Front page news points out the obvious: Homelessness costs us money

The front page of The Vancouver Sun posted a story entitled, “The cost of homelessness”. (Note that the online equivalent reads, “The high cost of homelessness”- which was published earlier on Friday, March 21, 2008- the word "high" a bit much for the front page?).
The Vancouver Sun, Saturday, March 22, 2008.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=11fdf74c-9130-41b3-b902-4273591ce59d&k=77775

"Every homeless person costs system $55,000, an amount that could buy supported
housing for each of them…annual total of $644.3 million in health,
corrections and social services spending for all the homeless in B.C."

Thanks to the Homeless Count (see http://www.gvrd.bc.ca/homelessness/whatsnew.htm) and researches from SFU, UBC and U of Calg, there has been a 150pg report written about the REAL cost of homelessness. I am so glad it reached the front page because advocacy groups have been saying for forever about the real cost of what happens when you don’t care for the most at-risk in our communities/society. It costs taxpayers MUCH more to criminalize homelessness and pretend its an individual problem rather than admit that it is a SOCIAL problem and result of a number of social forces (including the roll-back/ roll-out of the welfare state, closure of supportive/social/affordable housing, closure of mental health institutions, decline in Fordist manufacturing, increased professionalization and income polarization.. to name a few off the top of my head).

The resultant report is a great step towards getting citizens and governments to admit that what they are doing NOW is NOT working. Instead of shelling out millions of dollars to MAINTAIN our homeless problem we could be putting good money, towards state-led programs and supporting (and I mean REALLY truly supporting) current service providers to deliver services with a guaranteed and sufficient budget, to actually SOLVE the homeless problem. This report gives cold hard numbers (the only thing government bureaucracy responds to) to support the proper implementation of a program that will properly address homelessness.

The study estimated the number of people with severe addictions and/or mental illness who are homeless in the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority jurisdiction is between 2,000 and 4,000.
Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan said in an interview Friday that he believes those numbers are accurate, and said more needs to be done to help them.
"It's a real problem," he said.
However, Sullivan noted the city is working with the province to create more housing units and that the federal government recently committed $10 million to Vancouver in drug treatment funding.

Sam really knows how to pass the buck. And you can thank Sullivan for addressing our homeless problem with the awesomeness that is Project Civil City (See http://www.mayorsamsullivan.ca/pdf/project-civil-city.pdf), the best homeless-hating document that ever existed in the City of Vancouver.

Speaking of passing the buck..
Also in news was “Mayor seeks church exemption: Churches would not need permits to shelter and feed homeless” http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=ef7e7a74-f50b-49df-a112-393c9f5c3097&k=16814&p=1)

Sounds all good, but how about we properly support our service providers and give them real money to work with instead of taking it away? This is something Sullivan should have done a long time ago, along with supporting funding towards these programs that do good work. I smell an election… RECOMMEND this Post on Progressive Bloggers CLICK HERE!