Homeless

New Roommate Needed

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I lost a podmate (roommate) today when he returned to the great outdoors. Lately Income Assistance had been playing their non-assistance games with him; with Income Assistance as the cat and him as the poor cornered, tormented mouse. He began to feel trapped and a prisoner of their whims to the point he was driven to move out onto the streets in order to regain his freedom, peace of mind and self respect.

The sobering, somewhat scary thing is that I can really understand where he is coming from.

I need to get a CPAP machine to make my sleep more restful and revitalizing. However that would require dealing with Income Assistance and previous deals with them have so scarred my psyche that I have a mental block against taking any action that would cause me to have to deal with Income assistance.

Also it was not all that many days ago I was starting to look longingly at the back seat of my car with fond thoughts of the time spent sleeping and living in said automobile. I get a strange look from people who have no frame of reference to understand this point of view when I acknowledge there are days or periods of time when the thought of getting away and living in my car again is so enticing.

I know if I was not myself ensnared in the limbo that is the transition off the streets and getting ones life moving under ones own management, I would lack an understanding or awareness of just how difficult this process can be. I am experiencing it, I have run into the barriers or watched others run into different barriers, but some days the process is unfathomable.

It was so easy when I was young and starting out on my own. I travelled across Canada from ocean to ocean; moved from Southern Ontario to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan without a hitch; moved on to other cities to other employment; moved across country to Abbotsford, BC; all with relative easy. But the move from Mental Illness to Recovery (of the best mental health I have ever had), the move from homelessness and the streets to employment and a home is proving to be more akin to scaling Mt. Everest.

Truthfully, it is beginning to seem that climbing Olympus Mons on Mars (highest peak in the solar system) would be less difficult than scaling the heights of employment and housing.

This leads to frustration, major frustration, and hammers away at your spirit until hope is lost. Caught in the pit of hopelessness you feel like a fly in a spider’s web; your struggles seem pointless, only entangling you deeper into the web you are caught in. The primitive part of the brain kicks in the fight or flight reflex and the seeming freedom of open spaces beckons with its promise of relief.

You bolt for liberty, self-determination and free will under the open skies and the stars of night – so enticing a siren song.

I came so very close to listening to that song myself just two weeks ago. I was thinking longingly of the freedom from frustration and the ability to leave cares behind. There were a few evenings when the craving to seek out a favoured parking/camping spot for the night as opposed to returning to the cell of my habitation was nearly overwhelming.

Living in my car I have to focus on day-to-day tasks: shower, food, laundry, drinkable water and a place to park and sleep. Your focus on merely surviving chases other things out of your forebrain, a kind of enforced mental holiday from frustrations.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?), I had some meetings and other items on my schedule that served to remind me of the goals I intend to accomplish. When one seeks to bring about major changes in homeless, addiction recovery, housing, social and poverty policies, awareness and behaviour I suppose one has to accept that frustration is a basic fact of life. Examining the frustration of my personal situation in the context of the frustration of witnessing the waste of money and lives of current behaviours, systems and policies … well How Important Is It? This Too Shall Pass. One Day at a Time. Let Go and Let God.

When I first heard them these slogans seemed so trite but in listening, learning and thinking about them they became tools to be used to overcome things like frustration and other “stinkin’ thinkin’”.

Because falling prey to stinkin’ thinkin’ is what gets all of us in so much trouble and causes so many problems and difficulties within our lives, community, society, country and the world.

Carrying out some mental hygiene let me adjust my attitude and get back to focusing on what is important – bringing about change. Although I am left wondering if one of the changes I should most seek to set in motion is to get everyone practising good mental hygiene and overcoming stinkin’ thinkin.

So, how healthy and hygienic is your mind?

Municipal

Tax refugee??

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As his neighbours can tell you Mark Taylor has sold his home in Abbotsford and purchased a larger new home in Langley.

While I cannot say that Langley’s lower taxes are what have drawn Mr. Taylor there, it is certainly ironic that after playing a leading part in inflicting a heavy tax burden on the taxpayers of Abbotsford Mr. Taylor is himself fleeing to the lower taxes of Langley.

