Wander around the downtown streets near the state capital buildings, and you marvel at how pristine they are. No homelessness problem here, you think.
But venture a little further afield, closer to the borders of the downtown core, in the parks and overpasses that ring California’s sixth-largest metropolitan area (population: 525,041) and that image changes. You begin to see in jarring detail just how pervasive homelessness is in Sacramento, Calif., ranking it among the worst in the state.
The Alberta government is considering introducing a law that would broaden the circumstances under which people with severe drug addictions could be placed into treatment without their consent.
The legislation would be the first involuntary treatment law in Canada to target addiction specifically. Some jurisdictions, including Alberta, already use mental-health law to push people into drug treatment without court orders in exceptionally severe situations. But otherwise adult drug users can refuse help.
We make it very easy for people to slowly kill themselves on our streets while they in turn wreak havoc on our quality of life.
The arguments that emptied the asylums onto our streets are made in the Globe article. Why they are seen as humane is beyond me.
WARMINGTON: Used syringes in east-end Toronto park just waiting to jab somebody
Is the story that Toronto’s so-called safe injection of hard drugs policy means addicts leave behind used syringes in city parks or is it that no one from the city seems to come to take them away?
In big cities across America, homelessness has been so bad for so long that many have given up on ever ending it entirely.
Last year, federal agencies counted a staggering 582,462 homeless people nationwide – up nearly 20% since 2015.
It’s not the same everywhere.
Apparently, San Francisco mayor London Breed has been feeling downright smug about the fact that Cash App founder Bob Lee did not die at the hands of a random homeless person but, instead, was allegedly murdered by someone he knew. That would be a decent boast if San Francisco were an otherwise clean and well-run city…but it’s not. It’s still a decayed basket case, as is vividly illustrated by a widely circulated video showing a homeless woman and her baby moments after she gave birth on the street.
NEWS & Education ONLY
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Don’t Do Drugs. The reality of drug use is tough and these images are strong, but necessary to show how destructive narcotics are to society.San Francisco, California.— (@ppv_tahoe) Woman gives birth on the street after smoking crack all afternoon… pic.twitter.com/n6kbivg0uX
— PPV-TAHOE – News Journalist (@ppv_tahoe) April 9, 2023
Last month, the New York Times ran a story exploring the poverty, drug and mental health crisis engulfing the city of Phoenix, Ariz., through the eyes of a sandwich shop owner whose restaurant sat across from one of the largest homeless encampments in America.
It was an eye-opener.
Unexpected resolve in Vancouver.
The patients at the Red Fish Healing Centre for Mental Health and Addiction are here after failing all treatment options at B.C. hospitals, with more than two thirds also having become violent either with health care staff or while committing a crime on the street. All of them are battling severe addictions to drugs.
And more than half of the 100 or so patients are here against their will after being certified under British Columbia’s civil Mental Health Act.
It is the best option available to solve the “homeless crisis.”
City of Vancouver officials say they plan to deploy “quick response teams” if people try to set up tents again on East Hastings Street, even as scrutiny of their enforcement actions intensifies.
Canada’s federal housing advocate is calling for a moratorium on dismantling encampments, telling Postmedia she worries deaths could increase from the displacement of Downtown Eastside residents.
It will be interesting to see which side wins.
In Austin, Texas, in a 24-hour period in March less than a mile apart, a woman was punched several times and sexually assaulted, suffering a split lower jaw and bruises over her body; then a building was burned down, damaging adjacent buildings, causing about $1.5 million in damage. The common thread: Homeless men living on the street are the accused.
The homeless are on the streets because they don’t have homes — or so many of their so-called advocates claim. They see homelessness as a disease and prescribing housing as the first step to a cure — with housing seen as a right, like they believe health care should be.
An extreme fire risk and escalating crime have made a tent encampment in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside a deadly hazard and it must be closed, the city’s mayor, fire chief and police chief say.
City officials held a news conference Tuesday as Vancouver police officers and city staff were dispatched to dismantle the tent encampment along Hastings Street.
Mayor Ken Sim said the longer the street camp continues, the higher the odds more people will lose their lives and even more people will lose their homes to the fire hazard.
