Last month, The New York Times ran a story exploring the poverty, drug and mental-health crisis engulfing the city of Phoenix through the eyes of a sandwich-shop owner whose restaurant sat across from one of the largest homeless encampments in America.
It was an eye-opener.
Rarely does the homelessness pandemic focus on the unseen victims of this problem: innocent folks who have had their lives and livelihoods upended by a horribly sad situation with which cities around the world are struggling.
This restaurant owner described a dystopian landscape of people urinating and defecating near his restaurant almost daily. Gunshots, fires and fights had undermined a once-thriving operation. Owners Joe and Debbie Faillace now faced the prospect of having to walk away from their investment and the retirement income it was supposed to provide.
They are in their 60s.
Which brings me to Vancouver and the recent decision to remove a burgeoning tent city along a stretch of Hastings Street in the downtown core. The city and police defended the decision to remove the tents on the basis of safety concerns. There was escalating violence, especially aimed at women. The risk of explosions and fires from the more than 1,600 propane tanks that were seized, some industrial-sized, also provided motivation to clear the area.
Not surprisingly, the “decampment” has been criticized in some quarters as inhumane. I see it as the city finally showing the resolve it should have demonstrated months ago, before the encampment became the sprawling danger zone that was eventually established. Credit belongs to Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC party, which took over governance of the city last November. Finally, someone showed the courage to take on an issue that was fraught politically, but had the potential to become something far, far worse for the city.
Federal housing advocate Marie-Josée Houle was one of those who criticized the move to take down the camp. “People are going to die [now],” she told Postmedia in an interview. What she declined to acknowledge was the fact people were likely going to die if the encampment was allowed to persist.
There is a mix of people in any tent city, regardless of the location. There are people who are genuinely homeless, many through unfortunate circumstance. There are people with severe mental-health issues, many who aren’t equipped to live on their own even if accommodation could be found for them. And then there is a criminal element who use encampments as a cover for their illicit pursuits.
The Vancouver Police Department estimated that one-third of the 80 tents that were taken down were connected to some form of criminal activity. Chief Constable Adam Palmer said that there were people who had been shot with handguns and crossbows. Stabbings were common. Imagine allowing this situation to not just exist but actually thrive and grow.
At some point there have to be honest discussions about what we’re dealing with here. There has been criticism that the city has taken down the tents leaving many with no place to go. True, there is likely not enough permanent accommodation to meet the needs of everyone needing a place to live. But we also need to acknowledge that over the past eight months, many people living in the tents were offered a place to stay and turned it down for various reasons, among them that the housing unit was in another neighbourhood. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get.
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We also have to accept that there are some living outside who have debilitating and deeply ingrained psychotic problems. The humane thing to do would be to commit these people to an institution where they have a chance of living longer. Instead, their lives may be drastically shortened because of a reluctance by our political class to sanction involuntary confinement. Better to recognize and respect their individual liberties and let them die on the street, I suppose.
As chronicled in previous columns, there are cities around the world struggling with homelessness. And some are now paying the price for not taking decisive action to deal with their problem when they should have. San Francisco is the poster child for cities that were gripped by political paralysis (see progressives being afraid to hurt feelings) and are now dealing with almost daily chaos and disorder.
People who are homeless have rights. No one is questioning that. But so, too, do those who are trying to live and work in and around homeless encampments. And for too long their rights have not been recognized or honoured in any way.
And it’s about time they were.
Gary Mason