.  I couldn't last working there.  The graveyard shifts, lack of security and very difficult and burnt-out coworkers on top of my then emotional fragility as I was still in recovery from post traumatic stress disorder made it impossible for me to stay on.  But I also learned, shall we say, some very useful combat skills that have done me well in finding and establishing myself in other employment (I believe I already mentioned that I have been a mental health peer support worker for the past ten years now.

When I worked at Lookout the human collateral damage was already manifesting from the brutal cutbacks the newly elected BC Liberal Party had wreaked on our social welfare system.  I was happily unaffected because I had the good luck of finding employment and getting off of social assistance before they were able to hurt me further.  But the statistics that I helped compile for turnaways was something frightening and I knew that a secure way of life that I had once taken for granted living in Canada was over and that human life in a social, political and economic climate of global capitalism and neo-liberalism had become something very cheap and worthless.

Various band aids have since been applied to the wound but it is really too deep and cancerous for easy treatment and healing.  Even now, twelve years later, we still have street homelessness in this city.  This was never a problem till the nineties when the neoliberal "reforms" began.

Today I was having coffee with a friend from Mexico.  A street person came inside the café and asked me for a dollar so he could buy a coffee.  I offered instead to buy him a coffee and something to eat.  He declined after making a show of interest in the food selections and left the café with nothing.  Of course it is more than a little likely that he really wanted the money for something else, perhaps street drugs, or cigarettes.

My Mexican friend, who has lived in Canada for the past four years, asked me why the government isn't helping this man.  I explained to him about the cuts in service and many of the other hidden causes of street homelessness and poverty, some of which I suffered from: undiagnosed mental health issues, emotional exhaustion, substance abuse, divorce or other family rejection and breakdown, a disintegration of one's support and social network, sometimes due to circumstances beyond one's control, the incredibly high cost of housing, low wages, chronic underemployment, to name but a few.

It is also unfortunate that both our provincial and federal levels of government have remained intentionally deaf, blind, intransigent and absolutely callous towards the plight of our most vulnerable citizens.  I am deeply saddened and appalled by the lack of political will and the lack of action to remedy what has become a human rights debacle in this country and an international embarrassment.

The neoliberal reforms have really hurt us.  They have not only traumatized those too weak or incompatible with capitalism and global competition to be able to keep up.  This neo-Darwinist survival of the fittest climate degrades and dehumanizes all of us.  It is simply traumatizing seeing others suffer for the crimes of our governments while many of us are completely powerless to be able to offer a remedy.  This is beyond cruel.  We need government action and before that can happen we need political will.

I am not criticizing you or the civic government by the way.  I think it is completely laudable what you, our mayor Gregor, and City Council have been doing to create housing for our homeless population.  More of course needs to be done and I really wish I could do something besides email you about this as I am sure you must get pretty tired of reading this.

In conclusion here are the kinds of changes I would like to see in the way that social assistance services are delivered in this country:

1.  Housing First.  Canada needs to accept and promote safe and secure housing for all Canadians as an inalienable human right and we need to develop a national housing strategy in this country.

2.  Raise the Rates.  Welfare is not survivable.  It is not even subsistible (new word, I just invented it).

3.  Open and develop new and workable strategies for preparing and training people for employment.  I like the carrot on the stick approach.  Instead of denying people welfare for not looking for work (a human rights violation) pay them a premium of two or three hundred dollars extra a month for seeking employment and enrolling in job training.

4.  Publically subsidize all post-secondary education in this country, or at least for those who live on a modest income.  This includes trades, technical, vocational, and all college and university education up to and including Masters Degrees and Doctorates.  It may be hard to believe but some people have fallen through the cracks because they have the brains, gifts and the inclination towards higher education but no money, and no support and neither are they going to do well in other forms of work. 

All these things are doable and achievable and will only benefit us as a society.

Thank you as always.  If you don't mind I am going to put this letter on my blog.

I know that you are doing the best you can with little to work with.  If sharing this letter with others might help then please pass it on.

all the best

Aaron