Each Unit At The New Backpacker Will Cost About $266 Thousand Dollars

By Ben Meisner

The first Civic political forum took place in the city Thursday. The forum began with a talk by the NDP’s David Chudnovsky, who is the critic for Homelessness and mental health.

If there is an effort being made to focus the civic election on the homeless it is hard to understand why. Why you ask? Well at last count the job of looking after the homeless falls under the umbrella of the provincial and federal governments. Unless the new council would like to call upon the taxpayers to put up money in an area that they should be called on to finance, the issue should not have been discussed.

I found a lot of fault with Chudnovsky’s speech. He talked about each homeless person costs about $55,000 dollars to look after, while housing them costs, $37,000 a year. I don’t know how or who came up with these figures , but using them would suggest that if you gave every homeless person in the city a check for $4,583.00 every month it would be the equivalent of what we spend now to look after them .   That figure by the way would be after taxes and would be far more than the average worker earns in this city or for that matter in most cities in Canada.

Suggesting that providing housing for the homeless doesn’t come with a cost leaves me wondering who did the math in the Backpacker development. That project is now expected to come in at $8 million dollars for 30 units. That equates to $266,000 per unit which is far in excess of what the average home is worth in this city. I might also mention that the residence will also require supervision. So let’s see, $266 grand a copy, no taxes paid on the units that you live in, and an added cost for the supervision.

Again Chudnovsky suggested that the total homeless in BC was about the population of Williams Lake, about 10 to 12 thousand. He said that if there were a disaster in that community we would all rush out to help them, and he is right. He however should keep in mind that of that 10 to 12 thousand only (even at today’s figures) 6% would be unemployed, and most would own their own homes. They have gotten to that position but working hard in trying to achieve a goal in life.

Having your own home should come with some responsibility to look after it. The very fact that there will be supervisors at the backpacker more than suggests that not everyone takes that responsibility too seriously.

If city hall try’s to lay the old chestnut on the taxpayers that the reason for tax increases is that the Provincial and federal government are off loading costs onto us, they had better look at what is being sought in this city.

We have a responsibility to look after those who are unable to look after themselves but only to the extent that they must also show responsibility in return.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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