Saturday, March 22, 2008

We Don't Want to Help the Homeless


Here are the things wrong with the front page story in the Sun today on the cost of homelessness:


1. Who didn't know that the millions we spend on useless social programs could have been spent on housing? Well...lots of people I suppose...


2. How much did the study cost that is the basis of this report? And why not put that into housing instead of into the pockets of academics?


3. This tragedy lies mostly at the feet of our feral government..uh, federal government, who began about 30 years ago to no longer fund social housing. CMHC used to do this and then thanks largely to Liberal regimes, they stopped. Just as they stopped funding the military and cut back health care dollars from 50% to 18%.

4 comments:

Robert W. said...

I think it was you who taught me (taught us all, actually) that if a politician orders a "study" then it's their way of saying, "I really don't care about this but just want to pretend I do." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but you know what I mean.

While I strongly believe that there should be some study before any large expenditure of public money, let's face a clear fact: If the politicians wanted to bake a cake they would embark on a $100,000 study to figure out:
- The healthiest ingredients to use
- Where to source those ingredients so not to impinge upon the human rights of someone in the 3rd World
- The optimum number of calories each slice should have so as not to jeopardize the health of any cake eater
- The danger of using plastic forks and styrofoam plates

You get the idea. But let's face it, everything surrounding the Downtown Eastside has been studied Over and Over and Over again. Enough already!!!

* said...

Agreed
http://thevancouvermanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/03/front-page-news-points-out-obvious.html

David in North Burnaby BC said...

While we're all (no doubt) glued to the Olympic torch run this 2010, let's all remember it cost $24 million and consider what good could have been done with that money instead of pissing it away.

David Berner said...

Robert,

Your baking metaphor is one of your funniest to date. Great!