All posts by James W. Breckenridge

Federal, Municipal, Provincial

Flummoxed.

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There is a property in Abbotsford that has two underground oil tanks buried on it, probably left from the time in the 1940 – 50s when it was a gas station. The property is so contaminated that not only do you smell the oil, you taste in your throat.

It sits on the corner of Sumas Way and 4th Avenue just north of the Canada/USA Huntington border crossing. To improve traffic flow across the border major road construction was done involving 4th Avenue.

As a result of this work, every time it rains, this corner property is flooded 5 – 15 cm deep in rain water runoff. The rainwater is contaminated when it runs onto the property, leaving an oily sheen on everything it touches.

Unfortunately for the environment and the neighbours most of these contaminated flood waters do not remain on the property in question but runoff onto the neighbouring properties and into the ditches spreading contaminated water over a wide area.

Governments at the municipal, provincial and federal levels have all been informed of this problem. The result? Nothing. Nada. Zip. No government or government agency at any level seems interested in taking action to remedy this spreading environmental pollution.

Since governments had failed to respond, much less act, a number of well known environmental non-profits were contacted, informed of what was occurring and asked for help/advice. The result? Nothing.

I was not totally shocked when governments at all levels tried to avoid the cost of dealing with this contamination, leaving it to some other level of government to take appropriate action – and get stuck with the bill. But these from organizations that are about protection the environment?

I suppose there is just not enough potential for publicity and/or fundraising in this small environmental contamination. But still one would think …

The property sits there ignored while every time it rains the surrounding environment becomes more contaminated and the contamination spreads further and further.

I am fresh out of ideas on how to get this contamination dealt with; it just leaves me totally flummoxed.

Consider

Poverty and homeless Pimp.

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Reading Mr. Rushton’s poppycock of Tuesday June 3, 2008 about the people on the traffic islands with the begging signs was an experience containing incredible irony.

Irony abounds in the fact the homeless themselves distain these individuals with their signs seeking handouts because it re-enforces the prejudicial stereotyping of the homeless by the public, pundits and columnists.

It is also ironic that in rushing to make his sweeping and sophistic assertions, Mr. Rushton becomes the answer to his editor’s question with which he began his column.

Yes Ms. Editor, there are poverty (or homelessness) pimps out there; people who exploit the poor and homeless for their own economic ends and advantage, earning their thirty pieces of silver catering to the public’s uninformed view of the poor and homeless to fill their newspaper column space – without the need to think.

I do not suggest that Mr. Rushton pimps the poor and homeless to the public because he came down on the people with the signs. Knowing the story behind many of these individuals I too wanted to kick their asses out of there or stand there with a sign saying “Does not deserve your generosity”.

It is his broad, careless and misleading statements about how easy it is to find employment that, together with his apparent failure to apply any form of analytical thought process to these statements, render him a poverty (homelessness) pimp.

Try applying for a job when you are homeless and watch the employers reaction to that information – don’t call us we’ll call you. How does an employer willing to take the chance and hire the homeless contact the homeless person? Smoke signals? Jungle drums? Homeless and broke how do you manage personal hygiene, clean clothes etc to remain presentable enough to keep your job? With a job and thus unable to get to the Food Bank or the Salvation Army, is it Mr. Rushton’s belief that you pretty much starve for the three weeks until you get your first pay check?

Just how good a job of grunt work are you going to be doing on an empty stomach, at the end of the first week? Second week? Third week?

Jobs abound? Really? As I sit here I cannot think of any job that is available within the area I could walk to and from work. You are homeless, without transportation, living in Abbotsford a city where transit is of limited use – even if you could afford the $3 a day cost.

Here is an interesting problem that some Abbotsford citizens may already be facing and that more and more will face as gas prices continue to rise. You commute from Abbotsford to Vancouver daily. Lease or loan payments, insurance, repairs and maintenance and gas with its soaring prices – one may well find oneself spending more to get and from work than one is making as take home pay.

The job is there … or is it really there if it costs you more to commute to work than you make at work? A little conundrum that increasing numbers of commuters may face as gas spirals upward in cost.

Conundrums are what many homeless face in seeking employment.

Despite the baseless assertions to the contrary, finding employment for the poor and especially for the homeless is to run into barrier after barrier after barrier after barrier ….

I recently heard from someone who was on the verge of homelessness after a year of fruitless job searching having been repeatedly told she was “overqualified” for the job she was applying for. I know others, including myself, who have a stack of rejections on the grounds of being “overqualified”.

