I acknowledge that my depression is currently, as it likes to from time to time, making my life and simply functioning extremely challenging. Nevertheless I do not believe that is the reason I find myself feeling that Abbotsford’s City Song should be Gene Pitney’s ”town without pity”. Be that as it may, read and judge for yourself:

I first met Dave when I was homeless myself and he was attending and graduating from the R.I.T.E. program at Triangle Resources. Over the years since then I have spoken to Dave sometimes frequently, sometimes infrequently. Over that period he suffered the ups and downs of many of the homeless as they struggle with life and drugs while falling in and out of housing – good, bad and ugly housing.

The one thing that never changed over the time I have know Dave is my evaluation that what he needed to do well, perhaps even thrive, was pro active supportive housing.

Finding oneself forsaken to the streets has health consequences that are costly for the medical system and all too frequently fatal for the homeless.

I ran into Dave last night pushing his loaded shopping cart along and he was looking far too gaunt. It seems that he was recently told that cancer has reduced his life expectancy to a matter of weeks. And our government and our (laughable) social safety net still have left him living on the streets and pushing his cartload of meagre possessions around Abbotsford.

Then there is the case of the gentleman whose camp the City of Abbotsford and Abbotsford Police Department felt compelled to destroy, leaving him without shelter on what was perhaps the coldest night of last winter during the coldest spell of weather of said past winter.

Since beggars cannot be choosers, especially where shelter during a killer cold snap is concerned, the gentleman in question ended up finding shelter in a crack house – ironic in that he was not a drug user.

I heard today that the police were seeking him in connection with or as a result of his involvement with that crack house. Ah yes, the criminalization of homelessness – even more fun than harassing the homeless even though they have nowhere to go.

Now I have no doubt both the City and Abbotsford Police will beat their breasts and claim it is not their fault because of … whatever rationalization they decide to lay claim to. Notwithstanding their claims of non-culpability, if you start a boulder rolling downhill you bear accountability for what gets smashed when it reaches the bottom of the hill.

Then there is the kid, yes he is twenty but he is still a kid, who is hyperactive, has the attention span of a gnat, and has mental challenges and the challenges that arise from his upbringing. All of which make him a handful and a challenge (OK pain if the butt) to deal with.

However the reality of his situation is that he is not capable of functioning well enough to jump through all the hoops the system imposes on his own, he is literally his own worst enemy and he needs to be in supportive housing if he is to have any chance of a life.

Getting this young man into the housing and connected with the services and programs he needs is time intensive. In other words somebody somewhere in the system needs to invest the hours, more likely days, to get him properly connected since he is not capable of going and doing what needs to be done on his own.

On this subject, I told one of our Liberal candidates at the candidates meeting at Community Services on poverty that if the Liberals were re-elected and ever really wanted to actually reduce homelessness etc to call me. I also stated that programs need to be outcome focused rather than focused on generating nice, but meaningless, numbers.

For example: If you add up all the numbers cited by various organizations in Abbotsford for the numbers of homeless housed and those gotten into treatment you will find that we not only do not have any homeless or addicts on our streets, we have negative numbers of homeless and addicted on the streets. A very neat trick you must agree.

Numbers, without being in the context of outcomes, are for the most part meaningless in determining whether a program is actually accomplishing, or contributing to accomplishing, the goal or desired results.

Catch twenty-two for the young man. Even if people were not avoiding or refusing to deal with him because of the challenges he represents, they would not be investing time and effort on one human being when that time could be used to take actions that would generate lots of nice numbers to cite to justify the program.

Because he is hard to deal with as a result of his personal challenges and that it would require a large investment of one on one time, the young man finds himself on his own, effectively abandoned to the streets.

With his personal challenges the consensus on the street is that he is going to end up victimized, beaten or dead or in jail unless he gets the help he needs delivered in the way he needs. It should be about what he needs, not about the convenience of those charged with delivering services.
Three individuals whose paths have crossed mine in the last twenty-four hours and you need care, One of whom I witnessed nice words spoken and undertakings made on behalf of, which remain mere words. All the fancy words and undertakings are worthless unless they are turned into actions.

Three people: the dying, the criminalized and the likely dead or criminalized. Is it or is it not fathomable why the Gene Pitney song lyrics run through my mind when I reflect on the situation each of these gentleman finds himself in?

No, it isn’t very pretty what a town without pity – Can do.