Stop-Gap Housing
It is snowing hard outside. It is not that cold -4C but with the wind and the snow it is closer to -13. Victoria has a hardcore homeless population of between 700 and 1000. They are damned cold tonight if they have not made into shelters.
Over at The Tyee Vancouver architect Gregory Henriquez makes the case for “Stop Gap Housing”. Essentially pods of the sort of modular housing used in mining camps and in the tar sands.
Modular homes such as Stop Gap Housing could be built for less than $40,000 per unit, according to Geller’s estimates. (That figure includes all furniture and fixtures, but does not include the price of land, which would be provided by the city, or the price of management, which might be funded by the province.) the tyee
It is not a perfect solution; but it is a solution which could house all of Victoria’s homeless for 30-40 million and be put in place on a twelve month timeline. And, before anyone whines about the cost, the cost of doing nothing works out to around $55,000 per homeless person in health, corrections and social services. While having a place to live would not eliminate those costs it would reduce them substantially.
At the moment the world’s leading manufacturers of modular work crew housing are located in BC. And they have slack capacity as the tar sands in particular are being scaled back.
So, along with pissing away 4 billion dollars on carcos, Harper might suggest spending say, a billion, to provide shelter to Canada’s homeless.
December 21st, 2008 at 6:53 am
We had such shelters about 35 years ago. They were called mental institutions. I would guess they were more effective than anything we have today. THe hard core homeless have way more problems than can be solved by giving them a place to live.
December 21st, 2008 at 7:14 am
Yep, it’s reasonable. But what do we do about a) those who will never go too a shelter; and b) the “if you build it, they will come” eventuality?
December 21st, 2008 at 8:11 am
Well said. Not to mention the lost opportunity costs. The presumption that people in need are a net expense is not seeing the whole picture. Who knows who might be that one “with dauntless breast / The little tyrant of his fields withstood” given half a chance.
December 21st, 2008 at 8:53 am
“And, before anyone whines about the cost, the cost of doing nothing works out to around $55,000 per homeless person in health, corrections and social services.”
It doesn’t if you just shoot the useless twats. Bullets are cheap.
December 21st, 2008 at 10:18 am
The only problem I see Jay is if you build them, they will come. You will fill the new housing to capacity and find you have another new thousand on the street. I could be wrong of course, but if Calgary is any indication, thats generally how it works.
December 21st, 2008 at 10:35 am
Alan, meet Sean, Sean, Alan….I like a range of views in my comments and by God I’ve got it.
December 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am
The idea that health, corrections and social services costs would be reduced substantially by providing “social housing” is, in my mind, completely off base.
If the socialist-activists are correct and the majority of homeless folks are homeless because of mental or addictions issues, then the “health related” costs would stay relatively static. The simple provision of a warm bed and an offer of 3 squares daily cures neither schizophrenia or a heroine addiction.
As with the “health” costs, the “corrections” costs would remain relatively static as well. When looking at “corrections” costs we’re looking at things like facilities construction, maintenance, heating, furnishing, water supply, fire protection, meals, security etc. All of the costs that go into operating a corrections facility can be straight-lined to, and, are exactly the same as, state run shelters, with the only exception being a disparity in the wages paid to the operating staff and the original construction costs. For all intents and purposes, the only real difference between a correctional facility and the proposed state run shelter is the ability of the “clients” to come and go at will.
As far as “social services” costs go, I can see the price going up. It’d be lunacy to assume that such a facility would be built without having it staffed round-the-clock with state employed social workers. All of a sudden there’s 30 new taxpayer paid union employees to add to the list of costs. Those social workers wouldn’t be housed with the clients, of course, so more of the trailers would have to be added for offices and meeting rooms. Don’t forget the rec facilities that the social workers will inevitably push for. Midnight basketball works wonders, don’t ya know…
When the socialist-activists present us with an idea that they’re pushing, as the “lesser of 2 evils”, they’re playing a game. They’re asserting that, one way or another, the “evil” is inevitable in an attempt to hide the fact that “non-evil” options are available. The “evil” in this case is the redistribution of wealth from the producers to the non-producers. Think I’m wrong? Think about this… If the architect in the story (linked in the post) really cared about the homeless as opposed to the socialist-activist agenda, would he not be opening his own home, right now, to those currently freezing, instead of dreaming up ways to spend taxpayer dollars on their behalf?
