Saturday, September 25, 2004
Parents, other relatives and/or friends .....
of those people who are involved in addiction (drug, alcohol, sex, gambling, etc.) or who are seriously mentally ill, hear me now!! I am a huge believer in logical consequences for your actions. I know people have their limits. Tough love can work. All of this is important.
BUT PLEASE.... do not leave your relatives, friends or otherwise in a homeless shelter. I don't care what has been done to you and your family - it is just plain cruel and it won't yield anything good. Even worse, if you expect the experience to 'sober them up' or 'get them to want treatment' you are 99% of the time dreaming. Leaving someone in a homeless shelter and expecting the experience to be positive is like leaving someone in poison and expecting them not to get poisoned.
The other day a well-to-do family came to the shelter to visit their daughter who is addicted to crack. (horrible stuff) They were debating whether or not they should take her home. They claimed to love her. She wanted to come home. And yeah, she is in serious need of treatment. They left her hoping she would 'find her way.'
The area around homeless shelters is filled with a high concentration of pimps, drug dealers, folks fresh out of prison for a whole lott'a things like sexual assault , robbery, various crimes of violence, etc. In this environment it is NOT realistic to expect someone to 'find their way' , except to a deeper low.
Any solution - ANY SOLUTION - other than a homeless shelter is better.
End Transmission 8 - The Poverty Industry
BUT PLEASE.... do not leave your relatives, friends or otherwise in a homeless shelter. I don't care what has been done to you and your family - it is just plain cruel and it won't yield anything good. Even worse, if you expect the experience to 'sober them up' or 'get them to want treatment' you are 99% of the time dreaming. Leaving someone in a homeless shelter and expecting the experience to be positive is like leaving someone in poison and expecting them not to get poisoned.
The other day a well-to-do family came to the shelter to visit their daughter who is addicted to crack. (horrible stuff) They were debating whether or not they should take her home. They claimed to love her. She wanted to come home. And yeah, she is in serious need of treatment. They left her hoping she would 'find her way.'
The area around homeless shelters is filled with a high concentration of pimps, drug dealers, folks fresh out of prison for a whole lott'a things like sexual assault , robbery, various crimes of violence, etc. In this environment it is NOT realistic to expect someone to 'find their way' , except to a deeper low.
Any solution - ANY SOLUTION - other than a homeless shelter is better.
End Transmission 8 - The Poverty Industry
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Affordable housing needed and not ...
likely to happen regardless of where it is needed. That's the truth in Calgary. In this town easily one of the richest in Canada. In a province that is debt free - we have little or no affordable housing. Low-income people regularly spend 50% + of their incomes to keep a roof over their heads. If they can find a roof within their income. With a minimum wage of $5.90 per hour people just can't live!!!
The double whammy of low-wages and no affordable housing has many people giving up. They go on welfare, turn to drugs, crime (prosititution, etc.) to make ends meet.
For those who choose to continue the struuggle the result is that many eat in at homeless agencies serving free meals or contact a local church for a food hamper. The choice between rent and groceries can be a sobering one. In reality, these people, many on pensions of some sort or going through the dislocation of divorce or downsizing (the other divorce), are not really out of the homeless arena.
If the first definition of homelessness is 'I can't afford a place to live.' Surely the second one is 'I have a bed but no sense of home.' That's where many Calgarians find themselves. They eat in soup lines or they go without. Food hampers from local churches are delivered to their doors late at night. (frequently in the really nice neighborhoods)
The concept of security of place and person needs to be incorporated into the discussion of homelessness. Put another way - a roof is not enough.
This is not strictly a downtown phenomenon. Take a walk through the suburbs and, if you're sneaky (or delivering flyers to pick-up a few extra dollars, like I did), you can check in the windows. A disturbing number of homes in Palliser, Mount Royal, Sundance, McKenzie and The Hamptons are bare. BARE, except for lawn furniture and kids toys strewn about. No furniture, but they own the house. Call it being house poor or whatever - it's real.
