Victor On the Magic Stats of Homelessness

As usual, the Christmas season has seen Vancouverites inundated with stories of the homeless on the downtown east side(DTES). There never seems to be a definition of what homeless actually means, hence any counts produced must be met with skepticism. It is an absolute law of science that what cannot be defined cannot be measured, and vice versa. At this time of year, poverty industry advocates are tripping over one another in their annual homeless count. If you walk through the DTES, you'll likely hear some operative from the poverty industry yelling from an alley " Hey, I found another wino. He's ours!"

One example stands out. There is a public service ad for Covenant House , repeated with mind-numbing regularity on a number of radio stations. Now I'll concede that Covenant House (CH) probably does some good work. But the numbers in the ad just don't say crisis. The earnest voiceover guy tells us that CH "rescues 1800 people from homelessness every year." Ok, that's about 5 new guests a day, hardly an epidemic in an urban area of 2.2 million. On the other hand, if they are counting the same people over several days as new daily occupants, then the total number "rescued" is far less than 1800 annually. The ad goes on to lament that "400 homeless young people are turned away every year." Ok, that's about one a day. Again we're hardly talking the Darfur diaspora here.

But I also want to get some definition of homeless youth. Is the 16 year old Surrey girl who gets too drunk to get transit home truly homeless? In short, what is the core number of young people without resources, options, family support or mental competence who are on the street for prolonged periods and incapable of self help. Support them as needed but don't bulk up the numbers by making every rebellious kid a victim.

Our refusal to ask tough questions has had the unfortunate result of diluting scarce charitable resources from the needy to the greedy. There was a news story in the Vancouver Sun over Christmas about a free blanket giveaway for the homeless. The photo showed two homeless "victims" walking away with their treasured free blanket. They were smoking. If you're smoking a pack a day, your burning $2000 a year, which gets you a lot of blankets. So butt out and buy your own blanket.

This is not a grinch response. The reality is, big cities attract people without the remotest possibility of reaching the minimal survival income. A recent article in Atlantic stated that the richest one million folks in America as well as the poorest one million live in New York City. It illustrates the case. That city faced bankruptcy in the 70s when it embraced the concept of pan-victimization, or welfare without questions, challenge or exception. If you couldn't cut it for whatever reason, New York would cut you a cheque. It took 20 years to fix that mistake.
Vancouver is repeating the same mistake.

Instead of Simple Sam's Silly City concept, we need a new slogan. How about

WE fix the helpless but to hell with the feckless.