The People Who Know How To Fix The Homeless Problem Are Not Being Consulted

Monday, September 28, 2009 03:45 AM

Darryl Walker is the President of the BCGEU. Now that may not be any revelation, but is it is worth mentioning that people do not reach this high an office unless they have been able to demonstrate some serious leadership qualities, and the smarts to go with it.

Walker spent years looking after people with mental issues before government decided that these people would be better served by being on the street trying to make it on their own. They subsequently closed facilities designed to look after these folks and the results have never left us.

Now you can accept that government can make a mistake, it happens to everyone, the problem in this case is that the mistake is constantly being perpetuated.

Walker has a solution, but governments' have yet to sit down with him and ask for his advice.

His advice is simple; we need to get back to the basics in looking after our homeless. They need a place to stay, housing in other words, they need something meaningful to do, and above all they need constant supervision. That seems simple enough to do but instead, for some unknown reason, we are shifting the care for these people to various social agencies.

While not all fall into this category, there are many who have built a small empire on the backs of these people. You look after them from 8.00 am till 5.00 and after 5pm they are on their own until the next morning.

It won’t work says Walker and he is right. Many of these people, without guidance, find themselves on the street, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sound familiar as the ongoing problem in Prince George?

Look around the down town core, we are loaded with agencies looking after the mentally ill, the addicted, the disenfranchised. We are continually increasing the number of agencies but never fixing the problem. Have governments taken the time to seek the advice of Walker on how his experience could be put into play? No.

It seems that politics overshadow common sense when it comes to dealing with the problem and instead the wheel goes round and round but never stops.

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

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Posted on Monday, September 28, 2009 03:45 AM in Views by Ben Meisner

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Comments

Posted by: charles on September 28 2009 5:07 AM

It's all about money Ben. I do not think taxpayers's can afford to support an overbloated and unefficient public sector, all the special interest groups (like the corporate sector) and the needs of the poor and homeless. The poor and the homeless are on their own.

Posted by: Bridget on September 28 2009 5:32 AM

We don't need more money to help the homeless. Services for them need to be revamped. Put more of the funding into housing and have hours of service that would benefit clients more. Less Monday to Friday 9:00 - 5:00 jobs. Crisis happens after 5:00 and on the weekends. Have programming available so they have something to do during the day. More emphasis on clients instead of what's good for the employees.

Posted by: chrislivingdowntown on September 28 2009 7:49 AM

I agree another thing is get them to build the housing as well. Get the people working. Being a part of the growing of the community. Yes there are some that make a good living doing this for a job and without mentioning names. You know who you are. We need to tighten up the belt on them and steer the money towards giving the people the chance to build up the area to have pride in themselves.

Posted by: socredible on September 28 2009 8:04 AM

'Taxpayers' CAN'T afford to adequately look after the homeless or mentally ill, or fund so many other worthwhile things which we would have no problem whatsoever 'physically' doing, not so long as we have a financial system that continually collects its 'Costs' back in 'Prices' at a faster rate than those 'Costs' were distributed as 'Incomes' in the economy as a whole.

If we want to finally solve this problem, and so many others of a similar, recurring nature, we need to have the "figures" (of finance, as a whole) ACCURATELY reflect the physical "facts" of what can, or can not, be done.

To simply say that we can't solve this problem "because we have no money", when all the other necessary ingredients to its solution are already existant or could easily be created, seems to me to raise more questions about "money" itself
than it does about all the other essentially non-existant reasons why what needs doing can't be done.

Posted by: Loki on September 28 2009 11:46 AM

"there are many who have built a small empire on the backs of these people. You look after them from 8.00 am till 5.00 and after 5pm they are on their own until the next morning."

"It seems that politics overshadow common sense when it comes to dealing with the problem and instead the wheel goes round and round but never stops."

If one connects the dots, one can see that this is just another government sponsored industry. We no longer have a government for or by the people. We no longer have a government looking out for our interests. We have a government that is only interested in furthering the interests of its cadre of lobbyists, political contributors and sponsors. It is pure and simple profiting at the expense of the citizens.

Rich people playing with public money for personal entertainment. (And personal gain)

Posted by: bitter on September 28 2009 12:32 PM

The wheel goes round and round but it does stop in my area , and we can't take any more, read the letter in the Citizen today Afraid for our lives in Connaught Hill, who sent us the problem? Who keeps sending us more problems? Who does nothing to solve the problems??How much money keeps getting spent on the problems?? People should realize we have two SCHOOLS in the area, children should come FIRST.

Posted by: supertech on September 28 2009 11:47 PM

The people that we are generously giving shelter to, should be forced to work for their keep. They should be so physically exhausted at the end of an 8 hour shift, they wouldn't want to go party downtown. Work would cure the problem. If they had to work, they wouldn't want to be homeless. We have to stop giving and shift the onus onto those who keep insisting on helping them.

Posted by: socredible on September 29 2009 12:58 PM

"Forced to work" at WHAT, supertech? Speaking as an employer, I have enough problem just keeping those who WANT to work employed profitably. And I'm sure more other employers do, too, than do not.

"Forcing" those who DON'T want to work into employment they don't want to do is completely counterproductive, in my opinion.

Indeed, I wouldn't doubt that a large amount of the impetus to abolish 'slavery' in days of yore came about because employers finally realized the power of "inducement", through offering the slave a wage and letting him bear the costs of his own 'depreciation' was far more cost effective than having him as a depreciating asset that had to be properly cared for to maintain his value.

Or as one good ol' boy observed to a National Geographic reporter doing an article on the "new South" one time, as they both watched a group or the "working poor" congregating outside the gate of his cotton gin before opening time, hoping to get a day's work in if one of the regular hires didn't show up, " That there's the difference between the "old South" and the "new South". In the "old South we used to 'own' slaves. Now we jest 'rent' 'em."

I hardly think we'd want to return to 'slavery', especially in a day and age when 'production' is the LEAST of our problems, and making "more" of anything is certainly no cure for being able to "distribute" ALL the extra that's been made.

Posted by: bitter on September 30 2009 8:12 PM

Who owns the old Baldy Hughes base that is a drug rehab?? It must be the taxpayers as we are putting money into it. What happens to the people who are coming here from all over Canada who don't make the program and drop out, are they sent back to where they came from or do we get another addicted homeless person on our streets. Can anyone answer my questions??

Posted by: Harbinger on September 30 2009 9:31 PM

China has what they call "re-education camps". I wonder how they work. Maybe a politician can go over there and find out what the skinny on these camps are about. never mind being PC. Just call it a fact finding mission. How about re-educating our problems by sending them 450 miles northeast of Whitehorse to build a golf course with just hoes and rakes? Hmmmm? No hoes. Shovels instead. Leave the hoes in town here.