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- Thread starter MacLac
- Start date
bodsbods9090
Senior Member
I didn't have the sound on but there's pictures on tents on a roof. I'll see if I can find some headphones and listen. My bad.
Yup, my bad. I didn't read the article. Just saw pics of the roof and tents.
But I stand by what I said. That area is worse than it's ever been. I won't be going to any events there any time soon.
constance_chlore
Active Member
Come to think of it, the framing of the article really bugs me. It's veering awfully close to "no, it's not true, but the fact that we thought it could be tells us a lot about society!"
constance_chlore
Active Member
Up to you, but you're missing out on some damn good food.
kcantor
Senior Member
I’m a bit surprised you didn’t propose a Minimum Basic Income as it would eliminate many of the conflicts you note as well as the duplication and shortfalls of myriad services and their collective shortfalls from all three levels of government. It would also be fully transportable as new employment and housing options become available for individuals.
archited
Senior Member
Food and Shelter security is a must in this time in history. A "negative" income tax would greatly help people who need a basic living standard (at least as a starting point). The amount of wealth created in present day western societies is at an all-time high. I have changed my thinking over the years -- I now believe, having seen many instances of it, that people who don't have to stress themselves over food, shelter and health are more than likely going to fill the "next void" (in a progressive sense) with ambition to match their own specific set of interests -- how could that be bad for society.
SarcasticMarmot
Active Member
While personally I am a fan of both the concepts of a minimum basic income or a universal basic income, I do not believe either are politically feasible. It comes down to our weird obsession with "who deserves support". We have spent vast sums of money and created incredible bloated and intricate bureaucracies just to make sure "only those who deserve support get it", which creates a host of barriers, unintended consequences. The UCP, the party of "red tape reduction" has exponentially introduced layers of red tape to access supports for this very reason.
And its not just those who see themselves as paying for the supports that have this view, its often those receiving supports. One of the most disheartening realization was that many many people on income support strongly believe income support should be cut back because "those other people don't deserve it" while obviously they do. Their expectation is that those "other undeserving folks" will lose their supports while they won't. It's absolutely crazy, but it does help me understand how people in the states can so viscerally hate "Obamacare" while being dependent on it. At the end of the day, Many seniors who receive OAS won't be happy receiving supports from the same program as people with disabilities, and people with disabilities won't be ok receiving the same supports as people who are "just poor", and housed poor folk won't be ok receiving the same supports as those on the streets, etc.....
Its a problem I really wish we could overcome, as a streamlined Universal Basic Income or Guaranteed Minimum Income would greatly reduce our bureaucratic bloat and eliminate so many barriers and perverse incentives. But I have yet to see anybody working on the problem really address it.
The_Cat
Senior Member
The worst part about the poverty is that it’s reaching smaller centres as well. Red Deer and Wetaskiwin are having challenges with homelessness. Is there a way to provide some kind of social services?
MacLac
Senior Member
Only this increase now due to the media on our city citing exponential increase in overdoses....
www.alberta.ca
Expanding addiction detox capacity in Edmonton
Albertans suffering from addiction will have increased access to medical detox and pre-treatment beds at the new George Spady Society location in Edmonton.
www.alberta.ca
TAS
Senior Member
Am I missing something in this article about Montreal adding 6,300 additional below-market housing units with a $2million fund (split between 4 groups)?
How are they adding so many units for so little money?
"The Old Mission Brewery says it will receive $400,000, which will allow it to add 237 units to its housing stock by 2028."
Another group receiving $500,000 will be able to double its housing units from 1,000 to 2,000.
globalnews.ca
How are they adding so many units for so little money?
"The Old Mission Brewery says it will receive $400,000, which will allow it to add 237 units to its housing stock by 2028."
Another group receiving $500,000 will be able to double its housing units from 1,000 to 2,000.
