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Homelessness, Addiction and Mental Health

MacLac said:
vancouversun.com

Vancouver's East Hastings Street, the day after the removal of tent encampments

Patrick Weir said he wandered around all night after he was displaced Wednesday until he finally fell asleep on a bench outside Costco.
vancouversun.com vancouversun.com

If Stationlands is to be successful, the City is gonna have to pull a YVR and do this:
Click to expand...
In order for that success, we need developers to not turn lots into 4th world. Walk around the 1 block vicinity of the BMO lot. 4th world permits you to leave behind human feces right on the side walks of Jasper and other areas close by to that site. In lament terms: A shi-it hole is for shi-iting which is why outhouse were constructed. People will do business where they're shown or see.
 
MacLac said:
vancouversun.com

Vancouver's East Hastings Street, the day after the removal of tent encampments

Patrick Weir said he wandered around all night after he was displaced Wednesday until he finally fell asleep on a bench outside Costco.
vancouversun.com vancouversun.com

If Stationlands is to be successful, the City is gonna have to pull a YVR and do this:
Click to expand...
They do this when these camps become a public health and safety concern. Yes, they'll set up again but that's how they've been dealing with these camps for a long time. Lather, rinse, repeat. Until a longer term solution is found (which will take time), there's not much the municipality can really do.
 
The majority are meth heads, so the only option is 3 strikes and you are locked up to sober out. Once you're sober, you do community service until you prove yourself. When they get free money from taxpayers for their habits, who is going to straighten out? Meanwhile, take a look at all the LRT stations; we even have to pay for man/woman watchers at lrt stations bathrooms to make sure they don't overdose.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Clearshades said:
The majority are meth heads, so the only option is 3 strikes and you are locked up to sober out. Once you're sober, you do community service until you prove yourself. When they get free money from taxpayers for their habits, who is going to straighten out? Meanwhile, take a look at all the LRT stations; we even have to pay for man/woman watchers at lrt stations bathrooms to make sure they don't overdose. Once one's action creates nuisance to society, ONE'S PERSONAL RIGHTS ARE OVER. It sounds cruel, but enabling somebody's soul to the devil is morally incumbent upon us to correct. IF WE DON'T CORRECT THAT, THE DEVIL LINGERS NEXT TO US READY TO POUNCE AT "OUR CHILDREN". THANKFULLY, MINE ARE GROWN UP AND CAME OUT UNSCATHED, BUT HOW ABOUT YOUR?
Click to expand...
As someone who currently lives in Vancouver, this is such an inaccurate, disgustingly unsympathetic stereotype of the people of the DTES. There's so many people in that area that ended up there for a plethora of reasons. Some people chose the lifestyle yes, but far from most of them. Some grew up in poverty and had nowhere to go, Some lost their jobs and ended up on the streets, some have jobs and literally can't afford a place to live in Vancouver. Not all of them are on drugs. Many of those who are on drugs fell into it due to their situation, as they get into it as a way to make it through the day.

To paint everyone all with the same brush simplifies the complex situation of how and why people end up there. To essentially advocate for people to be jailed for where they ended up in life, instead of looking at why they're in that situation in the first place, is pretty messed up.

When it comes to "free money for their habits" the point is not to encourage use, but to make sure they don't die or get sick, and give them an opportunity to help them get clean. If you want to take the pragmatic view, it's actually cheaper to provide them safe needles/drugs than it is to deal with the healthcare and emergency services required when they take laced drugs or overdose. It's also much cheaper to help people than stick them in jail. Jailing someone costs like 100k a year. We can do so much more for so many people with that money instead of resigning them to a life of being in and out a jail. Once you get into the jail system it becomes incredibly hard to get out of that system.

Not everyone wants to get out of the homeless situation, or will, but it's our responsibility to help those most in need in society and give them an opportunity to get back on their feet, especially when it's our economic system that failed many of them and resulted in them being on the street in the first place.
 
Clearshades said:
The majority are meth heads, so the only option is 3 strikes and you are locked up to sober out. Once you're sober, you do community service until you prove yourself. When they get free money from taxpayers for their habits, who is going to straighten out? Meanwhile, take a look at all the LRT stations; we even have to pay for man/woman watchers at lrt stations bathrooms to make sure they don't overdose. Once one's action creates nuisance to society, ONE'S PERSONAL RIGHTS ARE OVER. It sounds cruel, but enabling somebody's soul to the devil is morally incumbent upon us to correct. IF WE DON'T CORRECT THAT, THE DEVIL LINGERS NEXT TO US READY TO POUNCE AT "OUR CHILDREN". THANKFULLY, MINE ARE GROWN UP AND CAME OUT UNSCATHED, BUT HOW ABOUT YOUR?
Click to expand...
Okay, I think it might be a good idea to tune down the rhetoric here. For once, I believe that going down the religious argument is a little inappropriate for this discussion a this forum, as we might not know the religious inclinations of every member.

Now, drug abuse has so many variables and explanations that is hard to point to one simple solution. As much as I agree with the need to help these people sober up and be able to integrate to society, if they don't have a roof over their heads, medical and social support and some positive incentive to keep them on the right path, it won't do anyone any good.

Criminalizing drug use has been the general practice in our society for the better bart of the last century, and was strengthened in the 1980's with the "war on drugs" policies, to absolutely NO AVAIL. Locking people up because they are addicts (which is a disease, not a choice) is no different than treating them as criminals, and as such, not helping anyone.

I do think we can, and should, make better use of the resources available to deal with these issues, and that the drug addictions are to an excuse for criminal activity. Someone goes out and robs, assaults, etc, they have to be treated with the due measures, and we should put up barriers to prevent these crimes from happening, but as long as we don't attack the roots of the problem, from a public health perspective one one side and by cutting off the illegal drug supply on the other, nothing will really change.
 
