A rchive Date
[ 21-02-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/williamson.html
Taboo topic
Why is it "mean" to take homeless off the streets?
By LINDA WILLIAMSON -- Toronto Sun
February 21, 2002
"Have you heard, if he becomes premier, Ontario Finance Minister Jim Flaherty wants to lock up the homeless?"
"Hey, here's an idea, why don't we lock up the politicians instead?"
Oooh, how clever.
It's just so easy to criticize, to attack Flaherty - and anyone else who dares to suggest that the hundreds of millions of tax dollars we spend on the homeless isn't working - as somewhere right of Attila the Hun.
"Mean-spirited." "Disgusting." And that's just Flaherty's Tory rivals talking! Which is fine, I suppose, if all you care about is internecine provincial party squabbling.
It's not so good, however, if you actually care about the burgeoning number of people living on our streets.
How did an issue so basic become so politicized, anyway? How did "homelessness" (an awkward, misleading word) become a megabuck industry, dominated by left-wing militants who insist every effort to help the homeless must follow their strict orthodoxy?
Now, I'm no Flaherty supporter and I don't have a vote in the leadership race. But let's look at what he actually said:
He referred to the homeless as "people living lives of unimaginable despair and hopelessness." Sounds fair to me.
"There is nothing compassionate about allowing people to live on the streets," he went on. "We have to help those who live in appalling conditions get the assistance they need."
So far, not so bad. Apparently it's his next point that's offensive: "We must also face up to the fact that many homeless people, often as a result of drug and alcohol addiction or mental illness, pose a danger to themselves and to others."
Bingo. You see, in Toronto, unlike other, more sensible cities, it's taboo to suggest "the homeless" have any problem other than the lack of a home.
Of course, those of us who encounter people sleeping on the street every day - and let me assure you, as someone who lives and works in the heart of the city, I do mean every day - know what a crock this is. We see the addiction and the mental illness with our own eyes.
We give to the United Way. We give to food banks, to any number of well-meaning "outreach" agencies that we expect to help these desperate people. We pay ever-increasing taxes, feeding an ever-growing homeless budget.
But all we see is the problem getting worse. People living - and dying - in transit shelters, doorways and on sidewalks. People living in shacks on land that's too toxic to develop.
We are not "mean-spirited." We can see this is madness. Not that anyone in power ever asks us.
Instead, we are drowned out by the screams of the homeless lobby, who cry that the real problem is people like Flaherty.
Again, here are Flaherty's own words: "Individuals would choose between a shelter, hospital or crisis intervention centre ... remaining on the street will not be an option. If a homeless person is deemed to be engaged in unlawful activity, police will be empowered to take the person to jail."
This has somehow been twisted, in the language of the homeless orthodoxy, to mean Flaherty would make it a crime to be poor. Ridiculous. Why are we listening to them?
These are the same people who fight every effort to find out exactly how many homeless there are, and how many have addiction and mental problems.
They are the same people who demand we spend more and more tax dollars on shelters that offer alcoholics a glass of wine an hour, and agencies that give out things like "safe crack use kits." (Can you say "enabler"?) But we mustn't force anyone into treatment against their will, oh no. Never mind that any number of American cities do just that, from L.A. to New York, with considerable success.
No, that would be, in the homeless lobby's lexicon, "mean."
Their mantra is that "homelessness" is a "national disaster." Yet they resist any true rescue effort.
It's time for the rest of us, who have no political axe to grind, to speak up. The homeless lobby doesn't have a monopoly on compassion, or on outrage. We, too, are outraged - by the waste of our money and our goodwill, and by the horrible hypocrisy of a system that says it's more humane to leave people on the street to freeze or die from their addictions than to make them get help.
Let those who think they're so clever try attacking the problem, instead of the latest easy-target politician. Flaherty is right: living on the street should not be an option. To suggest otherwise is simply disgusting.
Linda Williamson is the Toronto Sun senior associate editor. She can be reached by e-mail at linda.williamson@tor.sunpub.com
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|