“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

John Sherry saved all his life, owned his home outright, and ran a business with 15 workers. Then his wife got cancer.

Now the couple live in a trailer and take grocery handouts from shelter volunteers. Their prospects of ever getting back into a home in tony Marin County, California, are swiftly dwindling.

‘I’m not the guy that’s down there and has zero. I saved real well. I owned my home outright. But circumstances happen,’ Sherry, 69, told DailyMail.com.

The city of Phoenix is slated to begin work this week clearing out and cleaning up “the Zone,” a massive downtown homeless camp that a state judge recently deemed a public nuisance.

City workers on Wednesday are slated to begin removing tents, block by block, from a portion of the unstructured homeless camp, one of the nation’s largest, according to media reports.

Legislators in the Peach State have joined a growing movement rejecting the failed approaches that have fostered urban anarchy elsewhere.

The United States has a homelessness problem, but we have an even bigger homelessness-policy problem. It is an issue at the federal level—HUD spends nearly $10 billion annually to create bad incentives that reward destitution—and at the state and local level. This week, two widely divergent state approaches to homelessness were on display.

…. In San Francisco, “permanent supportive housing” is one such failed program. In one instance, the city found that a quarter of those given a free apartment were dead in just a few years, many from overdoses. The federal government and states like California embrace this boondoggle, but other states should make other choices. They can dedicate funding to treatment and emergency shelter, for example.

We can hope Toronto takes note … but I fear city hall is in love with all the worst policy.

As the poison drug crisis grows more lethal and visible, hence becoming more politically and socially untenable, politicians and policy-makers are grasping for new solutions.

Both B.C. and Alberta, for example, are promising to expand involuntary treatment – essentially forcing some drug users into treatment, whether they want it or not.

This get-tough approach has obvious appeal.

The random acts of violence that are happening on our streets and in our transit systems in cities across Canada are also making their way into public libraries.

Local branches of all sizes are reporting an increase in verbal and physical violence. And for some, the pandemic made it even worse.

Over the past two years, one person died and six others were injured in a mass stabbing in a public library in North Vancouver. Last December, 28-year-old Tyree Cayer was killed during a visit to Winnipeg’s Millennium Library. Four teenagers were charged in his death. And two branches of the Saskatoon library were closed temporarily because of concerns about staff safety.

Shocking revelation – Libraries are now ad hoc homeless shelters!

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 numbers are staggering.

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.

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.”