[Surrealplaces]

Medicine Hat went all in on the housing first strategy, and it worked briefly, but unfortunately things kind of regressed back to the previous situation. There are more homeless people on the streets now in MH than there was before the housing initiative, but without the housing solution maybe that number is much higher today?

I'll always believe housing needs to be part of the strategy, but I also don't believe it's a full solution, given the substance addition issue. The best we can do is roll out a housing solution, give it some time and see who falls through the cracks and can't be helped. Then it's a different conversation for the remaining, forced rehab? I don't know.

If we got housing down 63% like Houston it means probably 37% fall into that category of un-helpable, or extremely difficult to help. 37% is still much better than 100%.

 

[Mountain Man]

We should definitely be doing something, currently it seems the approach is ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

 

[Silence&Motion]

Unfortunately, the Trump administration just put out an executive order banning federal funds for any "Housing First" program - even thought it was a Republican idea (one of a few good ones to come out of the Bush administration). I guess, like EVs and mRNA vaccines, they think it's not manly enough, or too woke.

It's not clear what exactly will replace Housing First, other than performative tough talk. I've often banged my head against the wall on this forum arguing that tough talk of "cracking down" and "being like China" is not a policy solution. If you want to get people off the street, you need actual plans for where they're going to go and how they're going to get there. Building specialized institutions to put them is extremely expensive, which is why conservatives typically favoured "Housing First", which made use of surplus rental units on the private market. Of course, that depends on housing being plentiful and cheap, which was more the case in the 1990s and 2000s, but less the case now. When there's a shortage of housing, the people living on the edge of homelessness are the ones who lose the game of musical chairs.

My fear is that "tough talk" and "cracking down" will just result in the de facto strategy of police "whack-a-mole" where patrol officers spend their entire shift driving from one complaint to the next, ripping down encampments, picking people up, dropping them off at shelters or jails, only to have them back on the street in a matter of hours (and at an extremely high cost to taxpayers to go through the whole, useless cycle). But, sure, media images of angry officers ripping down tents and throwing people into paddy wagons looks good for Trump's social media content.

 

[boreal96]

Vancouver has plenty of subsidised housing and it's not exactly working out of them. I'm not sure how things operate Houston but I think their crisis is less severe than Canadian cities and West Coast American cities. It could also be that their homelessness is less linked to substance abuse than it is here.

Meanwhile, our downtowns can't afford more trials and errors. The situation is getting really dramatic and at this pace, some cities risk ending up with streets fully abandoned by normal people like Hastings. The Drop-in-Centre is unfair to all of the population of the East Village, Bridgeland, Chinatown and the surroundings. I know the Drop-In Centre center has been here for a while, before the E&V revitalisation, but it's greatly affecting the quality of life of 50K/100K people (not just the people living in the area but also shopping, working, transiting). Are there benefits to having the Drop-In Centre located downtown? Absolutely, it makes essential services more accessible to people in need. But should the needs and safety of 100,000 others also be part of the conversation? In my opinion, yes and it has not been the case at all, even though the Drop-In Centre is financed by the taxes of these 100.000.

I'm a EV resident, pay a significant amount of taxes and never had a say in the story.

 

[trtcttc]

The solutions are out there... in fact they have been successfully implemented in another oil and gas city from a conservative corner of the world. We could easily do this in Calgary if A: we had a provincial government that actually gave a shit about solving the problem, instead of paying lip service to it and instead making moves so that the issue is downloaded onto municipalities they want to make life difficult for and B: if we moved past the mentality common in most English-speaking countries that someone who is homeless and suffering from addiction or mental health has to somehow prove their worthiness by either getting sober or getting on meds before we give them help with finding a home. We have a problem in North America where the homeless, renters and the working poor are viewed as somehow morally inferior to those who own homes and so therefore must continually prove their worth to society (see most NIMBYism).

What happened? In 2012, the city went all-in on a concept called "Housing First." Since then, homelessness is down 63% in the greater Houston area, and more than 30,000 people have been housed.

Housing First means spend money on getting the unhoused into their own apartments, subsidize their rent, then provide the services needed to stabilize their lives – not fix the person first; not just add more shelter beds.