The dismantling of the #DTES encampment on E Hastings has begun. Vancouver police blocking access from Columbia to Gore. Folks down here not happy. More to come @CityNewsVAN pic.twitter.com/EqzOvpnlFJ
— Michael Williams (@MikeWillsTake) April 5, 2023
They did the right thing. Now will they stick with enforcement?
Officials must recognize that behavioral issues are the primary cause of homelessness.
Politicians, government officials, and academic “experts” from coast to coast have been insisting for years that homelessness is a “national crisis,” as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass both claim. That is a misdiagnosis, deflecting responsibility away from cities that should fix their own problems.
Every case of homelessness is tragic and complicated. According to new data, however, homelessness has reached crisis proportions only in a limited number of areas across the country, especially in California.
Cities that allow the most destructive of human behavior to take over the public space are cities where civilized life as we know it is being marginalized and forced to give way to social fragmentation. Dignity yields to savagery.
Europe has a long tradition of fighting narcotic drugs, with varying results. In 1992, the city of Zürich, Switzerland, closed the infamous ‘Needle Park’ area, just behind the national museum and the central railway station. For a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
hundreds of dealers and addicts packed into the park, [with] many people desperately needing urgent medical care on a daily basis.
As a curious tourist, I visited the place about a year before it was closed. I was shocked at the complete and utter lack of dignity among those who basically spent their entire lives there. Human beings had turned into empty shells, consumed and hollowed out by their addiction to something that was certain to kill them.
Smoke bellows skyward near an overpass on the outskirts of this Pacific Northwest city.
Flames become evident as you get closer, as do the fire trucks and the firefighters putting out the blaze at the centre of a homeless encampment that is affixed, favela style, to the under-shoulder of the crossing.
A good article on Seattle, it bodes ill for Toronto and elsewhere in Canada as does the following Star report on the Homeless camp clear-outs, one of the things Tory got right.
Forces are at work to make Toronto’s homeless camps as big and ugly as they are in the US.
The goal? Millions of dollars will flow to the hucksters who promise to deal with the very “crisis” they perpetuate.
Process behind 2021 encampment clearings ‘unacceptable’, finds ombudsman report
The clearings of three large Toronto homeless encampments in the summer of 2021 prioritized speed over the well-being of homeless people, Toronto’s ombudsman has found.
In the report, which comes nearly two years after the city-led, police-and-security-enforced operations, ombudsman Kwame Addo found the process by which city hall displaced people from Trinity Bellwoods, Alexandra Park, and Lamport Stadium was “unacceptable” — pointing to “unclear, confusing” and insufficiently transparent communication. It noted the city’s operational plans made no mention of the mental health of displaced people.
The camps were cleared quickly and efficiently with a minimum of activist triggered violence. This is why Toronto can’t have nice things.
Because it’s better to have drug addicted mentally-ill people wandering your streets. They add colour!
Legal group in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside cautions B.C. against involuntary care
A legal group representing marginalized people on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has issued a stern rebuke of the provincial government’s plans to force mental-health and addictions treatment on people who present a danger to themselves and others.
Pivot Legal Society released a report Thursday calling on British Columbia to halt its proposed expansion of “involuntary care” beds, arguing such treatment is an outdated approach that is harmful, degrading and often discriminatory.
As homelessness overwhelms downtown Phoenix, a small business wonders how long it can hang on.
He had been coming into work at the same sandwich shop at the same exact time every weekday morning for the last four decades, but now Joe Faillace, 69, pulled up to Old Station Subs with no idea what to expect. He parked on a street lined with three dozen tents, grabbed his Mace and unlocked the door to his restaurant. The peace sign was still hanging above the entryway. Fake flowers remained undisturbed on every table. He picked up the phone and dialed his wife and business partner, Debbie Faillace, 60.
“All clear,” he said. “Everything looks good.”
It’s largely a drug and mental health issue, being homeless is a symptom.
… The city’s data shows that drug toxicity is by far the leading cause of death for people experiencing homelessness in Toronto, resulting in nearly half – or 47 per cent – of reported deaths in the population.
PORTLAND, Ore. – On a sidewalk littered with tarps, bicycles and discarded food containers, one tent sat farther away from the rest. It was clean, with the rain fly removed, showcasing the vacant interior.
“This is an empty tent erected by activists to encourage people to live in tents,” Kevin Dahlgren said.
It’s a business worth billions but the problem is never solved.