We often talk about people on the street as having poor financial managment skills. It's true. But not too far down the spectrum - is a group of people who squeezed out a down payment and found themselves in anything but 'home'. They send their kids to school hungry and can't afford school fees. Child malnutrition and parent begging at schools in the 'burbs of Calgary. The real 'bitch' of it all is that if they sold - they'd loose their shirts and be homeless (definition#1
of this article).
Ahhhhh..... The Poverty Industry has so many 'marketable' prospects.
End Transmission 7 - The Poverty Industry
The double whammy of low-wages and no affordable housing has many people giving up. They go on welfare, turn to drugs, crime (prosititution, etc.) to make ends meet.
For those who choose to continue the struuggle the result is that many eat in at homeless agencies serving free meals or contact a local church for a food hamper. The choice between rent and groceries can be a sobering one. In reality, these people, many on pensions of some sort or going through the dislocation of divorce or downsizing (the other divorce), are not really out of the homeless arena.
If the first definition of homelessness is 'I can't afford a place to live.' Surely the second one is 'I have a bed but no sense of home.' That's where many Calgarians find themselves. They eat in soup lines or they go without. Food hampers from local churches are delivered to their doors late at night. (frequently in the really nice neighborhoods)
The concept of security of place and person needs to be incorporated into the discussion of homelessness. Put another way - a roof is not enough.
This is not strictly a downtown phenomenon. Take a walk through the suburbs and, if you're sneaky (or delivering flyers to pick-up a few extra dollars, like I did), you can check in the windows. A disturbing number of homes in Palliser, Mount Royal, Sundance, McKenzie and The Hamptons are bare. BARE, except for lawn furniture and kids toys strewn about. No furniture, but they own the house. Call it being house poor or whatever - it's real.
We often talk about people on the street as having poor financial managment skills. It's true. But not too far down the spectrum - is a group of people who squeezed out a down payment and found themselves in anything but 'home'. They send their kids to school hungry and can't afford school fees. Child malnutrition and parent begging at schools in the 'burbs of Calgary. The real 'bitch' of it all is that if they sold - they'd loose their shirts and be homeless (definition#1
of this article).
Ahhhhh..... The Poverty Industry has so many 'marketable' prospects.
End Transmission 7 - The Poverty Industry
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Images I can't forget...
- A young Indonesian-looking female shaking so badly she can't hold her needle to inject her cocaine. She leans on a fence post to steady herself. When steady - she then lowers herself down on the needle to inject the substance into her arm.
- Speaking to a man who is smelling of alcohol. He slept in a dumpster the night before. As we speak 3 cockroaches walk out onto his arm like actors on a stage. It's like watching one of those Twilight Zone episodes where some you think is alive is really dead or decaying. Zombie is loaded.
- Watching a Cree staff member who almost has control of a situation with another Native. Suddenly he announces he's a Blackfoot. In an instant, old hatreds boil. (Think the Balkans have problems - try Canada's Natives) She announces with venom that she's Cree. What was a calming sitaution with a slightly intoxicated Native male blows up into a cultural yelling fest. The staff member couldn't help it. It was aprogrammed response.
- Watching a woman - a former Ontario government worker - with mental health issues beg for a bed for the night, only to be turned down because she missed bed check. As she aborbs the reality, she melts down and collapses in the hallway. As she begs and sobs to the air (the people who should be listening walked away), she talks of killing herself.
- Watching a drug dealer sell crack to an obviously pregnant mother like he was selling milk at a 7-11. Two addicts for the price of one.
- A pregnant crack addict - later I find out 8 moths pregnant - standing on a street corner with a miniskirt, babydoll socks and a tight-fitting top showing off (if I can use that word) her newly enlarged breasts. (Before she gave birth a few weeks later a church group coaxed her off the street)
- Watching drug dealing in the stairwell... like kids sharing sandwiches at lunch.
End Transmission 6 ... The Poverty Industry
Monday, August 23, 2004
Ah Yes...Transmission 3...The Homeless are ...
just like you and me. At one time they were 2 paycheques away from the street or closer. And, at one time, they too believed it could not happen to them.
