What I am referring to is the inability of government to act on the issues of disadvantaged youths in our society and the homelessness as well as hopelessness they have in a system that is nothing but a bureaucratic nightmare. A system designed by PhD and Masters thesis candidates with little to no practical application to those suffering out there.
The other day I went to take my dog for a walk in the park beside my home. It was bitterly cold around minus 10 Celsius with a biting wind and nobody is in the park but this one young girl sitting on a bench. She is hunched over huddling in the cold on this exposed bench. When I approach her I ask if she is okay, the response I got was in voice that was full tears and despair, “ no I am not”. It is really cold, she has a thin coat, crappy boots and wet gloves, I tell her to wait, I will be right back. I race home and call for my wife to get a hold of our local services telling her of the girl. I grab some hand warmers and a couple of blankets for her, she is frozen.
Help comes in the form of a local security company and they contact an Outreach society for her and this is where we all start talking of this girl’s situation and I start getting really upset and angry. This girl is all of 90 lbs, she has just turned 19 and has been on her own pretty well since 14. Her face is all scabbed from the drugs she has taken and all her possessions in the world fit in a shoe box with room to spare. She tells me how she hates this, she needs to get clean, but she has nowhere to go. She tells me of what she has had to do to survive including prostituting herself and doing whatever she has had too to survive. She is now at that low point that many have to get too, before they can accept help. Unfortunately and this is where I lose my shit, there is nowhere for her.
Yes there are some shelters for her to go to, but they are just shelters, they are not equipped or capable of providing the counseling and the drug rehabilitation services she needs. Even to qualify to get help she first has to meet with a councilor to determine if she qualifies for services. What? Young girl, living on the streets, prostituting to survive hooked on all kinds of shit and no doubt has some deep mental health problems, not too mention it is -10 Celsius, I think she frickin qualifies for services and help.
The Outreach worker, who came, brought this girl new boots, a coat and gloves and knew this girl and her story. She confirmed all this girl told me, there is nowhere. The government changed the way they help and so more bureaucratic hurdles designed by those with lots of letters behind their names but no practical experience or understanding of what goes on and who is on the street, let alone why they are there.
This girl has no family, no support and no one to advocate for her until now as I am going to do what I can to get her some help and if that means annoying PM Photo Op and my MP’s or MLA’s oh well. Those of you who know me, know I like to stir the shit so that is what I am going to do for this girl because her living this way is not right and quite frankly as a society we should not let this happen to anyone. No one chooses to be hooked on drugs and prostituting themselves and I challenge anyone to show me anyone who wrote in their high school yearbook that their future ambition was to be living on the streets and prostituting themselves to survive, it does not exist.
If we really want to fix this problem then we need to be compassionate and we need to set the services so when a person, like this girl, hits bottom like she has, there is a place she can go, get warm, get healthy and get the help to fix all the trauma and mental health issues she may have. This girl was crying to get help so she could get off the streets and get a job. Yet in a city of 90,000 people there is nowhere for her to go and nowhere for her to turn other than temporary shelters which offer no services beyond a bed for a night and a meal. In most cases they have to be out by 7 am the next day. Imagine getting turned out during this past cold snap and having to repeat this every day, lining up for a temporary bed for the night, how can we expect anyone to get better?
It is estimated that the cost of homelessness and situations like above, cost the Canadian taxpayer an average of $7 billion per year, one study concluded the cost to society per homeless is over $53,000 per individual some studies have it as high as $70,000 per person. Yet the cost to house people and provide services is estimated to be about half this amount, so again my frustration as a taxpayer now comes out. The fact we are not dealing with the problem and wasting a shit load of money in not doing it. Again WTF is wrong with government and their thinking? Simple financial analysis says the way we are doing things is not working and costs more than providing housing and services to those out on the streets.
So here we have an insane system that not only is ineffectual but also costs more than the solution. What do you think taxpayers are going to say if its explained that fixing homelessness will save taxpayers money? Einstein said,” the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result “, yet we continue to do this and people like this girl who are ready and need help get caught up in the bureaucratic government where no one really understands either the humanitarian problem or the financial one.
This is not an issue of needing more money to fix the problem facing, housing for example the Federal government has committed billions towards housing so we are not looking for more of a commitment there, what we need is a commitment from all levels of government to quit flapping their gums about the issues and fix it. Enough Royal Commissions and inquiries at all levels, we don’t need to study it, we need to deal with it and get not just youth, but the mentally Ill and all those suffering out there off the streets.
Personally I am sick to death of hearing about Covid all the time and we ignore this glaring problem. Same with the Opioid Crisis that is still killing about 30,000 Canadians per year, yet nothing is done there either. Yet our governments continues to prioritize and waste resources on those who keep this pandemic going, the unvaccinated. In fact if a person ends up in the ICU it costs over $70,000 to treat them on average which is about double the cost of providing housing and services to someone like this girl for and entire year! The unvaccinated have made a choice, no matter how stupid and selfish it is. That girl in the park has had no choice since 14 and who I really think we should be helping and not the unvaccinated Covid – Darwin award morons.
www.AngryBob.ca 