All posts by James W. Breckenridge

behaviour, Issues, Municipal, Snafu

Where’s the Homeless Housing?

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WHERE’S the HOUSING?

That is the question on the lips of the homeless after reading the “Homeless in the City” series of articles.

They had thought that ‘being homeless’ referred to those without housing, rather than ‘homeless’ referring to those who did not own their own homes.

The Harmony Flex Housing Development is about OWNERSHIP, about making home ownership a viable option for those whose income is not sufficient to achieve home ownership without the favourable terms associated with this development.

While we need to find innovative ways to make home ownership affordable for more people …… those who this development will enable to own their home are currently housed and not on or in danger of finding themselves on the streets of Abbotsford.

The Harmony Flex Housing Development has and continues to take time and attention away from the urgent, critical need for housing for the homeless, those who are on their way to homelessness and those in danger of becoming homeless.

Should the churches and others listen to Councillor Smith and focus on this type of development it would be to the detriment of the people in need of safe, healthy affordable housing.

The priority for housing is, as it has been for years: for minimal barrier housing for those with addiction and mental health issues and those just plain hard to house because they are who they are; for supportive transitional housing for all those coming out of treatment in order to break the cycle of relapse/treatment/relapse; for supportive housing that is stable and long term for those (brain injury, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome etc) who need continued support to thrive.

Contrast the effort and speed of getting homeownership housing built for those who are home(ownership)less with the years of excuse making the homeless living on streets of Abbotsford have faced on housing.

It is excuse making. Half the people voted against Plan A but council bulled ahead because they were determined to build Plan A. Council found land, money and when projects were over budget, council found more money; council wanted to build Plan A and, to *bleep* with the consequences they did.

If council had a desire to build affordable housing for the homeless rather than form a committee and pay lip-service to building housing for the homeless, then we would have built and be building affordable housing for the homeless and those in need and the homeless would not, year after year after year, be asking:

WHERE’S the HOUSING?

Issues, Municipal, Snafu

Abbotsford’s Housing Leadership Vacuum

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Reading Mayor George Peary’s comments regarding homelessness left me wondering if councillors are issued a simple ‘crib sheet’ or whether they are required to memorize the ‘official city response’ to parrot back on questions about homelessness.

Setting aside why it is that the City of Abbotsford  has such a limited amount of city owned land, one is left wondering why councillors keep pleading poverty whenever the issue of homelessness is raised.

I have not heard people clamouring for the city to fund homeless initiatives. This is hardly surprising since people are well aware that it is the provincial and federal governments that must provide funding if we are to begin addressing the complex issues of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, poverty etc. Not based strictly on whose responsibility it is, but because of the reality that the senior levels of government are the ones who have sufficient financial resources to fund solutions.

The city’s lack of funds is not the poverty that is, and has been for years, the major impediment to addressing, rather than avoiding, the issues connected to homelessness solutions.

A poverty of leadership from council, not a lack of funds, is the poverty that most interferes with making progress on these issues. It is this lack of leadership that has failed to rally the wide array of resources available in Abbotsford and the province of BC, preventing effective progress to be made on these issues.

The difference between those communities building affordable housing and striving to address the issues that surround and interconnect with homelessness versus the communities pleading poverty or that it is not their responsibility or whatever the excuse de jour is for wringing their hands then sitting on them – is leadership.

There is a desperate need for affordable, supportive, minimal barrier housing in Abbotsford. The Ebenezer home, a 91 bed supportive care home, sits empty. In a city with civic leadership on these issues … anything is possible.

To relieve tension over council

Addiction, Provincial

Homeless and Forsaken

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The suicide of Corey O’Brien was tragic, but the true tragedy of Corey’s Story is that nothing has been done about implementing the recommendations in “Lost in Transition” – the report on mental illness on the streets of Vancouver.

The BC Liberals and the health care system have failed to put these recommendations into effect; as a result the mentally ill homeless continue to be left abandoned to the mean streets, continuously adding new names to the list of forsaken victims.

While a tragic suicide such as Corey’s is an infrequent event, having a person in desperate need of immediate mental health treatment refused service and turned away is a weekly occurrence for the outreach nurse who ministers to Abbotsford’s homeless.

Except for those not infrequent weeks where more than one person is turned away, back to being mentally ill and homelessness on the streets of Abbotsford.

The other evening the nurse and another staff person stayed late trying to help the latest victim of the BC government and its mental health system. Struggling to get a young human being in desperate need of immediate mental health treatment, mental health services at the Abbotsford Hospital.