Perhaps it is merely that Mr. Taylor is seeking a community where he will have no problem finding a public pool to cool off in should our weather ever heat up to summer temperatures. Langley and many other smaller communities, have more indoor and outdoor pool facilities than Abbotsford. They probably also have enough common sense to hire people who have experience building pools and know what they are doing, thus avoiding extended shutdowns as is happening with Centennial Pool.

Possibly it is the many other sports and recreation facilities and programs that the citizens of Langley enjoy that the citizens of Abbotsford lack that motivate Mr Taylor’s relocation. If so perhaps Mr. Taylor should be raising the matter or these recreational inadequacies with …… himself as Abbotsford’s parks, recreation and culture head honcho.

Undeniably his move does suggest that a white elephant of an arena is not a deciding factor, even someone responsible for foisting it upon Abbotsford, in making Abbotsford is a “must live” community. Just as clearly Langley’s lack of said white elephant is no deterrent to people moving there.

Apparently Abbotsford is fine place to take an exorbitant salary from, just not somewhere you want to live. A comment on Mr. Taylor’s opinion of the outcomes of the actions he and the rest of Abbotsford City Hall have wreaked upon our poor (much poorer) City?

Poverty

Do Societies have a tipping point?

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The changeeverything.ca website had a poll on environmental change and tipping points which got me wondering if societies have a tipping point. Is there a point at which the imbalances within a society become so pronounced that a massive rebalancing with its attendant “natural disasters” is unavoidable?

At this point in considering this question I am not exactly sure what such a rebalancing would look like, but it would undoubtedly be chaotic with a frightening potential for violence.

In previous generations there was the promise and real opportunity of improving ones life, especially for your children. This current generation will be the first generation getting less from their parent’s generation than their parents received form the grandparent’s generation. Where once the future held the promise of the stars, for current and future generations it now promises only a shrinking world and increasing competition for evermore scarce and costly resources.

There are also the far-reaching economic, environmental and sociological effects of climate change being bequeathed to the future.

A fair and balance society would have the flexibility to deal with and adapt to the changing world, to the stresses and strains of a diminished and diminishing future. Unfortunately our society and social structure has become imbalanced as never before in our history as a nation. What is it that leads me to conclude our society is so out of balance that we, as a society, need be concern about redressing the balance before anarchy erupts in the form of class warfare?

The wealth of the nation has become concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of the population and that concentration continues to increase.

Upward mobility is fast becoming a concept of the past except for a lucky few who in effect “strike it rich”. Prior to this time hard work and effort held out the promise of an improved economic situation. In Vancouver today there is an entire group of workers who even though working full (or over) time cannot afford housing the city they work in. This is also holds true in Abbotsford where I am aware of those forced to live homeless by hard, cold economic reality. Their housing and other choices narrowed and complicated by the fact they are working full time.

Other working people find themselves being ground down into homelessness and poverty by groaning debt loads. Yes a portion of that debt burden is often the result of poor money management, but all to much of it stems from the onerous cost of housing.

Despite our pretence of being a classless society we are becoming a class society – an economic class society.

I. The privileged moneyed class whose power is a function of their control over the wealth of the nation.

II. The operating class, those whose education, skills and talents are needed for the operation of society and by the moneyed class.

III. The working class, the drones who perform the day-to-day labour required to run society. Kept in a kind of debt slavery but their large, sometimes overwhelming debt owed to the moneyed class.

IV. The throwawaclass. The boogeymen and women whose spectre is used to keep the workers in line. Increasingly these days the very real fear of falling into this class serves to drive and distract the working class drones.

Just a few decades ago the distribution of people from poorest to richest was more of a continuum: poorest ………………………………………….richest.

The above continuum held the inherent promise of an ability to move upwards (or downwards) along the continuum. During the past few decades this continuum, with its promise of moving up the continuum, has begun to break-up and form “economic planets” around points I – IV above. Like the planets of our solar system these “economic planets”, or classes, are separated by wide distances with their current orbital trajectories taking them further away from each other over time.