"Our natural instinct when we see homelessness increasing is to hire more outreach workers and to build more shelter beds," said Mandy Chapman Semple, the architect of Houston's success story. She now advises other cities on how to replicate it, among them Dallas, New Orleans, and Oklahoma City. "The idea that if you have no permanent place to live, that you're also going to be able to transform and tackle complex mental health issues, addiction issues, complex financial issues? It's just unrealistic."

Inside Houston's successful strategy to reduce homelessness

Since 2012, the nation's fourth-largest city has reduced homelessness in the greater Houston area by 63%. Now other cities are looking to replicate this model.

www.cbsnews.com

2012 may seem recent but the drug market has changed so significantly. It's also why the Portugal examples people love to cite (including myself in the past), no longer work in today's context. This worked at a time when people were addicted to at worst, heroin, and many, even softer drugs. Now, people take so much fentanyl, there's permanent damage that's unlikely to reverse with any treatment. A homelessness problem is solvable, a drug crisis that is tens or hundreds times more severe than in the past, I don't think any city has successfully solved.

 

[Aardappel]

It's also why the Portugal examples people love to cite (including myself in the past), no longer work in today's context.

Portugal's decline is more nuanced than that. It isn't just a surge of worse drugs but also a general de-funding and placing responsibilities onto nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations which simply do not have the funds, capacity, or scale to make a long-term positive impact; leading to the worsening of the situation.

From the WAPO two years ago (archive.is link due to paywall):

After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug prevention programs.

I understand that Portugal got stereotyped to "just decriminalized drugs and solved addiction" over the course of it's decriminalization experiment, leading to disasters like the recent Oregon decriminalization disaster, but historically Portugal had a very well funded and well oiled government service that was able to support and force drug rehabilitation for its citizens. However, when funding dried up, so did the positive results.

The lesson from Portugal is that anti-drug addiction measures need to be well funded and well supported by their respective governments and if they are not, they simply will not work. Regardless, nearly any anti-homeless initiative needs government funding regardless of its model. For example, since 1984, Finland had decreasing number of homeless people in the country in large part thanks to its model of "Housing First"; making sure that homeless people had a safe and steady place to sleep before anything else. However, Finland has experienced it's first rise in homelessness in eighteen years this year. The reason why, of course, being rising rents due to a decrease in housing construction and availability along with the current right wing Finnish government slashing welfare and funding for Finland's anti-homelessness initiatives.

“The current government has pursued an exceptionally aggressive policy of cutting welfare and unemployment benefits, housing support for low-income families, and exemptions for part-time work,” said Hukka. “Their aim has been to drive down budget deficits, and they have done so without the customary parliamentary evaluations—which usually involve taking into account the cumulative effects of policy changes. Added to this is the downturn in the national economy and the reduction of state-supported affordable housing.


“It’s not a real surprise—a rise in homelessness is what happens when you cut housing benefits, tell low-income families to find cheaper housing, and offer no feasible supply of affordable rental properties. A huge shame, really, and totally preventable. Finland’s national debt is not out of control. Biting the bullet and accepting that investing in social housing and welfare benefits during a downturn – even if it requires increasing budget deficits – is, in my opinion, a reasonable alternative. Welfare reforms can wait for an economic upturn.

The point of it all is that any and all anti-poverty, anti-homelessness, and anti-addiction projects need good and consistent long-term funding else they simply fall apart. Hell, even actively criminalizing, punishing, prosecuting, and forcing rehab requires funding. Without funding of any kind of any program to deal with the homeless and drug addicts requires funding that these programs simply don't get, and without that funding the problem only grows. Even something like moving or just demolishing DIC and other central supportive housing requires funding they're not receiving. So unless governments pony up, and I have a feeling most right wing conservative governments won't these days, the issue will simply only worsen.

Best you can do is simply continue to focus on housing affordability/supply so people have less chances to slip through the cracks and into chronic homelessness.

 

[trtcttc]

Portugal's decline is more nuanced than that. It isn't just a surge of worse drugs but also a general de-funding and placing responsibilities onto nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations which simply do not have the funds, capacity, or scale to make a long-term positive impact; leading to the worsening of the situation.

From the WAPO two years ago (archive.is link due to paywall):


I understand that Portugal got stereotyped to "just decriminalized drugs and solved addiction" over the course of it's decriminalization experiment, leading to disasters like the recent Oregon decriminalization disaster, but historically Portugal had a very well funded and well oiled government service that was able to support and force drug rehabilitation for its citizens. However, when funding dried up, so did the positive results.

