Part I of VI

Scrolling down the Abbotsford News website  Sunday May 31, 2015 George Carlin’s routine about oxymorons [yes the plural should properly be oxymora] – mutually exclusive terms – [from Greek oxus – sharp/keen and moros dull/stupid]  came to mind when I reached the coverage of the ground breaking for the construction of Fraser Mental Health’s 50 bed facility.

It was not the groundbreaking itself that is mutually exclusive to Ed Fast’s announcement of federal housing first funds for Abbotsford City Hall. Rather it was the reaction of Abbotsford’s homeless advisory, bureaucrats and politicians when  they first heard that the facility would be constructed.

In a world where common sense was common, instead of extremely rare, and issues and problems were addressed with the focus on effectively dealing with the issues and problems the minimum standard Abbotsford City Hall would have to meet to receive federal homeless funding would be NOT to have demonstrated in actions and behaviours that the direct participation of Abbotsford City Hall would prevent the successful implementation of an effective Housing First Action Plan.

Unfortunately for the homeless, as well as the citizens of Abbotsford, problems and issues are approached through politics, perception and denial. The focus on appearance wastes $billions$ of dollars every year; wasteful spending that aides and abets the continued growth of the homeless population while allowing problems and issues to grow as well.

The actions and behaviours of the City of Abbotsford have clearly demonstrated a lack of even the most basic understanding of Housing First. The words and the deeds of the City of Abbotsford have demonstrated they do not subscribe to or follow any of the practices or principles that are the fundamental foundation blocks Housing First’s effectiveness is built on.

The City’s failure to understand and their rejection of the practices and principles Housing First is built from, guarantees the involvement of the City of Abbotsford in direct leadership, planning or as an active participant [performing intake and referral] will result in something labelled ‘housing first’ but doomed to fail because it is ‘housing first’ in words not in substance.

Calling something housing first does not make it Housing First any more than calling a grizzly bear a bunny rabbit makes the grizzly bear cuddly, cute and non-lethal.

The funds Abbotsford will receive are nominally to create an intake and referral system.

Ignoring the question of why we need to add the City to the list of organizations that currently provide intake and referral ……. referral to what?

In a city where the services available are overwhelmed by the demand, what does the City think adding more names to long waiting lists will accomplish? Particularly in light of the fact that research and experience make it clear the supports, services and resources required to create and implement an effective Housing First Action Plan do not currently exist in Abbotsford.

Of course we are speaking of Abbotsford, the city that hired a bureaucrat as a homeless guru without having set out the purpose and duties of their homeless guru. I suppose one should not be surprised the City’s homeless guru was overwhelmed by this dutiful purposelessness to the point the City felt it necessary to hire an assistant for their homeless guru in order to achieve even more ineffectual pointlessness.

A City whose hiring of a bureaucrat as a homeless guru was based on the report of the Abbotsford Homeless Task Force. A report whose outstanding feature was its clear demonstration of the Homeless Task Force’s complete lack of ability to effect a reduction in the number of  homeless in Abbotsford – at least one hopes it was a lack of ability, not a lack of desire or the presence of hidden agendas.

The reaction of Abbotsford’s politicians, bureaucrats and Homeless Advisory when groundbreaking for the new 50 bed Fraser Mental Health [FMH] Facility was raised at a Homeless Advisory meeting serves to highlight the lack of ability, the lack of capacity, on the part of the Homeless Advisory to effectively contribute to the reduction of homelessness in Abbotsford.

The story was reported as:

“The development is intended to replace 30 licensed mental health beds from an Abbotsford facility that closed down in 2012.”

Anyone with understanding and experience with the facts of homelessness, resources, services and service providers in Abbotsford would know that was not true and it was not what the housing manager of FMH had set out in her report on the existing housing resources and upcoming changes in the housing resources of FMH .

The fact no members of the Homeless Advisory were aware this facility would be built and the facts, not wishful thinking, connected to the facility says something rather damning about the makeup of the Homeless Advisory, the ability of the Advisory to be effective and raises the question as to the actual purpose of the Homeless Advisory.

First of all the term replacement means that these beds are not an increase in FMH housing stock and that once the 30 beds open in Abbotsford, 30 beds at other FMH facilities will close.

Secondly the 30 beds are not replacement beds for the 30 beds that were lost when Sunrise closed.

The 30 beds closed at Sunrise were replaced by the 30 replacement beds opened in other communities before Sunrise was closed. Thus the residents of Sunrise at the time of its’ closing were not thrown out into the street but were relocated to the replacement beds that had been opened in other communities [Chilliwack and White Rock].

The 30 beds in the new Abbotsford facility are replacement beds for the 30 beds in other communities that will be closed when the new Abbotsford Facility opens.

Thirdly: when the 30 beds in other communities close, the people in those beds will need beds elsewhere, just as the residents of Sunrise did when Sunrise was closed. Basing your planning on the use of 30 empty beds that will not exist will create a problem.

Finally it is necessary to understand that the beds at the facility in Abbotsford are not for the exclusive use of Abbotsford. The beds in Abbotsford are FMH beds and are for the use of any patient of FMH without regard to where the patient is from within FMH..

In Business as Usual fashion Abbotsford created a Homeless Advisory that lacks the awareness, knowledge and understanding of basic facets of homelessness, mental health and housing required to effectively address homelessness in Abbotsford.

The actions and behaviours of the City of Abbotsford vis-à-vis the FMH facility were simply one more addition to the long list of actions and behaviours the federal Conservative government had to ignore in awarding the $400,989.00 to Abbotsford.

As a point of information the additional 20 assisted-living units are an increase in the number of assisted-living beds that FMH has. However the increase in assisted-living beds is not an increase in the total number of beds available to FMH. The opening of these 20 additional assisted-living beds will result in the closing 20 other types of beds [e.g. tertiary].

 

End Part I of VI

Part II: Effective Housing First versus Invented in Abbotsford housing first