I ‘m sickened by the damage and misery that result from the Abbotsford Salvation Army and its PR machine constantly harking upon how successful its outreach program is in housing the homeless. It present s a false and misleading picture of what is happening on the homeless front in Abbotsford, allowing “leadership” in Abbotsford to avoid taking action by citing non-existent “real results”.

The outreach program at the Salvation Army is more about generating good-looking numbers to ensure more funding than it is about generating lasting, positive results to help the homeless to move off the streets.

The public would be shocked and dismayed at the facts an independent audit of the 180 people claimed by the Salvation Army as housed. Of course, that is using my definition of what I would mean by housed: they remain in housing and off the streets at the time you claim them as being housed successfully.

This would mean that those on the list who lasted only days, weeks, until the end of the month or a month or two before ending back up on the streets would not count as successful – although they are counted “successful” in the Salvation Army’s books. It would also mean the Salvation Army could only count an individual once – not every time their outreach “successfully” placed them in housing.

Such an audit would reduce the number of “successful” outcomes in housing the homeless to a number that would not even require removing your shoes to have enough digits to total those still housed and off the streets.

Public awareness of the truth will deny city council and other community leaders false “results” to hide behind, forcing them to face reality and act. One can only hope that public scrutiny would force the Salvation Army to change focus from good-looking numbers and PR to reality-based positive outcomes and results.

Until public awareness of the facts behind the claims of “real results” occurs I can only shake my head and remember the words of Franklin D, Roosevelt “Repetition does not transform a lie into truth.”