As for the woman seeking money for dog grooming tools, consider the following scenario. You’re poor and cannot afford new clothes; you have a job lined up but in order to meet the office dress code you need two pair of Khaki pants; so much for that job because you cannot get those pants – unless you can find someone of charitable consciousness to buy you those pants. This is not some impossible scenario – it happened to me.

When one is poor and/or homeless the statement “jobs abound” is often false and what abounds is multiple barriers, multiple layers of barriers, between employment and you, between housing and you.

The homeless derive no benefit from their homelessness. Benefits accrue to those who chose, by their behaviours and actions, to be poverty and homelessness pimps – a rather shameful irony.

Homeless, Municipal

An Anonymous letter writer shares:

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Below is a letter sent to me via www.homelessinabbotsford.com by Anonymous.
What the letter has to say is important as more and more citizens are finding themselves in Anonymous’s circumstances. It is also important because it paints a very different picture of who the homeless or those teetering on the edge of homelessness are, a very different picture than that most people carry in their minds.

I have included my comments in brackets in hopes the Anonymous writer visits and has an opportunity to read them and know she is not alone, there are far to many of us in similar circumstances who understand and who are suffering the same indifferent fate at the hands of the government and fellow citizens.

Since the letter was Anonymous and I could not ask permission to share it I have edited out any references I felt may contain clues to the writer. Otherwise it is included as written. I have highlighted the letter in blue to make it clear which is the letter contents and which are my comments.

Many people are a month or so away from homelessness and nothing will save them but a ‘miracle’. I can testify personally to this after over a year of 24/7 job hunting in Abbotsford which yielded zero results. (I’m highly qualified and experienced in corporate communications and office administration and ran my own successful business for almost 8 years; too qualified, was the excuse trotted out if they bothered to respond at all, but not qualified enough for other things.

(I too have been told I am “over qualified”, an incredibly frustrating experience – especially when my having dealt with mental health issues makes them very nervous about hiring me for those positions I am qualified for.)

I, too, am staring homelessness in the face. I am trying to move to Vancouver (where I know no one) but where there are more job opportunities and I think possibly more support. Abbotsford, a closed society, is no place for the desperate. To say it’s scary is an understatement.

I, for one, haven’t a clue how to manage being homeless, in Abbotsford or elsewhere. I have a small income, enough to feed me and buy necessary toiletries, etc., but not enough for rent, hydro, phone, internet — the necessities of life which allow you to look for work intelligently and to actually report for work, once hired, looking and acting like a professional. And you won’t be allowed in a supermarket if you’re dirty and stinking because you couldn’t do laundry or bathe, so where do you turn …

(I have repeatedly posed those types of questions to the Ministry (and minister) of Employment and Income Assistance and gotten no intelligent answers. Perhaps a more accurate name for the Ministry would be – Employment Barriers and Inadequate Income Assistance)

I certainly cannot be only one in THAT predicament, so I think words of wisdom on how to be ‘successfully’ homeless would be well received by many.

(You definitely are not alone in your situation as I have met many people suffering the same government indifference and lack of help.)

The ranks of the homeless are going to swell exponentially. It is unfortunate that so many are mental patients and/or addicted to drugs or alcohol, because they have little to no hope and make the whole situation even more terrifying for those of us who are not.

(While they may make the possibility of homelessness more terrifying for you, they are also victims of lack of care by their country and government – and from their fellow citizens for not demanding that the government intelligently and with will and intent address homelessness, mental health and addiction. It has been demonstrated in other very similar jurisdictions (Portland and Seattle) that all that is required to help the addicted and mentally ill is realistic and intelligent decisions. It is the waste of human lives and the current immense waste of government funds, funds that could build the system of care needed to deal with these social ills, that has me advocating for these people (many of who are friends).

NOTE: any system that has the capacity to help those most in need will have the capacity to help people in less dire circumstances.

The rest, those of us who would like to work and live decently, need somehow to band together and cooperate with each other, watching each other’s backs, so to speak, and forming a mini-community somehow, each bringing something to the table others lack, and perhaps somehow getting people in the group working and living in decent housing. Just a thought and probably an impossibility.

(Nothing is impossible has to be ones mantra if you are going to bring about positive change. This is a free country, by definition we can bring about change. We just need more sane behaviour from people. If you are complaining about government all the time why keep voting for the same old parties? Repeating the same action over and over hoping for a different outcome is the AA definition of insanity. People can choose who ever they want to represent them. Maybe it is time that rather than stick with the same old choices citizens banded together to get other independent people to run for office and /or to exercise their right to “write in” whoever they want to represent them.)