Roughly 50 to 70 per cent of them (you know 'them' the people you're sure you'll never be) have some form of mental health illness ranging from mild depression to paranoid schizophrenia and such. Addiction (crack, crystal meth, and the ever popular, alcohol) is a frequent add-on along with physical disbilities (like deafness) and chronic illnesses (Type I diabetes is a fave).
And so the story goes.
Then again, they may have nothing wrong with them that a higher minimum wage (a better education system, reduced government user fees and a genuine sense of social justice built into the laws of the land) wouldn't cure. But this is Alberta after all and well... King Ralph does not believe in those things. No ... 'round these parts the Christian right forgot about the idea of loving one another and opted for just loving their wallets.
End Transmission 5... The Poverty Industry
Roughly 50 to 70 per cent of them (you know 'them' the people you're sure you'll never be) have some form of mental health illness ranging from mild depression to paranoid schizophrenia and such. Addiction (crack, crystal meth, and the ever popular, alcohol) is a frequent add-on along with physical disbilities (like deafness) and chronic illnesses (Type I diabetes is a fave).
And so the story goes.
Then again, they may have nothing wrong with them that a higher minimum wage (a better education system, reduced government user fees and a genuine sense of social justice built into the laws of the land) wouldn't cure. But this is Alberta after all and well... King Ralph does not believe in those things. No ... 'round these parts the Christian right forgot about the idea of loving one another and opted for just loving their wallets.
End Transmission 5... The Poverty Industry
Monday, August 16, 2004
The King Eddie needed repair, not closure....
but nobody wanted to listen to the tenants. Instead, City Hall decided to turn the lives of 22 men upside down. When they complained about no showers and mold, they weren't looking to be evicted. They were looking to being treated like tenants who deserved to have repairs done - (to be treated like human beings like you and me). But no, government felt otherwise. Maybe others did too.
Strange that the evicition occurred so close to the announced plans of the Calgary Stampede $500 million expansion. Even more curious when you look at the map and see that 4th Street S.E. right next to the King Edward Hotel happens to work well (if widened - knock away a few buildings) as a new main entrance if linked to Memorial Drive. Just add underpass or overpass at the rail line (which has been done before). We do this kind of thing well in Calgary. Timing is clearly everything, isn't it?
Now I'm not saying The Eddie wasn't a flea trap, but it provided independence and a certain level of self reliance for 22 men. But even with the so-called generous $1,000 given to each of the tenants, the closing of the venerable Home of the Blues in Calgary was handled badly. It was sprung like a raid or a trap. The 22 faces of the lost and disheartened, who were rushed out like monkeys being shifted from lab cage to lab cage, were hard to take. I'm told, most, if not all, wound up at the Centre of Hope. In a very short time, most will be homeless once they burn through their $1,000 staying in a homeless shelter.
Ah, but you can't get in the way of timing.
End Transmission 4 The Poverty Industry
Strange that the evicition occurred so close to the announced plans of the Calgary Stampede $500 million expansion. Even more curious when you look at the map and see that 4th Street S.E. right next to the King Edward Hotel happens to work well (if widened - knock away a few buildings) as a new main entrance if linked to Memorial Drive. Just add underpass or overpass at the rail line (which has been done before). We do this kind of thing well in Calgary. Timing is clearly everything, isn't it?
Now I'm not saying The Eddie wasn't a flea trap, but it provided independence and a certain level of self reliance for 22 men. But even with the so-called generous $1,000 given to each of the tenants, the closing of the venerable Home of the Blues in Calgary was handled badly. It was sprung like a raid or a trap. The 22 faces of the lost and disheartened, who were rushed out like monkeys being shifted from lab cage to lab cage, were hard to take. I'm told, most, if not all, wound up at the Centre of Hope. In a very short time, most will be homeless once they burn through their $1,000 staying in a homeless shelter.
Ah, but you can't get in the way of timing.
End Transmission 4 The Poverty Industry
So who are they...the Homeless?