An ambulance was called and took her/him to the hospital … were he/she was discharged to homelessness – unable to care for or help her/himself; the police were then called and they took this individual to the hospital … to simply drop them off rather than staying and ensuring this mentally unwell individual received the care needed.

Dealing with the Abbotsford Hospital is enough to drive anyone to wanting to run away screaming. Someone having a mental health crisis will escape the madness by wandering away.

So, rather than being in hospital getting the care desperately and conspicuously needed, he/she spent the night in the stressful environment of the emergency shelter.

The homeless, by and large, have no support. No parent, sibling, relative, neighbour or friends to provide support or to advocate and fight on their behalf.

They must rely on those charged with providing healing or to serve and protect to discharge their duty with due care. When the healers and protectors cannot be bothered …

Hospital staff said to take her/him to detox.

Yes, he/she is an addict, suffering the burden of drug use. For those suffering from addiction, their treatment by hospital staff can frequently, at the very best, be called less than professional and rather haphazard.

No visit to detox was required. She/he was detoxed as the result of a mental state so bad, so degraded that it was interfering with his/her drug use.

This individual is so mentally ill that their mental illness was and is interfering with their drug use. Yet he/she was returned to the streets in a condition where she/he was mentally unable, unfit to care for him/herself; left to wander Abbotsford’s streets with decreased ability, capacity to function.

Government and society tells homeless individuals they need to seek help, yet when they seek such help they find there is no help to be had. If the homeless are to be told they need to seek help, it follows that when they do, the capacity, services and professional staff must be in place to help.

To get the homeless into recovery and wellness, it is necessary for the system to adjust to their needs as they lack the ability to navigate the current systems. The recommendations of the “Lost in Transition” report needs be implemented as a priority.

Another priority must be an attitude adjustment for hospital staff and police; while the homeless are more often than not frustrating pains in the ass, that does not justify less than professional behaviour on matters of physical and/or mental health.

The test of the soul of a society, its ethicalness and its set of values, is how that society and its government(s) treat the most vulnerable: those in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadows of life, those in need, the handicapped, the helpless and the ill.

Our failure of this test of character is written in the pain and despair of people like Corey or the young human being who is in such desperate need of healing.

It is time to make the wellness of people more of a priority than a convention centre, Olympic venues, roads, bridges and ideology. Time to recognize that the homeless mentally ill and/or addicted are wounded human beings.

behaviour, Issues

Proper noun is People.

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“James helps others.”

I prefer to think of it as I help people, not others.

Last week at a supper several homeless individuals were discussing something to do with homelessness. At one point in the discussion Jerry needed to make a point and called me over.

He gestured and asked “What do you see?” I turned, looked at the cityscape and asked him what he meant. He repeated “What do you see?” Hmmm??? After a few more exchanges it turned out the part of the cityscape he was asking me what I saw was the people.

While my answer lacked elegance it did make clear that when I looked at them I saw a group of individual people, many of whom I knew.

I did not see undeserving bums, cons, thieves, people who choose to be addicts or any other of the popular labels applied to this group.

Jerry seemed happy because whatever the discussion they were having was, the point he was making was the difference between looking at them and applying a label and looking and seeing them as individual people

Do some of them have addictions? Most certainly, however seeing them or thinking of them just as addicts brings with it preconceptions and attitudes that get in the way of the help they need as opposed to the help you think/believe they need or should get.

Mr. X is a person with a problem(s) and that problem happens to be his addiction. Is addiction a behaviour that is unwise? Yes. Does addiction give rise to behaviours that are a royal pain in the ass to deal with? Yes. Is that an excuse not to help this individual? No.

Helping or not helping is not about them it is about us. Our choice to help or not to help reflects the nature of each of us as individuals and of our society.

When you do not want to do something you can always find an excuse to not do it. You apply labels such as addicts or worthless or lazy bums or talk about not deserving.

The society everyone seems to decry results from the decisions and actions of the members of that society. And one of the fundamental foundation stones of that society is how we treat the most vulnerable and weak of our society.

Given the way society and government currently treats “them” it should not surprise anyone how our society behaves and functions.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

They are people and as such we should help – whether we want to or not – because this is how an intelligent, mature species behaves.

Which is why I say I help people not I help others; others carries the suggestion of us versus others when we need to respect that we all are people.

Still I like “I may never be able to sit having a coffee on the sidewalk in the same way again.”

Another one down, a few million Canadians left to illumine.