EtoV said:
As someone who currently lives in Vancouver, this is such an inaccurate, disgustingly unsympathetic stereotype of the people of the DTES. There's so many people in that area that ended up there for a plethora of reasons. Some people chose the lifestyle yes, but far from most of them. Some grew up in poverty and had nowhere to go, Some lost their jobs and ended up on the streets, some have jobs and literally can't afford a place to live in Vancouver. Not all of them are on drugs. Many of those who are on drugs fell into it due to their situation, as they get into it as a way to make it through the day.

To paint everyone all with the same brush simplifies the complex situation of how and why people end up there. To essentially advocate for people to be jailed for where they ended up in life, instead of looking at why they're in that situation in the first place, is pretty messed up.

When it comes to "free money for their habits" the point is not to encourage use, but to make sure they don't die or get sick, and give them an opportunity to help them get clean. If you want to take the pragmatic view, it's actually cheaper to provide them safe needles/drugs than it is to deal with the healthcare and emergency services required when they take laced drugs or overdose. It's also much cheaper to help people than stick them in jail. Jailing someone costs like 100k a year. We can do so much more for so many people with that money instead of resigning them to a life of being in and out a jail. Once you get into the jail system it becomes incredibly hard to get out of that system.

Not everyone wants to get out of the homeless situation, or will, but it's our responsibility to help those most in need in society and give them an opportunity to get back on their feet, especially when it's our economic system that failed many of them and resulted in them being on the street in the first place.
Click to expand...
Alright... when you're in Edmonton, come for a tour with me. This is something that I just decided just to throw out there. I have took it upon myself to study the situation including studying the areas in person. Heck, do a tour along 118ave and walk from 50st to Abbottsfield and see how many times you're asked if you need anything or if you got "pint" meaning meth...
This is before you even reach the beehives of the serious problems. Tell me what you know that I am seeing differently. Don't assume the meth heads are the young people only as i'm seeing people in their 50s and 60s selling meth...
 
Speaking of Vancouver, I was just there hopping over bodies on the side walks full of junkies. If you want to play naive, that is alright, but I don't want to; I'm actually very concerned because there are multitudes of ramifications to that. One example was a month ago all the bus shelters from the coliseum lrt stations to Abbottsfield along 118 were smashed. That destruction continued at 118 ave and went up along 50st up to Superstore on 137 ave. I don't know how much a 4x8 sheet of glass would cost, but I am sure it starts at 500.00 a panel. Using that standard as a gauge, 20 or 30 000.00 were destroyed over night. ETS fixed it only to see the process resume again. Now, the same path that saw all these shelters smashed, they also went after businesses. Something has to be done, and I'm not apologetic about my position, for I can take and show you the price.
Try riding on an LRT and smell meth smoked right behind you leaving me shocked because doing my part-time trade job, I get random testings for drugs.
If you think they're just conglomerating in poor areas, go down to century park, or up to Northgate bus terminal. Yes, they smoke right in the shelters. Anyone living downtown? Park your but at Churchill and observe. Why are there fencing on paths of tunnels leading down to the trains at Churchill? Do you folks want to know the biggest problem with our CC mall? THEFT... CAUSED BY THE SAME JUNKY CROWD. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but mine conclusion is based on my homework and due diligence done.
 
As someone born and raised not in Canada I have slightly different take on "root of cause" of this issue. To simplify it, I see two reasons. One is lack of culture that would fill people as many seems empty. It sounds maybe strange but I find in North America some people in general are somehow (trying to find a right word) hollow. Maybe it comes from the need to carve out the living in the relatively wild and remote place back in a days and secondly by cutting your roots of identity. I think people who have strong identity are coping better. I started at a simple position manual labor and first what struck me was how many young people have no goals in life. They basically work, by a new car (that never fills your soul:) and go home to play computer games and maybe find other instant fun stuff including smoking using as they don't know anything better. But I think not knowing what you want or having any ambitions for life is not healthy. And I can understand that part of colonialism hurting native people as their roots and identity was cut in some sense. Therefore, I'm for native organizations taking care of their own people much more and giving adequate funding for this. Of course supervising that money are not siphoned for a few.
Second big part is understanding what is "to take care" of someone. My strong believe is letting someone use drugs or letting them sleep on a street does not constitutes taking care of. If we treat those people us "our family" we would not let them do those bad things. But we don't think that way. So two summarize second part of the problem are family bonds that are broken and it spills over to society bonds being broken. So everyone is just pretending they are solving the problem but don't want to make decisions that can be strong handed but needed because we don't really care enough as if we would care about our brother.
And therefore, for those two reasons (emptiness and family/social bonds) North America has it worse than anywhere else I have seen it. Would it be Seattle or San Diego or Vancouver or Edmonton etc.
 
A lot of conversations in other threads degrade into long and political rants about homelessness and drug addiction. I feel bad about removing them entirely for being off-topic since some comments are high effort, but the arguments as a whole certainly distract from the regular conversations on this forum. So going forward, this will be where any and all long ranty discussions about these issues will be moved. Let's keep the rest of the forum focused. Remember to be respectful of other forum users and residents of our city.
 
Screen Shot 2023-05-15 at 11.40.35 AM.png

and the new downtown "warehouse district park" promises to pull the rug back, offering new places for drug exchanges, needle drops, and personal assaults on would-be park goers as Passive Parks in cities are wont to do... a new drop-out centre for Edmonton's under-class.
 
I am getting quite worried because I have heard that EPS is planning to reopen the Remand Centre as a drug jail that they will be empowered to hold our brothers, sisters, parents, and neighbours indefinitely once Premier Danielle passes her forced treatment act.
 
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