The lesson from Portugal is that anti-drug addiction measures need to be well funded and well supported by their respective governments and if they are not, they simply will not work. Regardless, nearly any anti-homeless initiative needs government funding regardless of its model. For example, since 1984, Finland had decreasing number of homeless people in the country in large part thanks to its model of "Housing First"; making sure that homeless people had a safe and steady place to sleep before anything else. However, Finland has experienced it's first rise in homelessness in eighteen years this year. The reason why, of course, being rising rents due to a decrease in housing construction and availability along with the current right wing Finnish government slashing welfare and funding for Finland's anti-homelessness initiatives.

The point of it all is that any and all anti-poverty, anti-homelessness, and anti-addiction projects need good and consistent long-term funding else they simply fall apart. Hell, even actively criminalizing, punishing, prosecuting, and forcing rehab requires funding. Without funding of any kind of any program to deal with the homeless and drug addicts requires funding that these programs simply don't get, and without that funding the problem only grows. Even something like moving or just demolishing DIC and other central supportive housing requires funding they're not receiving. So unless governments pony up, and I have a feeling most right wing conservative governments won't these days, the issue will simply only worsen.

Best you can do is simply continue to focus on housing affordability/supply so people have less chances to slip through the cracks and into chronic homelessness.

There are cities in the US with extremely well funded programs on a per capita basis, whether they put the money to good use is another issue, but I don't think anywhere has successfully solved the current drug crisis severity. Fentanyl and other synthetic drugs haven't been as big of an issue in Europe and their still largely on the heroin supply.

Why are fentanyl deaths in Europe a fraction of those seen in North America?

Established supply chains, rules around prescribing and advertising opioids lead to less abuse

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[Red Star]

I fully agree with Infrastructure Enthusiast’s ideas. I’m at the point where they need to be gathered up and forcibly sent to some type of set up outside of the city where they can detox, get mental support, learn new skills, and get set up for introduction back to society. The ones that can pass will be welcomed back with some affordable housing. The ones that refuse or are too far gone can wander around the corn fields in peace and leave everyone else alone. There are over 7 billion on this planet. Everyone can’t be saved.

That's a great idea!

In fact, before the 1980's there used to be such facilities. Unfortunately, our society can't enforce vagrancy laws or use force to gather people up and get them help as it would hurt people's feelings and infringe on their charter of rights. As a result, our society ends up treating homeless people like cows in India. And that's why we can't have nice things like glass on the Peace Bridge or enjoy an evening meal in EV.

 

[Sambo]

If we move it, where will it go?

Ogden

 

[Silence&Motion]

Vancouver has plenty of subsidised housing and it's not exactly working out of them.

Are you suggesting that Vancouver is somehow an easy place to find affordable housing? I accept that drugs are a big part of the problem, but housing is also part of the problem. There are plenty of people with addictions who live seemingly stable lives in a private home, but they're only one eviction away from ending up on the streets and becoming completely consumed by their addiction. The tighter the housing market, the more likely that eviction becomes. It's not a complete coincidence that the places with the most expensive housing also have the largest homeless populations.

Best you can do is simply continue to focus on housing affordability/supply so people have less chances to slip through the cracks and into chronic homelessness.

Exactly.

As a result, our society ends up treating homeless people like cows in India.

This is blatantly false. The issue is not that society's too full of bleeding heart liberals. The police are constantly harassing homeless people. The UCP doesn't seem to have any qualms about villainizing the homeless. And just look at what the Trump administration is doing to immigrants. We're clearly not a bleeding heart society. The issue is that homelessness is a tough problem that requires expensive solutions and conservatives don't like spending money. If one of you can convince the UCP to build some big complex on the outskirts of town to house and feed people with addictions, I'd be all for it.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Vancouver has plenty of subsidised housing and it's not exactly working out of them. I'm not sure how things operate Houston but I think their crisis is less severe than Canadian cities and West Coast American cities. It could also be that their homelessness is less linked to substance abuse than it is here.

