[video] Cops kick homeless out of tent citys

To put things in context, Victoria BC has a really big homeless problem. It's because these people are coming from other parts of the country to this nice temperate zone so when they do stay outside, they don't freeze as fast.

A good portion of these people are homeless by choice. Another good portion are homeless because they can't get along with their parents/families. When you see young people sitting on the street in boots and leathers that even YOU can't afford, that shows a lack of respect for real homeless people and merely adds tot he misconceptions.

Canada doesn't have the housing problem of the US as of yet. Foreclosures are not going through the roof.

But when these people migrate to Victoria, there isn't enough housing to go around. Buildings aren't built in a day, you know.

They would have been better off to stay where they had come from. Most of these homeless are not from Victoria.

Did you know that the Premier of Alberta, Ralph Kline at the time, gave all their homeless a one way ticket out of town? Guess where they all went.

Try to understand the context before making broad statements about how bad things are.

Originally posted by juniperberry
To put things in context, Victoria BC has a really big homeless problem. It's because these people are coming from other parts of the country to this nice temperate zone so when they do stay outside, they don't freeze as fast.

A good portion of these people are homeless by choice. Another good portion are homeless because they can't get along with their parents/families. When you see young people sitting on the street in boots and leathers that even YOU can't afford, that shows a lack of respect for real homeless people and merely adds tot he misconceptions.

Canada doesn't have the housing problem of the US as of yet. Foreclosures are not going through the roof.

But when these people migrate to Victoria, there isn't enough housing to go around. Buildings aren't built in a day, you know.

They would have been better off to stay where they had come from. Most of these homeless are not from Victoria.

Did you know that the Premier of Alberta, Ralph Kline at the time, gave all their homeless a one way ticket out of town? Guess where they all went.

Try to understand the context before making broad statements about how bad things are.

Excellent post J and right on topic.

Thx, JK

[edit on 20-10-2008 by leo123]

reply to post by juniperberry


Thanks for the info JB. When I watched the video I missed the location. I just thought it was interesting and figured I would share. Apparently Leo has a deep seeded hatred for the homeless in general and has been flaming this thread from the beginning. I was unaware of the location and Im glad we could clear it up. In no way was the mix up intentional.

Originally posted by bringthelight
When I watched the video I missed the location. I just thought it was interesting and figured I would share. Apparently Leo has a deep seeded hatred for the homeless in general

bringthelight:

I am actually a very compassionate individual who activively helps those in need, and I do so on a daily basis here in Victoria.

What I attack agressively is WHACKJOBS like you who ignorantly spread misinformation and lies - as you have confirmed above that you have.

JK

reply to post by leo123


Yeah compassionate would be the word I would use to describe someone who refers to the homeless as "douchebags". Also I admitted that I was wrong on the location but you still flame on. Maybe your just upset that no one responds to your threads

Originally posted by leo123

Originally posted by Dock6
Yes, where are the homeless supposed to go --- into the subways and forests so the more privileged don't have the distress of seeing them ?

America the great ? America the wealthy ?

If so wealthy, why does America have so many homeless .. and it didn't begin yesterday

How many billions have been spent murdering Iraqis ?

While in the US, so many don't have a home or job ?

Is it making sense to anyone ?

Dock6:

This thread is not about your US it is about Victoria Canada and a recent Court decision to allow life long bums to set up tent cities in our parks.

Further, you need to know posts from bringthelight are outright LIES and I welcome anyone to debate me about the truth here locally.

Regardless of the truth, let's put you in their shoes and then see how you view things. There's this thing...it's called Compassion. I know, it's a concept lost on humanity these days....Humanity, now there's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one. You sir, represent our species well...

[edit on 20-10-2008 by Oreyeon]

So does anyone have an answer as to what should or could be done to take care of the homeless problem in all our Countrys ?

I know around here (not my small town but down the road in Dallas and Arlington and Ft Worth etc ) they just kick em out ..so they just move from town to town now ...and then the next town kicks em out and on and on they go .

I dont see that as a solution to just let it be another towns problem .

The main source of the issue has already been mentioned: our beautiful climate. Once winter hits, homeless people from all over Canada head to Victoria and Vancouver to take advantage of the warmer weather and lack of snow. Compound this with a neighbouring province that handed out bus tickets to BC instead of paying out the welfare cheques like they should have and you have quite a mess and an awful lot of people with nowhere to live.

Victoria is a tourist town. Homeless people are allowed to camp in the parks at night, but they have to take their tents down by 7AM. It's not a perfect solution to the situation, but I think it's reasonable to some extent. Homeless people can camp at night and the city residents who pay the taxes for the upkeep of the parks can enjoy them during the day.

