darwink
Senior Member
Mostly a function of there being far fewer people, so transit became way more comfortable, and other 'third' spaces being closed imo.
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Calgary's Homeless
- Thread starter MrPeach
- Start date
DougB
Active Member
Something else is going on. I was back a few time last summer and fall....While the CTrain network always had a fair number of homeless people etc., the change is more in behavior than numbers. Open drug use, defecation, urination, lighting fires and generalized violence seem more more common than only a few years back. I saw the same trend when I lived in Seattle.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
I think the difference is that meth is the drug of choice these days. Methheads seem to be much more violent and unhinged.
Meth for sure and Opioids. Together they have wreaked a lot of destruction. I still remember when cheap wine was the choice of the homeless, it was a totally different scene.
Speaking of addiction. An article on Alberta's strategy and some of the pros and cons.
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jhappy77
Active Member
The homeless hub says there is somewhere around 1,935 homeless people living in Calgary. If I were in charge of the response, here’s what I would personally try doing to fix the homeless crisis:
Build tiny homes for each and every homeless person, plus some extra for flexibility. But make them as cost effective as physically possible: they don’t need electricity or plumbing or anything beyond a safe, warm space to sleep and store some possessions. I’m thinking they could be like little sheds that we can move around as necessary.
They would be humble, but provide a legitimate opportunity to guarantee a safe shelter as a human right, even for people who struggle with issues that make them difficult to otherwise shelter. Because they would be so cheap, they would not be risky to assign to people who might not be able to take care of a traditional apartment. And you’d aim for them to be so cheap that we can nearly instantly provide them to people in need rather than struggling with long waiting lists. People who take good care of their tiny homes and use the opportunity to start rebuilding their lives could be considered candidates for other programs for more permanent forms of housing.
Ideally, you’d spread out these homes across the entire city, integrating with communities without causing too much disruption. You could place them in spots like vacant lots in industrial areas or underused parking lots (like 2 parking spots converted to 3 or 4 tiny homes) near amenities like grocery stores or LRT stations.
I think our current method of having “superclusters” of homeless people at places like the DIC just ends up encouraging and perpetuating antisocial behavior through cultural pressure (if you are struggling with drug addiction or mental health, surrounding yourself exclusively with people who are also struggling with addiction and mental health is evidently not a recipe for success). We could cut down the size of the DIC to lessen its adverse effects on the community and introduce a few smaller service centers for the homeless across the city in strategic locations.
A consequence of this strategy is that since every homeless person would have a safe shelter of their own where they are free to do as they wish, there is no longer any moral argument against enforcing the rules against things like abuse and drug use in public spaces (like on transit). Therefore, we’d be able to pair this with stricter laws and enforcement to keep public spaces safe for everyone.
Build tiny homes for each and every homeless person, plus some extra for flexibility. But make them as cost effective as physically possible: they don’t need electricity or plumbing or anything beyond a safe, warm space to sleep and store some possessions. I’m thinking they could be like little sheds that we can move around as necessary.
They would be humble, but provide a legitimate opportunity to guarantee a safe shelter as a human right, even for people who struggle with issues that make them difficult to otherwise shelter. Because they would be so cheap, they would not be risky to assign to people who might not be able to take care of a traditional apartment. And you’d aim for them to be so cheap that we can nearly instantly provide them to people in need rather than struggling with long waiting lists. People who take good care of their tiny homes and use the opportunity to start rebuilding their lives could be considered candidates for other programs for more permanent forms of housing.
Ideally, you’d spread out these homes across the entire city, integrating with communities without causing too much disruption. You could place them in spots like vacant lots in industrial areas or underused parking lots (like 2 parking spots converted to 3 or 4 tiny homes) near amenities like grocery stores or LRT stations.
I think our current method of having “superclusters” of homeless people at places like the DIC just ends up encouraging and perpetuating antisocial behavior through cultural pressure (if you are struggling with drug addiction or mental health, surrounding yourself exclusively with people who are also struggling with addiction and mental health is evidently not a recipe for success). We could cut down the size of the DIC to lessen its adverse effects on the community and introduce a few smaller service centers for the homeless across the city in strategic locations.