The homeless are the unlovable children of God (or whoever)...
who people like me are called to serve, even on days when you know they are taking you for a ride, even on days when they are belligerent and somehow they're nastiness makes you believe - for just an instant - that the hell they are living is the hell they deserve. Called? Yeah - or something like that. Sometimes I think people who work on behalf of the homeless are suffering from either a kind of co-dependency or a God complex (or maybe something worse).
It's not normal to work at a job where workers are regularly spit on (an HIV/Hep C cannon if there ever was one), sworn at, threatened, treated with great disregard while doing their dead-level best for the clients. Honestly, the lack of appreciation makes me think we who do this are in some kind of weird S&M thing with the homeless. Beat us, whip us, make us want to help you more!!
And then there come the fucking moment. That moment when you help someone and their lives are really better. You have, in spite of everything, made a difference. The feeling does not last long. Getting 'shit on' again is just around the corner, like a punch coming toward your head that you can't duck.
All of this introduction explains more about the people who work for the homeless - not the homeless themselves.
The homeless are snowflakes. No two are the same. Sure you can have two addicts, two mentally ill people, two young people who are just discovering that 'the street' isn't the 'free' place they thought it was - but how they (the persons) got there is always unique. And then their are the !*&(*&^%$$$##%!%^$%^^* bastards who play the system and simply feed off of deminishing resources because they can and they are too lazy to get off their asses and do something better. To be sure, the latter is a tiny portion of the overall. But, they are the ones suburbanites point to when they don't want to help either with their money or time.
Oh hell...this is going to be a two parter....so I'll stop now.
End Transmission 3 The Poverty Industry
who people like me are called to serve, even on days when you know they are taking you for a ride, even on days when they are belligerent and somehow they're nastiness makes you believe - for just an instant - that the hell they are living is the hell they deserve. Called? Yeah - or something like that. Sometimes I think people who work on behalf of the homeless are suffering from either a kind of co-dependency or a God complex (or maybe something worse).
It's not normal to work at a job where workers are regularly spit on (an HIV/Hep C cannon if there ever was one), sworn at, threatened, treated with great disregard while doing their dead-level best for the clients. Honestly, the lack of appreciation makes me think we who do this are in some kind of weird S&M thing with the homeless. Beat us, whip us, make us want to help you more!!
And then there come the fucking moment. That moment when you help someone and their lives are really better. You have, in spite of everything, made a difference. The feeling does not last long. Getting 'shit on' again is just around the corner, like a punch coming toward your head that you can't duck.
All of this introduction explains more about the people who work for the homeless - not the homeless themselves.
The homeless are snowflakes. No two are the same. Sure you can have two addicts, two mentally ill people, two young people who are just discovering that 'the street' isn't the 'free' place they thought it was - but how they (the persons) got there is always unique. And then their are the !*&(*&^%$$$##%!%^$%^^* bastards who play the system and simply feed off of deminishing resources because they can and they are too lazy to get off their asses and do something better. To be sure, the latter is a tiny portion of the overall. But, they are the ones suburbanites point to when they don't want to help either with their money or time.
Oh hell...this is going to be a two parter....so I'll stop now.
End Transmission 3 The Poverty Industry
Thursday, August 12, 2004
It's about numbers, credentials and greasing the media
The funding chase has more to do with....
fiction than reality. Most funding proposals are a hodge-podge of veiled suggestion, end-times type predictions and numbers stretched and twisted in so many directions that they rarely resemble truth. Add to that - "creds". Creds is the slang for credentials. If you have a Master's degree or a PhD -you can be a frigg'in idiot and still be a hot commodity at a social agency. Funders like to see lots of letters after people's names. It makes them feel that their money is going to a place of competence. This is rarely the case.
One of the best social agencies in Calgary, Servants Anonymous was started by well-meaning, recovered alcoholics named Dominique and Pearly. Amazing, talented, visionary people. Not a "cred" between them except life experience. Their work resulted in helping hundreds of young women save themselves from lives of prostitution and drug abuse.