Montreal says new housing fund will help create 6,300 non-market units in 10 years - Montreal | Globalnews.ca
The Old Mission Brewery says it will receive $400,000, which will allow it to add 237 units to its housing stock by 2028.
globalnews.ca
constance_chlore
Active Member
"'Some have already been bought and are under renovation, and some are in construction,' Jean-François Degenais, who oversees the Brewery’s rehousing program, said in a recent interview."Am I missing something in this article about Montreal adding 6,300 additional below-market housing units with a $2million fund (split between 4 groups)?
How are they adding so many units for so little money?
"The Old Mission Brewery says it will receive $400,000, which will allow it to add 237 units to its housing stock by 2028."
Another group receiving $500,000 will be able to double its housing units from 1,000 to 2,000.
Montreal says new housing fund will help create 6,300 non-market units in 10 years - Montreal | Globalnews.ca
The Old Mission Brewery says it will receive $400,000, which will allow it to add 237 units to its housing stock by 2028.
"The $2 million won’t go directly toward building housing. Rather, he said, it will help the capacity of the four non-profits to develop and manage more units."
Not sure exactly what this all means, but it seems clear that the $2 million is not covering anywhere near all the costs for this housing.
thommyjo
Senior Member
Currently in Santa Monica and it’s so bad here. Mix in the fent fold friends with all the delivery clankers and waymos, plus a good number of super cars and 3-12mil condos and it’s just quite something else. It’s like yaletown and east hastings had a baby.
Sad state of our world. We gotta sort out the drug supply that’s feeding all of this.
Sad state of our world. We gotta sort out the drug supply that’s feeding all of this.
archited
Senior Member
This article is worth copying in full from NPR...
An unusual 'village' aims to help people leave long-term homelessness for good
Chronic homelessness is at a record high, but there’s a shortage of housing, rehab and mental health treatment. One ambitious program in Utah is finding a way to offer all that plus jobs.
MURRAY, Utah — On a weekday morning, about two dozen formerly homeless men and women file into a small room at The Other Side Village near Salt Lake City.
“How have you felt since our last meeting?” asks Melissa Hepworth, a fellow resident here who tells the group that she’s felt “challenged with a little bit of shame.”
The people in this meeting have all been chronically unhoused — typically living outside for eight to nine years with significant addiction or mental illness. They are among the hardest to help, and that’s exactly who the Village has targeted since it opened two years ago.
“Once you've forgotten how to work, forgotten how to engage with other people, forgotten how to solve human problems, forgotten how to manage finances, it takes a lot of work to restore some of those abilities,” says Joseph Grenny, a co-founder of The Other Side Village.
Across the country, much-needed housing and treatment programs for the unhoused are in short supply. There’s also heated debate over which should be a bigger priority, with President Trump calling for forced treatment.
This ambitious project in Utah offers short-term housing, rehab and mental health treatment, along with a kind of training program. People start in a prep school that teaches life skills for those who may have lost them. They must get and stay sober and are also required to work.
The Village runs businesses to help create jobs for that. After six to 12 months, fellow residents vote to decide when someone is ready to “graduate.” At that point, they can move on to their own place, in tiny cottages the Village is building for permanent housing.
“We believe that human beings change when they're in an environment that expects something of them,” Grenny says. “When we succeed in doing hard things, we start to feel good about ourselves.”
There are coaches who’ve been there themselves
The conversation at morning meetings is meant to build community, because supporting each other is a big part of the therapy here. Resident Patricia Jean Martin says it feels like starting a new life with people she can “actually trust, be honest with, be accountable with.”
But that process can also be intense. “You do have to listen to the feedback, and just work on it and change your behaviors,” she says. “And if you don't, you will be kicked out.”
To help with that change, there are coaches who know exactly what people are going through.
“I was introduced to drugs by one of my mom's boyfriends, probably around nine or ten years old,” says coach Jackie Tress. After that came a car wreck and prescription pain pills, and then things really spiraled. Eventually she lost her house and daughter, living for years on the street and in and out of jail.
“Every time I got arrested I would think, all right, this is it, I'm done. And I would be provided resources,” she says. “But as soon as I hit the street, I would go right back to what I knew.”
Things changed when she went through The Other Side program herself, and could not believe one of the directors had also been homeless and addicted. “Because I only saw the woman that was in front of me,” she says. “She just had such purpose and grace and I'm like, OK, if she can do it, I can do it.”