December 21st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
But Harper hates poor people! He likes cars.
December 21st, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Actually I suspect that Harper might well like poor people more than he likes members of the UAW…
December 21st, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I was homeless in the early nineties. Know what I had to do to get off the streets? Walk into a Salvation Army office and tell them that I was sick of being a homeless drunk and that I’d do whatever they told me to if they would help me.
They found me a place to live.
They found me a job.
They found an AA member willing to drag my sorry ass to meetings.
They got me addictions counseling.
They connected me with outpatient mental health treatment and got me on meds.
Getting off the streets is not as hard as mot people think. Lots of help out there if you’re willing to carry your share of the load.
Most astute comment in this thread so far deals with mental institutions. A fair number of homeless are severely mentally ill. No way they’ll ever be able to work. A scoop law would be more effective and humane than shelters.
December 22nd, 2008 at 3:37 am
Funny how I have three adult mentally challenged cousins who work to the best of their ability, paying their way through life. But they just have been able to avoid being put out with the garbage or otherwise treated like useless twats by the self-proclaimed astute.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:35 am
Sean, I’m pleased that you were able to recover from a bad situation. With respect to your previous comment, well, it’s unfortunate that your experiences didn’t teach you to care for your fellow man like you were cared for. But hey, we can’t have everything, I guess.
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 am
Perhaps that’s because they, as you said, “work to the best of their ability”.
Amazing what a difference a bit of elbow grease makes, isn’t it?
BTW, I personally know over a thousand addicts and mentally ill people (probably comes from being a recovered alkie/addict and diagnosed schizophrenic), many of whom lived on the streets and made it back into real life through existing programs.
Let me fill you in on a little secret: Those homeless who made it back into society almost exclusively did it through the help of church programs, Christian ones at that. No one ever makes it back through government programs, which mainly seem designed to prolong the misery of the “consumers” and the employment of the “care givers”. (BTW, I’m not a Christian, but I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for them so credit where it’s due.)
Less politely: you don’t have a freaking clue what you’re talking about even if having some mentally ill relatives gives you an impression to the contrary. Go blog about beer, or something.
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:23 am
Sean, I think you are pretty accurate in your assessment of what gets people off the streets permanently. Faith based programs – even when you don’t have the faith – let people who want to help accept the endless defeats which are part of the program.
I am not at all sure that the “Stop Gap” housing program will get people to change. And I am not sure that is the point of providing warm, safe places for people who are having real trouble in their lives. Buildings, in themselves, don’t change people.
However, what having a place to live can do is give people a “fixed address” and the stability which can go with it. (To take the simple example: if all of your possessions in a shopping cart, they are reluctant to leave that shopping cart in order to go into a shelter overnight. Having a place to live eliminates both problems.)
“Stop Gap” is not a perfect solution – nothing is; but it beats the Hell out of little old ladies burning themselves to death trying to heat their cardboard box with candles.
(And, frankly, if Harper is intent on pissing money away running a compassionate deficit to impress Ontario he might as well do something for people who are freezing to death on Canadian streets.)
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:15 am
Jay, I don’t think you’ve had anything to do with crazy people. They do not think like you or me. The compassionate thing to do is to put them into a situation where they can get help for their mental problems. If you cannot solve that, a fixed address isn’t relevant. “One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest” is not reality. There are a lot of people out there with poor skills on dealing with every day life. Fix that and there won’t be any bag ladies burning themselves up. The solution is not housing!
I remember when the Kennedys (Bob and John) felt that people should not have been sent to an institution and shut them down. Canada followed suit. We did not (at that time) have bag ladies, beggars or otherwise on the streets. There were places like Riverview and other facilities.They no longer exist and now we have poor souls dying on the streets. You may thank a liberal mindset. I do not!
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Alan equates mental retardation with mental illness sigh, methinks Alan needs to spend some of his free time getting a tour of skid road. Maybe Sean could show him where to look?
Here in B.C., Dave Barrett’s NDP government (Dave’s previous occupation was a Social Worker…) started the ball rolling by turfing the inmates out of the Psychiatric Institutions. Worked like a hot damn! He created an industry for Social Workers.
December 31st, 2008 at 7:37 am
How can you provide free housing for local homeless without it becoming a trans-Canada magnet for Bums?