The other part of the funding game is numbers. They don't actually relate to real people but the number of visits real people make to a given agency. They're called client contacts or something like that. The game goes like this:
fiction than reality. Most funding proposals are a hodge-podge of veiled suggestion, end-times type predictions and numbers stretched and twisted in so many directions that they rarely resemble truth. Add to that - "creds". Creds is the slang for credentials. If you have a Master's degree or a PhD -you can be a frigg'in idiot and still be a hot commodity at a social agency. Funders like to see lots of letters after people's names. It makes them feel that their money is going to a place of competence. This is rarely the case.
One of the best social agencies in Calgary, Servants Anonymous was started by well-meaning, recovered alcoholics named Dominique and Pearly. Amazing, talented, visionary people. Not a "cred" between them except life experience. Their work resulted in helping hundreds of young women save themselves from lives of prostitution and drug abuse.
The other part of the funding game is numbers. They don't actually relate to real people but the number of visits real people make to a given agency. They're called client contacts or something like that. The game goes like this:
Client A comes in and signs in. (one client contact) He/She goes out for a cigarette and comes back in. (two client contacts)..etc. In a given day client contacts for 40 people can be over 100. All those contacts over time make for an impressive set of statistics and "clearly" show dire need. The extrapolation from that data looks like the Book of Revelation - whose end- times can be postponed for a small grant. And the beat goes on.
Then - there's the media. You're average reporter is a poorly read generalist with crushing deadlines in all mediums. That's not to say they don't have a grasp of current affairs. Heck, they are up on everything, except the history of given issues and the background of who they are talking to. Most media reports are re-written press releases or well massaged prose courtesy of a media kit provided by some organization. Virtually all statistics are taken as gospel. (There simply is not a lot of time for fact checking) Add to that the journalistic predisposition for a bleeding hearts and voila you have misinformation in the form of truth. (And yes, manipulation of the media is easy and fun; only because people in the media are so damned self important.)
End Transmission 2 The Poverty Industry
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Why The Poverty Industry??
And finally the truth will be known....
I have been in and around the Calgary, Alberta "street" community for a number of years. Raising money, doing publicity, administrating programs and, generally, doing the 100-and-1 things needed at a social agency. The truth about social agencies isn't pretty, though to be sure the vast majority of people on the frontlines who work in agencies are hard working, caring, etc. The problem is the whole mindset behind helping those in need.
It's a mindset that is so damned holy-than-thou on one extreme and downright self-serving cynical crap-ladden on the other. In between the two is a cancerous thread that is the do-gooder mentality. It's an enabling mentality that helps people stay on the streets - bouncing from homeless shelter to homeless shelter to jail (now part of the social housing system) and back to the streets. And so the cycle begins again - daily - in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadians. Agency workers are responsible for all of this - by omission or commission - while doing the serving of food, cleaning of shit, licking of stamps and giving of money with all of the best intentions. They are intentions that pave the way to other's hell.
It's a cozy little system - that is in the final analysis, the streetagencies have become their own industry. The Poverty Industry.
Over the time this blog exists - you will meet the people on the street, the adminstrators caught between huge grant money and doing the right thing and, of course, me - Silentman.
My thesis is this: The current social safety net that comprises homeless agencies does more harm than good by engaging in the complete ignoring of common sense in favour of some social theory (spoutted by social workers and few others ) . These theories include - "we must meet the clients where they are." Translation: make hell comfortable for those in need and we will keep our jobs and get more grant money. Very little attempt is made to set some standards for the homeless to rise to. Granted, you have to be realistic about the potential for personal growth. But, placing no expectations (even the simpliest of ones like - brush your teeth, take a shower, if you have urinated in your pants ask for another pair - and so on) means you set no goals - and give no hope. If someone is lving in 'shit' rather than help them out ,or help them to help themselves out of it, most modern social workers want to help people be comfortable in their 'shit'. If it sounds insane - it is. It's also the truth I see every day.