(If you feel such a group of people looking for work is needed to cover each others backs and help each other – create it. Co-operative ventures have a long and distinguished history in Canada.)

There would be only opposition from the powers that be in Abbotsford however, so better to find out what’s available in more progressive cities like Vancouver or Kamloops.

(While I agree that Abbotsford is hide bound and continues to behave as though it were a small country town, remember that the provincial government is miserably failing to meet its Duty of Care to those citizens finding themselves in your circumstances and in need of Assistance – not more and higher Barriers. Remember that in November you, all the citizens of Abbotsford will have your chance to send the current council home (taking away their part-time salaries that are higher than many citizens earn full time) and replacing them with competent people with caring and vision for all citizens and Abbotsford’s future)

(Whatever you do, don’t give up and let them win – remember the best revenge is a life well lived.)

Consider, Homeless

Revealing the Soul.

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The most recent presentation I attended by an organization addressing what they were about had a rather interesting denouement that went unremarked, perhaps unnoticed, by the others there – including the speaker.

This presentation had the “right” buzzwords: safe, compassion, gentleness, acceptance, consistent values and ethics, nurture, home, community, spirituality, et cetera.

It had warm fuzz stores and pictures that elicited an “aaahhhhh” as in aaahhhhh – isn’t that nice/sweet/touching.

The pitch painted a very positive overview of the organization; the kind of affirmative self-narrative organizations like to believe about themselves.

Been there, heard it before.

Except …. As remarked, the most revealing comment drew no attention to itself or what it said about the organization.

In speaking about Home and home being where the heart is, the comment was made that home for the homeless person living under the bridge was/could be under that bridge or that for their homeless person home was the shelter he found on the organizations property.

Their homeless person, making his home on their property; they did not chase him away or call the police to have him hauled away nor erect a gate to deny access to shelter or home.

All the nice words, stories and pictures do not say as much about these people as their action in granting shelter, a home.

Words are cheap, in many ways even many actions are cheap, but in the simplest, the mundane behaviours lie the soul, the spirit of an organization. In the simple grace of allowing this homeless person to shelter were he has chosen to, lies the true soul, the spirit, of this organization.

For it is in the simple, the unthought-of and the mundane behaviours that the true ethos of a person, an organization or community is revealed.

We all like to tell ourselves wonderful narratives about ourselves. The real question, the important question, is what truth are behaviours telling about you, your organization or your community?

Municipal

Environmental poisoning/contamination in Huntington/Abbotsford.

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If you do not want to read the tale of tangled webs, fraud and perhaps forthcoming fraud – you need to read the environmental pollution/poisoning portion highlighted in red, although the background would be useful for understanding and context.

An interesting tale of tangled webs woven and environmental contamination

I met Wayne McCulloch shortly after I first became homeless in Abbotsford and so have known him for several years.

Wayne is in my economic bracket – abject poverty; when he had some legal and related documents he needed looked at and discussed with him, he could not go running to seek (costly) professional advice.

Wayne’s place is a corner property in Huntington, at the corner of Sumas Way and 4th Avenue. At one point he owned it free and clear but finding himself in a state of poverty, owing taxes and legal fees of close to $20,000 and with no credit rating he was in desperate circumstances.

So a deal was struck with someone Wayne knew. For a ¼ interest apiece the acquaintance and his brother-in-law, a mortgage broker, would secure a $75,000 mortgage which would pay off the monies owed and provide living/operating capital for Wayne.

Flash forward to today. The acquaintance of Wayne’s passed away this past year and the deceased brother-in-law served Wayne with court papers seeking to force the sale of the property. Wayne filed with the court to dispute the matter and did some research and a search for applicable documentation.

So it was that Wayne came to find himself in need of a professional to read the stack of documentation and advise him. Unfortunately for Wayne he is poor and could not afford to pay – limiting him pretty much to one choice – me.

In the interest of honesty I must admit that while I hope I would have done it as a matter of friendship, my car needed work, I live in poverty, Wayne’s a mechanical wizard …and we both got to sooth our pride since each of us had a skill the other needed.

I will spare the reader even a brief summary of the hundreds of pages of documents and copies Wayne has in his files on this and just go with the interesting and “tangled web” documents and facts.

Photographs of the open pipes that lead to the underground oil tanks on the property; a copy of the title that shows nothing about any oil tanks; photos of the flooding that takes place when it rains (the result of the work done on 4th Avenue); the recently received copy of the appraisal for the original mortgage years ago (requested by Wayne in his search for all the documentation he could possibly in any way need); the court/legal papers he was served; the affidavit filled by the brother-in-law in support of his suit and finally the fact that a recent appraisal was done on the property at considerable expense to the brother-in-law – without the appraiser speaking to Wayne in any way, just taking photographs.

