“Just head over to City Hall and the Social Services people there will give you vouchers for food, clothes, a bed, whatever you need, no questions asked.”
Tons of free stuff
I have vivid memories of spending (wasting?) time on the streets of Vancouver back in the late 60s. A buddy and I found ourselves on Vancouver‘s downtown Eastside. It was a Friday in the summer. We were low on cash and facing the ghastly prospect of having to accept one of the many available labour jobs which paid cash at the end of every day.
Before we walked over to the temporary labour office, we began chatting with a dude trying to peddle drugs to us on the street corner. He informed us of a way out of our predicament.
“Just head over to City Hall and the Social Services people there will give you vouchers for food, clothes, a bed, whatever you need — no questions asked.”
“No way! Is that for real?” we exclaimed.
“Yes way” he scornfully retorted. “And like I said, no questions asked.” As we scurried off to meet our new found providers, he called out cheerfully after us, “then you can save your own money to buy my dope.“
That proposition was in the early days of being refined and presented in cities across North America to untold numbers of young people teetering on the edge of ‘to work or not to work.’
In those days there were no tents in the streets and parks of Vancouver. We all knew that was against the law and would not be tolerated. Yes, there were always a scattered few at night sleeping in an abandoned door stoop or alleyway. But the word on the street in Montreal, Winnipeg and Calgary was nevertheless,
“Head to Vancouver, summers are beauty, winters are fine and the city councillors are crazy — they give you tons of free stuff. You can live there no probs — it’s party time 24/7.”
Later that same year, hitchhiking to California, we experienced the same civic generosity everywhere we went. However, as in all things California, the social accumulation of ‘free stuff’ policies was far more advanced and generous. In LA and San Francisco, gatherings of people living off the avails of the taxpayer were much larger and already gaining a sense of permanency. Tents and elaborate cardboard hovels were, to our surprise and delight, wonderfully tolerated in the downtowns of California and in previously pristine park and beach areas.
Many of us who were enjoying the weather and the easy living would chuckle at headlines berating local politicians for not doing more to help the growing ranks of ‘underprivileged’ youth. We often said,
“If they do anymore we’ll just live like this forever, baby.”
Provision of drugs and places to enjoy them evolved
At this point it must be said that among our numbers were those who genuinely needed psychiatric care because of their already advanced drug use and addictions. However, the courts were consistently ruling that it was unconstitutional to make any attempt to even temporarily contain even the most psychotic of the street dwellers. Treatment programs continued to evolve into more elaborate forms of provision. And not just a provision of food and dwelling space, but also of drugs and places to enjoy them in relative human safety.
In fairness to “the system,“ the buffet of subscription drugs provided to the “Streeters” had pharmaceutical names with the intention of breaking addictions to the street drugs being purchased. In some cases, this policy assisted a relatively small number of individuals to break the drug cycle. What I saw far too often however, was these Pharma products being abused simply as a bridge between hits of the ‘real’ stuff or used as barter for cash, food or sex.
Most striking to us those days as we cruised the party street scene was the number of very early teenaged girls and boys who were drawn, captivated and then captured into the whole homeless lifestyle. And governments were making it easy to do so.
These policies over time, quickly became more indiscriminate, to the point where kids could just say, “my mother‘s boyfriend is harassing me” and they would get their ticket to freedom and street life. This is not to diminish the very real need to have a protective follow-up for young people who are making these claims. It is clearly an area of sensitivity and concern. There is also need to have a very close contact procedure for young people turning 18 coming out of foster care. These teenagers are especially vulnerable and need very close relationship building with the appropriate individuals to reduce the potential of them simply migrating to the streets. Once out of the home, these girls and boys became easy targets for older teens or men who would provide some level of cash or comfort in exchange for everything from sex to recruitment into shoplifting and other petty crimes. And of course, drug addiction.
Incessant pressure to provide more funds to help the homeless
It doesn’t take a behavioral scientist to understand the overall approach to so-called homelessness has simply not worked. A magnet effect, over a number of decades, has resulted in the present tidal wave of people inhabiting our streets and parks in most cities with no sign of abating.
Also not abating is the incessant clamour and pressure from media and social groups to provide even more funds to help feed, clothe and house the ‘homeless.’
I agree that more must be done, but it’s time for a reality check.
With all of the money, good intentions and staggering increase of support programs and staff, we must come to grips with a harsh reality: in terms of reducing the problem and the population affected, it is NOT working.
People ask, “why don’t politicians stop the problem?” I can tell you from years of trying to deal with the problem, even from the position of being a Provincial Minister of Social Services, most politicians at all levels live in abject fear of the media viciously chastising them if they do anything at all that looks like trying to find another answer other than the present one of massive funding.
Adequate care for drug users who are dealing with psychoses
In Vancouver, and in many other North American cities, we are now into a third generation of people inhabiting our streets in this manner. I have already alluded to the fact that there is a certain percentage of the population on our streets that is in desperate need of intervention because of the severely psychotic state of mind in which they now live. It is indeed heartbreaking to see what our wrong-headed policies have wrought.
