Homeless in Abbotsford, BC
I DO NOT, HAVE NOT, WOULD NOT ever suggest throwing money at a problem. I am a REALIST, believing in examining a problem to understand what the situation IS. I am not an Ideologue who, wearing the blinders of ideology, looks at a situation and sees what they want to see, not what really is. There is NO perfect solution. A system dealing with people demands flexibility and denies neat, easy answers. Rigidly applying Ideology guarantees failure. How I came to homelessness: click Backstory below.
Ethics and Choice
Abbotsford City Council has $1.73 million to subsidize
Entertainment and Sports......
Abbotsford City Council has an additional $1.1 million to
subsidize the ownership of a professional hockey team......
Abbotsford City Council has another $115,000 to subsidize
golf plus clubhouse food and beverage services......
And Abbotsford City Council has $0.00 to keep the warm zone
open.
Council has $2.945 million for frivolous pursuits and $0.00
for saving, reclaiming and transforming lives.
A budget - spending - reflects the values and ethics of
Council, our City and its people.
$3 million to subsidize amusing ourselves and $0.00 to reach
out to those in our City in desperate need of love and caring reflects a Council,
a City, a people who are not simply ethically challenged, but suffering a
critical ethical deficit.
Not that this is the first time a city, a people, have
suffered a critical ethical deficit.
And......Abbotsford Council does have its Coliseum, a group
of disposable people and just down the road - the lions at the Greater
Vancouver Zoo......
"Even the most rational approach to ethics is
defenceless if there isn't the will to do what is right" Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
A New Front?
Homelessness, Poverty, Affordable Housing, Hunger are
social issues about which Abbotsford City Council uses all the right buzzwords
while accomplishing nothing - or at least nothing of a positive nature.
Thus you have Olympic housing rolling through Abbotsford
on its way to provide affordable housing in Chilliwack. And the opportunity of
$11 million dollars of financial funding for affordable housing from the
provincial government lost to city council's inaction and ineffective,
inappropriate actions.
You have the Warm Zone on the verge of closing their
doors despite support from the police department and concerns the police have
about the repercussions should the Warm Zone close its door.
Mayhap
if the woman of the Warm Zone were to re-organize into a hockey based
operation, put together a franchise and join the Canadian Women's Hockey
League, they could gain access to the millions of dollars City Council has to
subsidise profession hockey franchises?
With City Hall's latest ethnic cleansing campaign against
the homeless in full swing and destroying what shelter the homeless have to
provide some protection from the elements, members of the homeless community
find themselves soaking wet, cold and faced with the need to find a place to
warm up in order to survive.
Finding oneself watching a soaking wet human being huddled
into himself and shivering
uncontrollably, desperate for warmth to avoid dying of 'natural causes' – as if
there is anything natural in our wealthy society about a homeless person dying
of hypothermia – brings you face to face with society’s thoughtless indifference.
It is the experience of living with the consequences of City
actions that had the homeless, the poor, the hungry and other members of Abbotsford's
growing underclass questioning whether city council was expanding its ethnic
cleansing to include the hungry poor among the 'unworthy' to be cleansed from Abbotsford
when the signs suddenly appeared along Gladys Avenue.
The disquieting growth in the number of seniors, families
and others needing to avail themselves of the food distributed and meals served
at noon means vehicles spill along Gladys Avenue. No parking meant being unable
to park along Gladys Avenue because a parking ticket represents a disaster they
cannot afford. No parking meant being forced not to come for food, to go
hungry.
The City stated their reason for the appearance of the no
parking signs along Gladys Avenue........but the City's 'reasons' have often been
indistinguishable from excuses.
On the other hand the City has a long and well
established history of failing to think its actions through with costly, often
very costly, consequences for Abbotsford citizens
Fortunately the appearance of the no parking signage was
noted immediately, brought to the City Hall's attention and resulted in 'No
Parking' becoming '2 Hour Parking' in the 'Food Zone'. Which should ensure that
'No Parking' does not turn into 'No Food for You!'.
Unresolved however is the appearance of 'No Parking'
signs raising fears that this was the opening move to add the hungry poor to
those the City feels need to be cleansed, and what that fear signifies about city
council, Abbotsford and its citizens.
My Linked Homeless Pages
Alternative Perspectives Views & News
Information & Reference
Lastest Posts
- Calling it ‘The News”, doesn't make it ‘The News”....
- Surprised? No, Just Politics as Usual
- To omit Information is to Misinform
- Motivation: an Evaluation Tool
- Car Trouble – It Came to Pass that...
- Beleaguered by the Universe?
- Done with the HST? BC should be so lucky.
- A Fallacy of Words
- The Reason.
- How many more?
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