To drive home this transformation, the common area of the prep school has photos of Jackie and other coaches when they first exited homelessness. She looks exhausted in her photo, with red marks on her face and deep bags below her eyes — nothing at all like now.
“Not something usually available to people who are homeless”
The Other Side began a decade ago as training to reintegrate people with a long history of crime and other troubles. But Grenny and other co-founders saw a growing need for a separate program to specifically address chronic homelessness.
That’s defined as when someone with a disability, including addiction or mental illness, has been without housing for at least a year straight, or repeatedly over several years. The number of chronically homeless people in the U.S. hit a record high last year of more than 150,000, mostly living outside.
“Trying to recover from substance abuse, and you're homeless and you're on the street or you're in a shelter, it's very tough,” says Dennis Culhane, who researches homelessness at the University of Pennsylvania.
Typical shelter-based programs may only house people at night, leaving them essentially still homeless during the day, he says. There’s little structure, certainly no jobs, and dropout rates are high. Meanwhile there’s very little residential rehab, and it’s usually for people who have private insurance or can pay out of pocket.
So the Utah program “is not something usually available to people who are homeless. It’s pretty unique in my mind,” he says.
For the lucky few who can get it, federally subsidized permanent supportive housing also offers treatment for addiction and mental illness. But it’s optional — not mandatory — and Culhane says while that works for most, it’s not for everyone.
“I did a study in supported housing in New York City,” he says. “And about 30% of the people wanted to be in a clean and sober environment. So I think we need every option possible.”
Still, Culhane says The Other Side Village model is expensive and may be hard to scale up, especially since the sober and work requirements bar federal funding.
The program aims to eventually become self-sufficient through the businesses it runs. But to launch, it has raised money from donors and gotten several million dollars in state funding. It’s also leasing a large patch of city-owned land for a dollar a year.
Creating community and jobs for the long term
In a wide open dirt field on that land in Salt Lake City, The Other Side Village CEO Preston Cochrane stands near rows of new tiny cottages. There are 60 completed so far, where the first graduates from the prep school moved in less than a year ago. The plan in the next few years is to double prep school enrollment and build hundreds more cottages.
“We have coaches that live on site as well, just like the prep school,” he says. There’s also a neighborhood council and regular resident meetings. “It’s a supportive community. For many of them it becomes their family.”
There’s an income limit, but otherwise people can stay here as long as they want.
A health clinic is also under construction that will include mental health services and dentistry, and there will be a grocery store. Both places will offer jobs for residents.
Cochrane says that “100% of the folks who live here maintain a sober lifestyle. They pay rent and they work.”
Jennifer Davis loves her tiny cottage home, and her job a short drive away at The Other Side Donuts. The store and the donuts are whimsical and full of color. “People are like, ‘Oh, wow,’ and they gasp,” she says. “It's a bright spot.”
Davis once had a professional career and owned a condo but says she spent years lost, without housing, family or friends. She’s now the donut store’s wholesale logistics manager and says she's grateful for the chance to start over.
“It proves to myself that I can have a career again. I didn't ruin it all with my choices,” she says. “I can do a great job. I can be a professional leader.”
An unusual 'village' aims to help people leave long-term homelessness for good
Chronic homelessness is at a record high, but there’s a shortage of housing, rehab and mental health treatment. One ambitious program in Utah is finding a way to offer all that plus jobs.
MURRAY, Utah — On a weekday morning, about two dozen formerly homeless men and women file into a small room at The Other Side Village near Salt Lake City.
“How have you felt since our last meeting?” asks Melissa Hepworth, a fellow resident here who tells the group that she’s felt “challenged with a little bit of shame.”
The people in this meeting have all been chronically unhoused — typically living outside for eight to nine years with significant addiction or mental illness. They are among the hardest to help, and that’s exactly who the Village has targeted since it opened two years ago.