The oil tanks were never disclosed when Wayne originally purchased the property – as I said there is no indication on the title that there are underground tanks. Wayne discovered them a few years after he bought the property.

When I asked, Wayne said that both of the people who getting a ¼ interest in the property were aware of the existence of the tanks when the deal was struck, that the plan had been to remove and clean up the contamination themselves.

I have no personal knowledge of this. While I cannot say exactly when I learned about the existence of the oil tanks, I have been aware of the tanks for several years. On my first visit to the property it was not hard to see the location of the pipes – the large steel plates covering them are hard to miss. I am aware of others who are also aware of the existence of the tanks, including local and provincial governments (more on that latter in the environmental calamity portion of the tail) since Wayne has never made any secret of their being there in my presence.

Even if the pipe openings were hidden – the air is tainted with the odor of petroleum products.

I asked the question because the recently received copy of the appraisal that was used to get the original loan makes no mention of the tanks. It does however contain a disclaimer that the presence of unknown environmental issues would make the appraised value incorrect.

When I asked about the original mortgage Wayne’s said that the two new partners in the property arranged the mortgage, that the brother-in-law mortgage broker handled it. Wayne could not remember if he had signed the original mortgage documentation.

The court suit specifically asked that Wayne be excluded from any dealings with the buyer but specifically asked Wayne be held liable for any warranties, guaranties etc. made by the brother-in-law in selling the property.

The appraisal and court suit required an outlay of further money on what, given the existence of the underground tanks and the cost of clean up, is not only a worthless piece of property but for anyone with assets a money pit to clean up.

Why would anyone sink more money into a piece of property they knew was worthless unless … they expected to get those monies and more back?

I pointed out to Wayne that obtaining the original mortgage without disclosing the underground tanks was fraudulent. As the appraisal’s so carefully worded and included disclaimer noted – environment problems render the property worth far less than the appraised value, assessed value or mortgage amount.

That with nothing on the title, should the court grant his petition, there is nothing to prevent the brother-in-law from selling the property without disclosing the oil tanks existence.

Given: the title search included in the documentation does not disclose the existence of underground storage tanks; the first mortgage appraisal did not disclose the existence of the tanks; that the mortgage on the property was obtained without disclosing the tanks, thus fraudulently; that the new, current appraisal was done without talking to Wayne or inspecting the property closely; that the petition to the court sought to ensure Wayne had no contact with any purchaser yet was to be held liable for any warranties made about the property; that the only way for the brother-in-law to recoup his current outlay of thousands of more dollars on a property he knew had underground tanks and was thus worthless; that there was nothing “on record” to demonstrate the brother-in-law knew of the underground tanks.

It seems probable that the brother-in-law intends to sell the property without disclosing the existence of the tanks. The money he is spending and the fact he is petitioning the court NOW suggests there is a buyer for the property.

Without hard evidence the brother-in-law knows about the tanks, he can claim ignorance and dump it all on Wayne.

Needless to say Wayne was somewhat unhappy with this possibility, feeling he was “hooped” and “what to do”.

I said the first thing we needed to do was to ensure the property was not sold to some innocent third party and avoid the can of worms that would open or give rise to.

This is where this tale takes an interesting Environmental pollution, contamination, menace, health threat twist.

I just plowed through all the documentation in the past few days, however I had been asked by Wayne for advice on who you would report his underground tanks to weeks ago, giving Wayne several suggestions.

He has tried the provincial government and Abbotsford City Hall getting no help or action.

Action is desperately needed. The road work done on Fourth Avenue means that every time it rains the property is flooded with several inches of water, contaminated water that leaves an oil film behind on everything it covered. The photos Wayne has frighteningly show the depth and extent of the flooding and the oily sheen of the water.

Every time it rains the property is flooded and the rain water contaminated. This contaminated water flows onto neighbouring properties, into the ditch, the local ecosystem, soil and the Abbotsford sewage system.

This is contaminating, poisoning the ground, the ecosystem and perhaps even the people of Huntington.

Action needs to be taken, not just to prevent this property being sold to some innocent third party, but far more importantly to prevent further poisoning of Huntington.

So it is I find myself writing this story down to share. This is a situation that cannot be referred to an advisory committee with no concrete action taken.

It needs to be acted on NOW.