A friend took me to Mission the other afternoon to visit the Union Gospel Drop-in Centre and speak to the people there as I had never been to the Drop-in. We found the leaders of the Union Gospel Mission’s mission in Mission out walking the streets and serving ice tea on a hot day as a way to reach out and stay in touch with their clients and those in need on the city streets.

While speaking to them about the homeless situations in both Mission and Abbotsford the subject of opening a Drop-in Centre in Abbotsford arose and I issued an invitation and urged them to pursue a place in Abbotsford since Abbotsford is sorely in need of an afternoon/evening drop-in/supper meal centre.

We also spoke of the benefits of adopting the wellness recovery action plan that Fraser (mental) Health puts on in communities in the FVRD and how a wellness plan would have significant benefits for those seeking recovery from addiction or those simply seeking to get their lives back on track form whatever had disrupted their lives.

Afterwards I sat down to have a coffee with some of the clients and chanced upon a copy of the new September/October issue of The Inner City Pulse, the Union Gospel Mission’s newsletter for the lower mainland. On page seven of this issue I found three stories about some rather interesting children.

A five year old who donated her birthday presents to benefit many other children who were in need. An eight year old, who seeing people living on the streets of Vancouver’s downtown eastside, collected blankets for these homeless people. An eleven year old who founded K.A.R.E. (Kids Actions Really Energize) to encourage people and local businesses to donate clothing and non-perishable food items for those in need.

I was contemplating these children as we crossed the Mission Bridge on our way back to Abbotsford, a community sadly in need of the lesson about generosity of the spirit which these children embody.

The children could also teach our self-styled leaders something about tackling seemingly overwhelming problems in society. They did not talk the situation to death; nor seek to study it to death; nor spend their energies saying all the right things but doing nothing. They did not pursue grandiose plans; nor seek a comprehensive solution where none exists; nor lose sight of the reality that at some point of dealing with a problem action is required.

These children took action to meet a need they saw.

The observer affect tells us that the act of observing will make changes on the situation/problem being observed. The uncertainty principle tells us that when we try to quantify the qualities of ending homelessness, these quantities can only be determined with some characteristic ‘uncertainties’ that cannot become arbitrarily small simultaneously.

You study a problem, you change the problem. The uncertainty principle defies attempts to measure or quantify the problem with exactness. Any action taken to put a plan in motion will change the nature of the problem and render the original plan moot.

Homelessness involves people and uncertainty: we are dealing with a chaotic system with its implications of little agreement about what should be done and even less agreement on how whatever should be done can be done.

Without starting you will never finish. We need to pick a point, any point, as the start point. With a place to begin we simply begin at the beginning and continue to the end.

The biggest hurdle to ending homeless and addressing other social ills is an apparent inability to start. A concept so simple a child can understand it and in understanding it set examples such as those above in how you end homeless – you start.

While I cannot say I share exactly your frustration over recovery houses, homelessness and crime problems, I can say I too am intensely frustrated over recovery houses, homelessness and the crime fallout from the way people and politicians continue to fail to exercise basic common sense in responding to the situation.

I concur that we need a recovery house policy, not to appease citizens but to protect the addict(s) in recovery who are seeking safe and supportive housing to continue their journey of recovery. Having witnessed the damage and pain that results for those who have the misfortune to end up in one of the houses that has nothing to do with recovery, I whole heartedly agree that we as a community owe it to those seeking recovery to ensure that is what they will find at a recovery house in our City.

What I find so frustrating is the continued failure of people and politicians to exercise common sense by asking some basic and obvious questions, then proceeding to address the issues raised by these questions. So here are some questions for the residents of Clearbrook to think about – and to demand the City answer.

Where are the displaced residents from houses that close going to go? Why would those who find themselves “released to homelessness” do anything other than join the ranks of the homeless who currently call the Clearbrook area home? There are no services, resources or housing to draw them away from the Clearbrook area, an area they are familiar with.

Have you considered the effect that dumping between 100 and 200 newly made homeless onto the streets of Clearbrook will have on the area? If you think you have problems with crime, homeless and addicts in the area now, what do you think is going to be the result of tossing large numbers of additional people onto the streets?

Are you prepared for the newly made homeless to take up residence in sheds, yards, parks, doorways, under trees and bushes, on the sidewalks etc? These people are homeless why would you expect them to just disappear? Where else do the homeless have to go?

Why is it that when these points were raised with the City over a year ago, when they first began to work on recovery house regulations, they have failed to address the most basic and pressing question of what/where are you going to do with those released to homelessness?

What kind of neighbour, what kind of citizen are you? Are you about solving these problems or are you about chasing them to some other part of the City, into someone else’s backyard as the homeless were harassed out of the downtown and into Clearbrook?

What is the point of the City chasing the homeless, the poor from residential neighbourhood to residential neighbourhood when they have no other place to go but around in circles, from spot to spot within the City? Would it not be common sense to provide leadership, support and political will to provide viable alternatives for housing, support and recovery?

Do you want to continue to act thoughtlessly or to act with purpose in pursuing long term, solution focused policies? Do you want these problems and issues to continue endlessly into the future, worsening year by year, or do you want to achieve the goal of the issues and ending these problems?

Think about it, then demands the city, provincial and federal governments begin to act with thoughtful common sense…