“Once you've forgotten how to work, forgotten how to engage with other people, forgotten how to solve human problems, forgotten how to manage finances, it takes a lot of work to restore some of those abilities,” says Joseph Grenny, a co-founder of The Other Side Village.
Across the country, much-needed housing and treatment programs for the unhoused are in short supply. There’s also heated debate over which should be a bigger priority, with President Trump calling for forced treatment.
This ambitious project in Utah offers short-term housing, rehab and mental health treatment, along with a kind of training program. People start in a prep school that teaches life skills for those who may have lost them. They must get and stay sober and are also required to work.
The Village runs businesses to help create jobs for that. After six to 12 months, fellow residents vote to decide when someone is ready to “graduate.” At that point, they can move on to their own place, in tiny cottages the Village is building for permanent housing.
“We believe that human beings change when they're in an environment that expects something of them,” Grenny says. “When we succeed in doing hard things, we start to feel good about ourselves.”
There are coaches who’ve been there themselves
The conversation at morning meetings is meant to build community, because supporting each other is a big part of the therapy here. Resident Patricia Jean Martin says it feels like starting a new life with people she can “actually trust, be honest with, be accountable with.”
But that process can also be intense. “You do have to listen to the feedback, and just work on it and change your behaviors,” she says. “And if you don't, you will be kicked out.”
To help with that change, there are coaches who know exactly what people are going through.
“I was introduced to drugs by one of my mom's boyfriends, probably around nine or ten years old,” says coach Jackie Tress. After that came a car wreck and prescription pain pills, and then things really spiraled. Eventually she lost her house and daughter, living for years on the street and in and out of jail.
“Every time I got arrested I would think, all right, this is it, I'm done. And I would be provided resources,” she says. “But as soon as I hit the street, I would go right back to what I knew.”
Things changed when she went through The Other Side program herself, and could not believe one of the directors had also been homeless and addicted. “Because I only saw the woman that was in front of me,” she says. “She just had such purpose and grace and I'm like, OK, if she can do it, I can do it.”
To drive home this transformation, the common area of the prep school has photos of Jackie and other coaches when they first exited homelessness. She looks exhausted in her photo, with red marks on her face and deep bags below her eyes — nothing at all like now.
“Not something usually available to people who are homeless”
The Other Side began a decade ago as training to reintegrate people with a long history of crime and other troubles. But Grenny and other co-founders saw a growing need for a separate program to specifically address chronic homelessness.
That’s defined as when someone with a disability, including addiction or mental illness, has been without housing for at least a year straight, or repeatedly over several years. The number of chronically homeless people in the U.S. hit a record high last year of more than 150,000, mostly living outside.
“Trying to recover from substance abuse, and you're homeless and you're on the street or you're in a shelter, it's very tough,” says Dennis Culhane, who researches homelessness at the University of Pennsylvania.
Typical shelter-based programs may only house people at night, leaving them essentially still homeless during the day, he says. There’s little structure, certainly no jobs, and dropout rates are high. Meanwhile there’s very little residential rehab, and it’s usually for people who have private insurance or can pay out of pocket.
So the Utah program “is not something usually available to people who are homeless. It’s pretty unique in my mind,” he says.
For the lucky few who can get it, federally subsidized permanent supportive housing also offers treatment for addiction and mental illness. But it’s optional — not mandatory — and Culhane says while that works for most, it’s not for everyone.
“I did a study in supported housing in New York City,” he says. “And about 30% of the people wanted to be in a clean and sober environment. So I think we need every option possible.”
Still, Culhane says The Other Side Village model is expensive and may be hard to scale up, especially since the sober and work requirements bar federal funding.
The program aims to eventually become self-sufficient through the businesses it runs. But to launch, it has raised money from donors and gotten several million dollars in state funding. It’s also leasing a large patch of city-owned land for a dollar a year.
Creating community and jobs for the long term
In a wide open dirt field on that land in Salt Lake City, The Other Side Village CEO Preston Cochrane stands near rows of new tiny cottages. There are 60 completed so far, where the first graduates from the prep school moved in less than a year ago. The plan in the next few years is to double prep school enrollment and build hundreds more cottages.
