Until the Danielle Smith government funds affordable housing in Edmonton as well as they fund it in the rest of Alberta, I will NEVER call the EPS snitch line on a single human just trying to barely survive in this nasty province run by its evil government.
 
trevorhayden said:
Until the Danielle Smith government funds affordable housing in Edmonton as well as they fund it in the rest of Alberta, I will NEVER call the EPS snitch line on a single human just trying to barely survive in this nasty province run by its evil government.
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Strangely, I don't recall the situation being new only with the ucp victory, there were problems before under rachel too or are you saying otherwise? Time to stop playing politics with people's lives and using them like pawns
 
trevorhayden said:
I agree with you. Danielle Smith is playing politics with peoples' lives and using them like pawns.
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You can give these people a home and they wouldn’t even know what to do with it. They would destroy it. Not to mention, housing in Edmonton is affordable. Two people making minimum wage can rent a low end apartment together for $1100-$1200 per month, so $600 each. Working minimum wage, you would bring in $2500 per month and pay virtually no tax and qualify for all sort of extra goodies. Would it be easy and glamorous? No. Can you make it work? Absolutely
 
trevorhayden said:
Until the Danielle Smith government funds affordable housing in Edmonton as well as they fund it in the rest of Alberta, I will NEVER call the EPS snitch line on a single human just trying to barely survive in this nasty province run by its evil government.
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While I can empathize with the perceived “compassion” in this sort of view, it’s, respectfully, nonsense.

1. Letting people OD on the street and in transit centres isn’t compassionate.
2. Putting them in essentially palliative “homes” to OD in just a few more months isn’t magically more compassionate.
3. No city that’s taking that approach in North America is succeeding. See all of the west coast.
4. The housing first assumption was based too heavily on the drugs not being as serious as they are today and the cost of housing not being as high as it is today. Spending 500-1.5mil to house people (see LA), and then providing them drugs through safe injection etc, is just wasting a ton a taxpayer money to let people still kill themselves.
5. You’re failing your fellow citizens, many of who are vulnerable (kids, elderly, disabled), by not taking action on these issues.
6. You’re applying a view of victimhood to all drug users and homeless people. Some are for sure victims. Most have complex stories. But they aren’t excused from illegal activity. And they aren’t more important than other citizens who pay taxes, don’t commit crimes, and who rely on transit for work/school/shopping, which all contribute to our society.

We need to reform the legal system/policing.
We need to bring back mental institutions and some people will have to permanently live in them due to very complex needs that don’t allow them to safely function in public.
We need a 0 tolerance view of drug use in public spaces again.

I can respect why this type of thinking resonates with many. But frankly, I think it only makes the problem worse. We can’t house 5000 people with wraparound social supports. The cost is astronomical.
 
As much as I want social housing better funded. I don't see any of that happening in the near future. With UCP or the CPC.

I m starting to think like Ralph Klein now and that Scares me. Time to ship all the people on the streets back to their home communities and let them deal with it.

Was serving dinner at an inner city facility last week and talk with a few people from the east coast that came looking for work. But even I think sending people back to their Rural Alberta communities may be more humane.
 
Airboy said:
I do wish we had them back. Since they were shut down I've noticed more issues downtown.
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I remember being in a talk in 2019 by a few U of A professors/organization indicating that shutting down SCS sites would result in this. Some in the audience were skeptical but half a decade later they’re proven right.
 
Mental institutions were closed in part due to horrific abuse, which led to them being treated in community. This is fine in theory however it also requires a good well funded social support system to allow that.

It’s not fair both to the community who aren’t equipped or funded to handle such complex needs or to the people who have severe mental health conditions who don’t have much choice to end up on the street where you then have problems with drugs, get preyed on by gangs, etc. There needs to be a serious expansion of social services to make this work, and fast because things aren’t improving.

thommyjo said:
. The housing first assumption was based too heavily on the drugs not being as serious as they are today and the cost of housing not being as high as it is today. Spending 500-1.5mil to house people (see LA), and then providing them drugs through safe injection etc, is just wasting a ton a taxpayer money to let people still kill themselves.
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God help us when tranq makes its way here, that drug makes Fentanyl look like aspirin.
 
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Garneau2Go said:
Mental institutions were closed in part due to horrific abuse, which led to them being treated in community. This is fine in theory however it also requires a good well funded social support system to allow that.

It’s not fair both to the community who aren’t equipped or funded to handle such complex needs or to the people who have severe mental health conditions who don’t have much choice to end up on the street where you then have problems with drugs, get preyed on by gangs, etc. There needs to be a serious expansion of social services to make this work, and fast because things aren’t improving.


God help us when tranq makes its way here, that drug makes Fentanyl look like aspirin.
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Sadly tranq already hit us and our supply last year. It's why you would have seen a significant amount of people who were much more non-responsive and bent over while walking last year.
 
Garneau2Go said:
Mental institutions were closed in part due to horrific abuse, which led to them being treated in community. This is fine in theory however it also requires a good well funded social support system to allow that.

