Canada’s ‘class system’ is hurting our communities
Homelessness is an economic problem. People do not choose or want to be homeless. The bias: Homelessness and drug abuse go hand in hand. False! All drug abusers are homeless. False! All people who are homeless abuse drugs. False!
Hopelessness can lead to drug abuse. If left unchecked we will all own that human and social cost.
Solutions, anyone?
I believe we have mislabelled “Safe Injection Sites” as we are enabling and encouraging illegal drug use. Why not “Safe Withdrawal Sites”? This community needs a detox centre for all of those individuals who are homeless and addicted to be able to get off drugs and get their lives back on track. These individuals need an intervention approach. Intervention and prevention could be the basis of providing successful supports.
We all know that providing cots and feeding people are a band aid solution. More affordable housing was needed 10 years ago. Temporary measures such as shelters or tents only show the lack of care and concern by our past and present governments. Again, the shelter system has been overrun by lack of political leadership, economic downturn and that has been the case for years. It used to be called a recession, now it is called separation of the classes. I did not know that we still lived in a class system: the uber rich, the well off, the middle class and finally the working lower class and homeless that need the most supports.
The minimum and living wages in Ontario were cut with the whole world watching. Housing, a basic human right, is no longer affordable for certain groups in our society. Say what? People can no longer afford to put a roof over their heads. Oh, and the new rent guideline increase in Ontario for 2020 is, wait for it, 2.2 per cent, just to add insult to injury.
The class system was popularized by our current federal government and is being exacerbated by current provincial government cuts to the necessary supports needed. When did we stop caring about the less fortunate and start caring so much about protecting the middle class and its taxdollar rhetoric?
Everyone is going to pay for a long-term solution. Even the uber rich who may find people camping out on their front lawns. We all need to become part of the solution. Greed corrupts the brain into thinking that more is better and bigger is better. Empathy and compassion vanish. Giving back enough to help support a community disappears. Can we only pay down our government deficits on the backs of cuts to services that hold our communities together? That is the obvious action of a government that has no clue how to govern or is looking for an excuse to not do or say the right thing. Pray for our leaders.
Gentrification and intensification comes at a cost.
The displaced residents, now homeless, are paying a very high price for all of the above and there is no way they should bear the burden of blame, when in fact the blame comes from the top down not from the bottom up. Who is going to step up to help us all rethink this whole situation so it does not divide a community into “us” and “them”?
Suggested viewing: “Seattle is Dying.” They are ignoring a solution that has a 93 per cent success rate (spoiler at the end of the YouTube video). Watch LA Times documentary or read https://www.homelesshub.ca/
Dave Hamilton, Peterborough