Meanwhile, our downtowns can't afford more trials and errors. The situation is getting really dramatic and at this pace, some cities risk ending up with streets fully abandoned by normal people like Hastings. The Drop-in-Centre is unfair to all of the population of the East Village, Bridgeland, Chinatown and the surroundings. I know the Drop-In Centre center has been here for a while, before the E&V revitalisation, but it's greatly affecting the quality of life of 50K/100K people (not just the people living in the area but also shopping, working, transiting). Are there benefits to having the Drop-In Centre located downtown? Absolutely, it makes essential services more accessible to people in need. But should the needs and safety of 100,000 others also be part of the conversation? In my opinion, yes and it has not been the case at all, even though the Drop-In Centre is financed by the taxes of these 100.000.

I'm a EV resident, pay a significant amount of taxes and never had a say in the story.

I'm not sure how Calgary would compare to Houston or Vancouver. I suspect the issue differs somewhat for all three cities, but I think we need to at least take a run at a housing solution as the first step. The housing could be dispersed into smaller clusters and spread out in different areas. I also think the housing would be better away from the DIC, and in that case should in theory provide some immediate relief to EV. Nobody knows how successful the housing program would be, but we won't know until we try it. We know housing won't solve the issue for all homeless, but it'll give us a clear picture of how many are in the range of extremely difficult to impossible to help. The step for those people is a more difficult solution and another conversation.

I get your frustration. I don't live in EV, but have a friend who lives in Evolution and have heard the frustrating stories, and understand not wanting to spend time experimenting, but IMO, housing would at least get the ball rolling, and would provide some fairly quick relief to EV residents.

 

[CBBarnett]

While not everything is a housing problem, a sufficiently affordable housing supply is a pre-requisite for any other solution to be effective.

Tough or soft approaches to policing, relocating facilities etc. none of that will be meaningfully impactful if there's always a poverty pipeline - exacerbated by a lack of housing access - for people on the margins.

 

[jhappy77]

My main issue with housing first is there is a significant chunk of the homeless population is unwilling or uncapable of following basic rules, leading to chaos for everyone nearby. Here in Vancouver, some druggies were starting fires in the SROs every couple weeks (via genius moves like using a blowtorch to do meth indoors, or creating a jerry rigged charging system for their stolen ebike collection). This closed down nearby businesses and in general many people started to avoid Granville Street. If this type of person is getting free housing, free food, free everything on the taxpayer dime, then we should do the rest of society a favor and move them somewhere far outside the city where they aren't going to harm everyone else along the way.

As a society, we've become unwilling to enforce any sort of lasting consequences for the subset of homeless people who are anti-social "agents of chaos". All compassion and no toughness is just called foolishness. We need to be both compassionate for those who need help and tough to those who are abusing the system. And if we can reduce the anti-social behavior that's harming communities, there will be more support and acceptance for programs giving housing and help for people who need it and appreciate it.

 

[The Familia]

We have a winner! Thank you jhappy77 I couldn’t agree more with your statement. I’m all for assisting the people who need it most and want/willing to be helped. Those that are agents of chaos and do not want any assistance should be forcibly removed from our streets and exiled as would have been the case in years gone by. No time or patience for these types of people anymore.

 

[Surrealplaces]

My main issue with housing first is there is a significant chunk of the homeless population is unwilling or uncapable of following basic rules, leading to chaos for everyone nearby. Here in Vancouver, some druggies were starting fires in the SROs every couple weeks (via genius moves like using a blowtorch to do meth indoors, or creating a jerry rigged charging system for their stolen ebike collection). This closed down nearby businesses and in general many people started to avoid Granville Street. If this type of person is getting free housing, free food, free everything on the taxpayer dime, then we should do the rest of society a favor and move them somewhere far outside the city where they aren't going to harm everyone else along the way.

As a society, we've become unwilling to enforce any sort of lasting consequences for the subset of homeless people who are anti-social "agents of chaos". All compassion and no toughness is just called foolishness. We need to be both compassionate for those who need help and tough to those who are abusing the system. And if we can reduce the anti-social behavior that's harming communities, there will be more support and acceptance for programs giving housing and help for people who need it and appreciate it.

I think the trick would be to do as good of a screening process as you can when to decide who moves in. There's no question, not all homeless people can be helped, by housing, or any method really, but if we can get the ones who can be helped into housing and separated from the rest, it's a good start.
Of course it's all easier said than done. I'm not sure what has been done in Vancouver. Maybe they tried to screen people before housing them as well?