Ooh, another thing: This latest tent city is a political protest against some new city bylaw. They broke the law on purpose. The West Coast is filled with professional activists.

[edit on 20-10-2008 by Duzey]

There sure is a lot of misunderstanding and anger about homelessness. There is a housing crisis in Canada, with rents that are far beyond most peoples abilities, and growing numbers of families living in campers and tents throughout the province. But I do understand the choosing the location to be a park that is utilized by families and children with the possibility of needles was not the best choice. But the same ruling the judge used for the charter should mean that people could establish their own small communities on crown land.

Povnet is a wonderful resource full of information in BC.

www.cbc.ca...

The court ruled Tuesday the bylaw deprives the homeless of life, liberty and security in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms....


Irene Faulkner, a lawyer for the group that challenged the law, said the judge decided a sleeping bag or blanket isn't enough to protect people from the elements when sleeping outside in Victoria or anywhere on the West Coast.

Faulkner said the ruling also says that sleeping in a tent or under another structure is not a public safety issue but rather a basic human dignity.

In her ruling, Justice Carol Ross found that due to insufficient capacity in Victoria's shelters, hundreds of homeless people have no choice but to sleep outside.

The need for affordable housing is basic to the rights of life and liberty in our constitution.
In Canada, this wording of equality and rights is substantive. That is it recognizes that all people circumstances are not equal and therefore in order for equality to occur, circumstances must be equalized. Of course despite the wording, and despite what lawyers know to be the meaning of the words, most judges fail to carry through on the upholding the constitution part. It was surprising that this one did. However, these same conditions could better be applied to a small tent village away from parks and areas that need to be kept safe for children.

www.psacbc.com...


In 2001, the B.C. Ministry of Social Housing released a document reviewing the research on the relationship between homelessness and the health,social services, and criminal justice systems and estimated the cost of homelessness to governments …


The specific objectives for this exploratory research are:

* To present a cost analysis of homelessness in terms of the British Columbia health care, social services and criminal justice systems.
* To analyse whether the provision of adequate and affordable housing is a preventive cost to the government.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The prevention approach to homelessness has proved to be more cost-effective than the emergency or reactive approach for this small sample of individuals. Focusing on preventing the use of costly government funded health care, criminal justice and social services through the provision of supportive housing for homeless people makes good sense from a financial perspective. This approach also has the benefit of improving the quality of life and well-being of homeless people. The interviews and service records suggest that in most cases, housing had a positive impact on these people’s lives.

According to the governments own studies, providing shelter and affordable housing is less costly than dealing with the medical and legal aspects of homelessness. I always knew it cost far more to be heartless than to organize the caring civilized society that I want for my children and all children. I wonder why when it actually costs them more, no no strike that, it costs us more of our tax money that they prefer to squander more of it to be heartless.

Could be they want to keep us demoralized, and living on the edge to serve them better as a slave labor group, and maintain their dominion over us, even though it always cost us more.

I walk through a park where many homeless live every day on my way to work. I try really hard not to judge them and try and remember that no kid grew up dreaming of being homeless.

However, I don't enjoy picking my way through used condoms, needles and human waste twice a day. I can completely understand why the city residents are upset and want their parks back.

I'm only 3 blocks away from Main and Hasting, which I'm sure mystiq is familiar with and would agree that it's one of the worst neighbourhoods around. Many of these people are very nice, but it still makes me feel uncomfortable and unsafe walking through their chosen home, especially now that it gets dark so early.

It's a tough situation, but parks should be safe during the day and free of dangerous/potentially diseased objects.

I agree with the parks issue. Children use these parks and they mustn't be sacrificed in the mismanagement of our society by the elite for their corporate agendas. There has to be better locations to choose.

reply to post by mystiq


I'm sure the government will find a way to round them all up and hide them somewhere, just in time for the Olympics.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to think we can solve this in 18 months, but nobody ever said we had smart politicians in BC.

I personally think camping in the government buildings greenspots, squatting in vacant buildings, and/or establishing a village on nearby crown land would be the idea. They won't succeed in hiding them too well however.

Sadly, in order to get rid of homelessness, which includes feeding, housing and clothing these people, you'd have to have an almost purely socialistic society.

You can't tell one person, 'here have an apartment, and yes we'll feed you too' and yet tell another person (who contributes to society) that they have to bust their butts to work for their food and housing..

The only other option is to have some way of getting these people to somehow contribute to their own welfare. Get jobs, dig ditches, become security guards, whatever. But eventually get them off the handouts. There isn't enough money in Canada to 'keep' them indefinitely.

And get them off the drugs. Close INSITE and really deal with the stupid problem and get these people clean and having a life. Not just living day to day waiting for their next fix. That does NOTHING for these people.