The old adage “The rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer” has never been truer. Except that currently “the poor” has expanded to include the working class, not just those living in poverty. Even the most basic shelter has become so costly that our streets are being inhabited by people working full time, even overtime, but still unable to afford shelter.

The middle class as we knew it is an endangered species having all but disappeared. Along with this many are facing the disappearance of retirement, facing the need to continue working or face the real risk of a descent into poverty, homelessness and finding themselves joining the growing ranks of retirees depending on the Salvation Army and their local Food Bank for their daily bread.

We have become a society of economic classes with the differences between these economic classes growing. As the separation between the classes grows the economic fairness, indeed the fairness of our society itself is decreasing at a faster and faster pace becoming more pronounced and in your face day by day.

How much unfairness can our society contain before it begins to come apart at its seams, along the splits between the classes? At what point does society have lost so much cohesion that it begins to fly apart?

At a time when circumstances in the world are placing increased strain on Canadian Society, when we need to pull together as a society and country as never before, we are becoming less of a society – indeed in many ways less Canadian.

These increasing internal and external stresses are beginning to tear at the fabric of our society, pulling us apart. If we sit around ignoring this reality because it is uncomfortable and unpleasant we will find our society has become uncivil to the point where a form of civil war between the classes inescapably breaks out.

A rebalancing of the economic class structure we have allowed to be born will be uncomfortable, especially dealing with wealth concentration where the wealth of Canada needs to be spread more fairly throughout all levels of Society. Will we achieve this rebalancing in a Canadian manner or wait until chaos erupts? How close are we to the societal tipping point? Have we passed the point where we can have any control over the rebalancing of economic and societal fairness? Is economic warfare between the classes now inevitable?

Federal

Defiling Canada’s Honour

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I have always been proud to be a Canadian. Proud of our history, our behaviour, the reputation and perception of Canada held by countries and people around the world. That is until lately.

Mr. Harper is not the first prime minister I thought more closely resembled the southern end of a northbound horse. I have often found prime ministers seemingly out of touch with the reality of life for many working, poor and homeless citizens. Lacking in even basic logic, leadership, vision and of questionable intelligence one still had to admire the political sophistication and gamesmanship that made them Prime Ministers.

Perhaps it is that Mr. Harper is the first true ideologue we have had leading Canada.

What ever it is that causes his behaviour on the international stage it needs to stop. Whether Mr. Harper begins to behave rationally or is removed from office by his caucus, party or Canadian voters his policies and behaviour internationally must be changed now.

Where once Canada was respected, consulted and sought out because of its conduct, guiding principles and earned respect, Canada is now becoming an international outcast, a war mongering bully whose word is questionable.

At the just finished G8 summit Mr. Harper was already backing away, making hackneyed excuses, from the global warming agreement he had just made at the summit. There he stood in front of the cameras at the first post climate change press conference already justifying not enforcing or meeting the agreed upon emissions reduction targets.

I stipulate that I do not know if it is lack of understanding of basic scientific principles, adequate grey matter to understand those basic scientific principles, simple denial or a pathetic need to curry favour with George Bush by parroting his climate change obfuscations.

I do know that leadership is about making hard choices for the long term good of the nation and the world. Worrying about and making excuses based on short term disruptions and costs that can be handled while ignoring the potential disaster of failing to act, is short sighted political and ideological opportunism totally lacking in leadership.

We must accept that there will be costs to correcting our ecological behaviour, reach reasonable targets and goals with our European allies and be a trustworthy partner in striving for a better future for our country and children. The costs and consequences of not acting are far higher than that of thoughtful action taken now. Just as there are costs and consequences of being seen by the international community as a country whose words and promises are worthless.


I do not care if on a personal level Mr. Harper demonstrates he is not trustworthy. I do care when his actions so damage the Honour of Canada as to injure our standing and perception around the world and erode my pride in being Canadian.