This population actually provides us with an opportunity. We need the ability to gently but firmly get these people into care. That means having a designated residential area (not the streets or parks) to which they can be taken where treatment is available. It is absolutely essential that they are not allowed to return to the streets.
The courts have been most futile in this regard. Officials who want to start to clean out the terrible safety and social hazard of tents on the street are often not permitted to — by the courts. The courts have insisted that there must be an alternate place to take these individuals.
We have started to see a move in the direction of alternate facilities being made available. In fact, it has gone beyond social housing; purchasing hotels is one of the latest developments in this regard. However, unless the individuals in these facilities are lovingly but strictly monitored, the ‘projects’ will only become more advanced tent-hoods with all of the risks to health and safety of the individual that we are seeing on the streets.
Social activists will shudder at the thought of people getting monitored. I can tell you it is already happening extensively now. Many drug users dealing with psychoses are in fact followed, and followed up on a 24 hour basis by social workers who are directly assigned to them and whose only task is to make sure they take their meds. No counselling — no prevention — just, “did you take your drugs today?”
This is not a criticism of the social workers. Most of them are sincere individuals who are truly concerned with those under their care. Yet, in most cases, they are highly restricted in what they can do.
Policing must focus more on those who are making drugs available
So what to do? First comes the awkward and expensive but necessary step of removing the tent-hoods and tent dwellers and not allowing them to return to the streets, parks and beaches. As already indicated, alternate decent shelter must already be in place as this relocation begins.
At this point, politicians must realize that some social activists, in sync with the media, will do all they can to make it look like this is a horrifying and brutal thing happening to these people. Elected officials can somewhat mitigate these attacks by making it very public and clear that this is a direction in which they will be moving. Most people in public life and most citizens realize that the media sensationalizing these situations, egged on by social activism, is actually harming the people that need the help. Politicians need to lean into this and not back off out of fear of media name-calling.
The social workers that are presently assigned to walking the streets to make sure their ‘cases’ are taking their meds before they crawl into their tents, must begin the process of using a different approach. It’s not easy to tell mentally disturbed individuals that they are not going to be allowed to sleep on that street or in that doorway. This process is going to take time, effort, patience and perseverance; however, you can be assured that you will begin to see a reduction in the problem. Word will get out on the street in terms of which cities are so-called ‘cracking down’ and which cities are not.
In conjunction with this shift in social service programming there is another uptick in activity that has to take place. Many people will cringe at the thought of my next suggestion, but it is the only thing that will help in terms of reducing the tidal wave of addictive and deadly drugs which flood the tents on our streets. That is, policing must focus more aggressively on those who are making the drugs available. I know it sounds like the word ‘crackdown,’ but it’s the only thing that is going to help to reduce the availability of the killer drugs now sweeping our streets.
Again, the public must be engaged in a social media awareness program. It must be shown with smart and truthful advertising that predators roam our streets in huge numbers to addict and perversely use and abuse the vulnerable. In many cases, the people who will be arrested for selling drugs will be drug addicts themselves who sell the pharmaceuticals that are legally dispensed to them by doctors.
This is a potential point of advantage in terms of reducing the problem. Appeals must be made to the political and judicial community explaining that the chance to get these unfortunate addictive folks into drug programs that work, means being held in secure facilities.This will give a chance to truly see a break in their addiction cycle.
There is an added reality here that must be followed. After they have come out of their 30, 60 or 90 day program, they must be assigned individual workers who will stay with them (figuratively) to make sure they are trained and assisted in getting back in the workforce or into a program of training and education. And part of that program has to be the awareness by the individual that they will not be receiving levels of financial support if they are not either working or being trained. Let’s be clear, the success rate in these types of approaches is going to be far less than 100%. The programs have to be more clearly refined and defined than I have done here, but I can guarantee that a consistent approach along these lines (not caving in to social and media activists) will gradually result in less people being lured to the streets, less people being preyed upon and less people becoming lifelong addicts who are a threat to themselves and those around them.
Personal street outreach success experience
I speak with some experience in terms of seeing these basic principles being put in place through a provincial social services program. It’s not perfect, but it works. I can also share something with you from personal experience.
Many years ago, my wife and I were involved in street outreach work in this regard. In those days, there were no facilities available for young people who wanted to make the break. We made makeshift living quarters in our basement to provide shelter while getting these young people into jobs and training programs and prevailing with them through the painful process of withdrawal.
Was it risky? Yes, we had parts of our home broken into at times; and yes, things were stolen. Did we see successes? Yes. Not 100%, but I can tell you we are still in touch with some of those today who have had wonderful and meaningful lives since breaking free. And yes, faith was an essential part of that program. But these wonderful people would never have broken free in the first place if they had been offered those ‘free stuff’ programs that my friend and I almost fell into on the streets of Vancouver way back in the wild 60’s.
From a utilitarian and fact-based point of view, there are two ways to go. We stay with the continuing methodologies, or the ones that I am outlining. The ones I outline will not be perfect, but they will have better results than what we have now.
So, what do you want? More or Less?