Were these people harvesting the plants? The lady at the beginning seems to think so, what was that girl doing handstands for lol...

Even though the law may not be a good law, it must still be carried out, that is what we have the constitution for, vote for who you want in office and stupid stuff like this won't happen.

People need to get involved so that laws that do not make sense are abolished. However it remains to be seen whether in this particular case he law was justified or unjustified.

And I didn't see any violence.

[edit on 21-10-2008 by PinealGlandThoth]

[edit on 21-10-2008 by PinealGlandThoth]

The people being foreclosed on in the U.S. are not the people you see living in the homeless camps - so lets get that straight. It's not that bad, yet.

From my perspective the homeless population is a mix of alcoholics, drug addicts - many of whom are mentally ill or socially inept. Of course there is another class of youngsters, who come from families that are sometimes bad, or they just wouldn't get with the program for various reasons already mentioned. Many of the youngsters are plenty smart, but they have low self esteem & other mental issues that can easily be solved if they had professional help.

In Seattle just a few hours south of the video scene, they don't let them stay in parks at all. Lately they give them a 72 hour notice then they come in much more heavily handed than we see in this video. In the past they tossed all their bedding, clothing, tents and other gear in the trash. So, not only were these people homeless with no money but now they couldn't even get a fractional moment of comfort, because all they owned is confiscated and dumped.

I would say the Canadians are pretty tolerant by letting them setup a tent from 9PM to 7AM. Yes, that's allot of work to break down camp everyday by 7Am, but at least the cops aren't coming in at 3AM and tearing down their tents. I'm thinking 7AM is to get the placed cleaned up so the tourist keep coming and maybe incentive to get out of bed and work at something besides laying on their butts all day, panhandling and running whatever game they have.

One of my homeless encounters. Lets call it "Taxi Ride".

On one occasion I finished a day of work in Portland Oregon and was driving back towards home 20 minutes north of Seattle, about a 3 1/2 hour drive depending on traffic. I stopped for take out food right across the border and then I decided stop at a rest stop to eat because the food wasn't being freeway friendly. I saw a couple homeless kids with a backpack with a sign for a ride to Seattle. It's about a 3 hour trip and I let them in my truck and I noticed they were hungry so I shared my food with them. Anyway they were kind of stinky so I had to keep the window down and I talked with them quite a bit and they just seemed like rebels who traveled around and stopped in cities where they had relatives they could restock clothing and maybe a few supplies until they wore out their welcome.

They told me they hadn't eaten in a few days and they enjoyed my food. I could tell they were at least part time dopers so I didn't want to give them too much money, but I decided to give them I think it was about 28 bucks - the amount of cash I had in my wallet.

As I was approaching Seattle I informed them they I would drop them off at any Freeway exit where I could get back on shortly because I was finishing up about a 14 hour day including driving, besides I didn't want to have to fill up with gas again before getting home. It was decided the closest they could get from where they wanted to be was at the bottom of capitol hill. It was maybe a 25 minute walk up hill. The girl then said - oh I'm not walking up that hill I'll just get a cab.

Here I gave them the rest of my cash so they could eat a decent meal, but instead they're going to take a cab. That really burned my butt.

Okay - I'm not saying they're all like that and I do continue to help them when I can. That's just they way it is though. It's an uphill battle.

[edit on 21-10-2008 by verylowfrequency]

To Serve and Protect!

Riiiiiiight... This is some bs, who the hell wants to leave their house, let alone tent before 7am anyway

There are definitely two sides to this problem and its not an easy issue to solve. I learned a lot from this post which is why i come to ATS.

On one side they are people who have had a tough go of things and deserve food and shelter, which any moral human can agree with.

On the other side, they are creating an unsafe and unsanitary environment in a place that people like to enjoy.

This is not an easy problem to solve and I honestly dont know what the right thing to do is.

I dont know what to do about it either. I also dont know that the goverment COULD or SHOULD fix this. Its been my long standing opinion that you stand on your own two feet and pull yourself up, you dont wait for the government to hand you anything, you do it on your own. WHere there is a will theres a way. That being said its applicable for a vast majority of the homeless. Tho the other portion not so much due to disability etc. I think this is a serious case of a few bad apples ruining the bushel. I use to live and work in Nashville Tn, and its really bad there too, as its also a tourist town. The only problem there is, the homeless use this to enable them to stay homeless, by always having a fresh stock of people to con into giving them cash. Alas, i have no answers......

i just wonder whats going to happen when foreclosures hit their peak and there are thousands of people all over north america with no where to go. Shelters will be fill up and tent city's will inevitably spring up. What is the decent thing to do with this problem?