So why Silentman? Because I would get my ass fired if I gave my name. I am the silent person who has sat back as I have watched people fall to the street and stay there for years (or the end of their lives, whichc ever comes first). They are fitted into a system that by acts that deny them their own humnaity, supports lack of initiative and constantly feeds into a mainline of pity, hopelessness and victimhood that slowly makes the streets a comfortable place to be. I witness administrators who dither (sometimes deliberately) - studying, writing policies, pushing mountains of paper - whiel the problems grow. Their actions are the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns or applying bureaucratic anesthetic, in triplicate no less, to their own lives. (It numbs them to reality on one hand and builds their careers in The Poverty Industry on the other.)
What a reality. It's a reality where drugs dealers are given safe haven and a damned-near captive market in the shelters throughout Calgary. It's a reality that allows pouty well-to-do teenagers to run to the streets because mommy and daddy wouldn't spring for a boob job or new car. On the streets those 'pouty ones '- perfect skin, straight teeth, reasonable health - become prey for pimps (after all they are suburban -made grade A product for the daddies in their mini-vans looking to be naughty with a whore), drug dealers (these kids even after they leave home have sources of money well beyond most 'street' people) and each other.
End Transmission 1... The Poverty Industry
I have been in and around the Calgary, Alberta "street" community for a number of years. Raising money, doing publicity, administrating programs and, generally, doing the 100-and-1 things needed at a social agency. The truth about social agencies isn't pretty, though to be sure the vast majority of people on the frontlines who work in agencies are hard working, caring, etc. The problem is the whole mindset behind helping those in need.
It's a mindset that is so damned holy-than-thou on one extreme and downright self-serving cynical crap-ladden on the other. In between the two is a cancerous thread that is the do-gooder mentality. It's an enabling mentality that helps people stay on the streets - bouncing from homeless shelter to homeless shelter to jail (now part of the social housing system) and back to the streets. And so the cycle begins again - daily - in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadians. Agency workers are responsible for all of this - by omission or commission - while doing the serving of food, cleaning of shit, licking of stamps and giving of money with all of the best intentions. They are intentions that pave the way to other's hell.
It's a cozy little system - that is in the final analysis, the streetagencies have become their own industry. The Poverty Industry.
Over the time this blog exists - you will meet the people on the street, the adminstrators caught between huge grant money and doing the right thing and, of course, me - Silentman.
My thesis is this: The current social safety net that comprises homeless agencies does more harm than good by engaging in the complete ignoring of common sense in favour of some social theory (spoutted by social workers and few others ) . These theories include - "we must meet the clients where they are." Translation: make hell comfortable for those in need and we will keep our jobs and get more grant money. Very little attempt is made to set some standards for the homeless to rise to. Granted, you have to be realistic about the potential for personal growth. But, placing no expectations (even the simpliest of ones like - brush your teeth, take a shower, if you have urinated in your pants ask for another pair - and so on) means you set no goals - and give no hope. If someone is lving in 'shit' rather than help them out ,or help them to help themselves out of it, most modern social workers want to help people be comfortable in their 'shit'. If it sounds insane - it is. It's also the truth I see every day.
So why Silentman? Because I would get my ass fired if I gave my name. I am the silent person who has sat back as I have watched people fall to the street and stay there for years (or the end of their lives, whichc ever comes first). They are fitted into a system that by acts that deny them their own humnaity, supports lack of initiative and constantly feeds into a mainline of pity, hopelessness and victimhood that slowly makes the streets a comfortable place to be. I witness administrators who dither (sometimes deliberately) - studying, writing policies, pushing mountains of paper - whiel the problems grow. Their actions are the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns or applying bureaucratic anesthetic, in triplicate no less, to their own lives. (It numbs them to reality on one hand and builds their careers in The Poverty Industry on the other.)
What a reality. It's a reality where drugs dealers are given safe haven and a damned-near captive market in the shelters throughout Calgary. It's a reality that allows pouty well-to-do teenagers to run to the streets because mommy and daddy wouldn't spring for a boob job or new car. On the streets those 'pouty ones '- perfect skin, straight teeth, reasonable health - become prey for pimps (after all they are suburban -made grade A product for the daddies in their mini-vans looking to be naughty with a whore), drug dealers (these kids even after they leave home have sources of money well beyond most 'street' people) and each other.
End Transmission 1... The Poverty Industry