“We have coaches that live on site as well, just like the prep school,” he says. There’s also a neighborhood council and regular resident meetings. “It’s a supportive community. For many of them it becomes their family.”
There’s an income limit, but otherwise people can stay here as long as they want.
A health clinic is also under construction that will include mental health services and dentistry, and there will be a grocery store. Both places will offer jobs for residents.
Cochrane says that “100% of the folks who live here maintain a sober lifestyle. They pay rent and they work.”
Jennifer Davis loves her tiny cottage home, and her job a short drive away at The Other Side Donuts. The store and the donuts are whimsical and full of color. “People are like, ‘Oh, wow,’ and they gasp,” she says. “It's a bright spot.”
Davis once had a professional career and owned a condo but says she spent years lost, without housing, family or friends. She’s now the donut store’s wholesale logistics manager and says she's grateful for the chance to start over.
“It proves to myself that I can have a career again. I didn't ruin it all with my choices,” she says. “I can do a great job. I can be a professional leader.”
archited
Senior Member
Photos that go with the previous article copied from NPR files...
This proves to me that the angels aren't in "heaven"; they are among us right here on earth.
This needs to be brought to the attention of municipal politicians and should in fact be a test for Mayoral candidates.
This proves to me that the angels aren't in "heaven"; they are among us right here on earth.
This needs to be brought to the attention of municipal politicians and should in fact be a test for Mayoral candidates.
Greenspace
Senior Member
List of day shelter spaces if anyone is curious (in the latest Emergency Weather Response press release from the City):
---
Expanded overnight shelter
Al Rashid Mosque (13070 113 Street NW) will open an overnight shelter from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., providing up to 50 spaces to supplement the existing shelter capacity funded by the Government of Alberta. The shelter is open to walk-ins and is on the north bus route.
In addition to 24/7 shelter sites, there are day shelter spaces operational in these locations:
Navigation Centre
The Navigation Centre, operated by the Government of Alberta and Hope Mission, offers access to 24/7 emergency shelter, income and ID support, health services, housing support and a pet-friendly service. The Navigation Centre is located in Bissell Centre West (10530 96 Street NW) and is open Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
edmonton.ca/ExtremeWeather
---
Expanded overnight shelter
Al Rashid Mosque (13070 113 Street NW) will open an overnight shelter from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., providing up to 50 spaces to supplement the existing shelter capacity funded by the Government of Alberta. The shelter is open to walk-ins and is on the north bus route.
In addition to 24/7 shelter sites, there are day shelter spaces operational in these locations:
- AAWEAR Reconnects, 10024 82 Ave NW (upstairs), Tuesdays, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- Boyle Street Community Services, wâwâhtêwa, 10327 97 St NW, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m - 8 p.m.
- Hope Mission, Bruce Reith Centre, 9908 106 Ave NW, seven days a week, 7:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
- Herb Jamieson Centre, 10014 105A Ave NW, Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
- iHuman Youth Society, 9635 102 A Ave NW, December 8 & 9 11 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Starting December 10, seven days a week, 11 a.m. - 9 p.m.
- Jasper Place Wellness Centre, Community Health Centre, 16114 100A Ave NW, Mondays and Wednesdays, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.
- The Mustard Seed, Canora Community Impact Centre, 15740 Stony Plain Rd NW, Hours to be extended by mid-December to Monday - Friday 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- The Mustard Seed, Mosaic Centre, 6504 132 Ave NW, Mondays and Wednesdays, 9 a.m. - 12 p.m., 1 p.m. - 3 p.m., Tuesdays, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays 9 a.m. - 11 a.m.
- The Mustard Seed, Strathcona Baptist Church Community Impact Centre, 8318 104 St NW (back entrance), Monday - Friday, 9:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Navigation Centre
The Navigation Centre, operated by the Government of Alberta and Hope Mission, offers access to 24/7 emergency shelter, income and ID support, health services, housing support and a pet-friendly service. The Navigation Centre is located in Bissell Centre West (10530 96 Street NW) and is open Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
edmonton.ca/ExtremeWeather