It’s not fair both to the community who aren’t equipped or funded to handle such complex needs or to the people who have severe mental health conditions who don’t have much choice to end up on the street where you then have problems with drugs, get preyed on by gangs, etc. There needs to be a serious expansion of social services to make this work, and fast because things aren’t improving.
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Yes. We have strategies that may be good (i.e. harm reduction strategies, community treatment instead of institutions) but are not full solutions themselves and require greater wrap around supports to make them successful. That doesn't end at supports for the individual either, but must include measures to mitigate negative externalities. Social disorder at Valley Line LRT stations, for instance.

Unfortunately, all too often they are implemented virtually independently, and the results are rarely positive. Worse yet, it sours public opinion on what otherwise might be legitimate key pieces to the solution, draining political will along with it.
 
The real problem is that rural towns send all their “not so brightest” here to the city for us to deal with. As a result our social system gets overflowed. Also there is some hypocrisy in what some people are saying. If a person is to sick in the mind to get off a pill, and the pill Is addictive and makes them more sick you get an infinite cycle. All the way until they OD on the street. The real problem here is that the large portion of the population is naive enough to believe that if we offered the service these people would choose it. If you work downtown you would know that they are too sick and I mean if you walk around downtown not just drive and see glimpses for bits and seconds. These people are too sick and keep getting more and more sick the more we let them be. They largely aren’t cognitive enough to know their own names while high and are unpredictable and are even violent. So whichever one it is whether you want to claim they are mentally ill or sick off of a drug they can’t get off of. They are unpredictable and shouldn’t be left alone to deal with it and get high for free. Even housing them wouldn’t get most of them off of the drugs. Being human isn’t just feeling bad for another human. Sometimes you need to save people. They should be slowly taken off the street and put in a facility with forced detox. They should spend the next few months speaking with psychologists and being mentored back into basic things like keeping a healthy routine and maybe even learn some trades to enter back into our workforce. That’s something radical of course but at what point is enough enough. If family members are available they should be able to sign the individual out at anytime of course but they are then responsible for that person and what they do. There are people out there that aren’t sick and are just homeless. Those very same people avoid these shelters because of the unpredictable nature of the people out there. Our entire system doesn’t help anyone and costs everyone money and time. All we do is delay death with small success stories here and there. Of course this would require lots of money and I don’t plan on putting money where my mouth is lol. Just a thought to add to the discussion!
 
God said:
The real problem is that rural towns send all their “not so brightest” here to the city for us to deal with. As a result our social system gets overflowed. Also there is some hypocrisy in what some people are saying. If a person is to sick in the mind to get off a pill, and the pill Is addictive and makes them more sick you get an infinite cycle. All the way until they OD on the street. The real problem here is that the large portion of the population is naive enough to believe that if we offered the service these people would choose it. If you work downtown you would know that they are too sick and I mean if you walk around downtown not just drive and see glimpses for bits and seconds. These people are too sick and keep getting more and more sick the more we let them be. They largely aren’t cognitive enough to know their own names while high and are unpredictable and are even violent. So whichever one it is whether you want to claim they are mentally ill or sick off of a drug they can’t get off of. They are unpredictable and shouldn’t be left alone to deal with it and get high for free. Even housing them wouldn’t get most of them off of the drugs. Being human isn’t just feeling bad for another human. Sometimes you need to save people. They should be slowly taken off the street and put in a facility with forced detox. They should spend the next few months speaking with psychologists and being mentored back into basic things like keeping a healthy routine and maybe even learn some trades to enter back into our workforce. That’s something radical of course but at what point is enough enough. If family members are available they should be able to sign the individual out at anytime of course but they are then responsible for that person and what they do. There are people out there that aren’t sick and are just homeless. Those very same people avoid these shelters because of the unpredictable nature of the people out there. Our entire system doesn’t help anyone and costs everyone money and time. All we do is delay death with small success stories here and there. Of course this would require lots of money and I don’t plan on putting money where my mouth is lol. Just a thought to add to the discussion!
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Agree with a lot of this. I can respect the intention of many who support SCS, housing, not clearing encampments, etc. but the reality is that all the cities most fully embracing these approaches are a mess.

They aren’t working.

And financially it’s a death spiral.

People use SCS, and it often just delays death. People get wrap around support and housing, but many never recover to the point of functioning on their own so they simply relapse. We can let encampments be instead of clearing, and you get hastings, Seattle CHAZ, and just more death/drug abuse.

when you daughter is anorexic, you don’t help her throw up. You don’t let her live alone. You don’t give her free reign to social media. You take her to the hospital and rehab to try to save her life before she kill’s herself. Even if she doesn’t want it.

It’s complex with people’s rights and freedoms vs children/parents. But I don’t believe it’s compassionate to keep supporting strategies that are killing thousands every year across our major cities. It’s not working.

And letting those who are sick/addicted, and often criminals, assault and do harm to innocent others is horrible. Where’s the compassion for those people?
 
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