A consequence of this strategy is that since every homeless person would have a safe shelter of their own where they are free to do as they wish, there is no longer any moral argument against enforcing the rules against things like abuse and drug use in public spaces (like on transit). Therefore, we’d be able to pair this with stricter laws and enforcement to keep public spaces safe for everyone.
darwink
Senior Member
Los Angeles tried the above and there are issues.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I see what you're trying to do, give them somewhere else to go that isn't a shelter at a train station. It's an interesting idea, and if your goal is to move them to different places then they are now, it works. But there are other problems at play than just where they are. I do agree with your below statement though, how the city so easily granted another 50 year lease for the DIC without thinking or looking at alternatives confuses me.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Timely…
livewirecalgary.com
Calgary Drop-In Centre to get $4 million for 35 detox spaces, overdose response - LiveWire Calgary
The provincial government announced millions for Calgary’s Drop-in Centre on Wednesday, cash to expand medical detox and recovery capacity alongside the creation of dynamic overdose response teams. The funding, which amounts to $4 million for 2023, includes $2.2 million for 15 detox and 20...
livewirecalgary.com
403808
New Member
Interesting idea. Has this strategy actually been implemented (and succeeded) anywhere? darwink mentioned LA.
Some of the obvious challenges would be access to bathroom facilities.
darwink
Senior Member
Are Tiny Homes built on oddly-shaped slivers of 'virtually unusable' city an answer to the homelessness crisis? Have a look inside
Tiny homes are cheap to manufacture and quick to build, and offer transitional bridge housing for the unhoused in Los Angeles.
www.businessinsider.com
Los Angeles’ newest ‘tiny home village’ for homeless opens in Tarzana
The tiny home village’s residents are provided laundry access, three meals a day, restroom facilities, 24/7 security, case management and drug and mental health counseling. Pets are also allo…
www.dailynews.com
jhappy77
Active Member
Some cities have done tiny home villages, yes. Here are the main problems with them and how my proposal would hope to solve them:
- They often come with lots of rules that make homeless people unwilling to accept them – I propose making smaller communities / clusters with less regulations
- Because the homes or their villages often feature lots of amenities, this drives up the cost of construction, rendering them expensive. I’d propose making them literally as basic as possible so that we can afford to build them at scale.
- They are usually in large clusters (ex 50+ homes) which would drive up community impact and opposition. While we could have some tiny home villages like that (if they’re in good locations), we could also have smaller clusters of just a handful of tiny homes in places like grocery store parking lots. This would cause much less community impact, so it lessens the political barriers to action.
- Nobody anywhere has built enough to house all homeless people in their city, only to put a smaller dent in the problem. I propose doing it at a scale where you can house everyone. If you had a housing guarantee, you could pair that with stricter rules around public land usage (zero tolerance for drug use on transit, ban on encampments, etc)
darwink
Senior Member
Or we could just build more you know, real housing instead of shacks with balconies so people can smoke in peace. You’re proposing to do less than Los Angeles. How would what you propose be better than random encampment?
In the end the wrap around services necessary to make this work would be way more expensive than the housing itself. So why the opposition to the housing itself?
In the end the wrap around services necessary to make this work would be way more expensive than the housing itself. So why the opposition to the housing itself?
Urban Outdoorsman
Active Member
Strong towns did an interesting episode touching on some of the issues around homelessness:
In short, an important point they raised is that the rise of meth and fentanyl has pretty much changed the game in terms of how we deal with drug use and homelessness as a society. I'm not really sure what the solution is. But I think the guest raised some really important points that what used to work is no longer viable given the insane potency of these drugs and the strangle hold it has on those addicted to them.
In short, an important point they raised is that the rise of meth and fentanyl has pretty much changed the game in terms of how we deal with drug use and homelessness as a society. I'm not really sure what the solution is. But I think the guest raised some really important points that what used to work is no longer viable given the insane potency of these drugs and the strangle hold it has on those addicted to them.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
That sounds like… completely dehumanizing. Outhouses? Using the nearest service centre for showering? Like… what?
jhappy77
Active Member
That's a big exaggeration and completely against my intent. Is it not dehumanizing to leave people in the cold without shelter and without a home? Obviously in an ideal world you would have great quality homes for everyone, but in this case I think material progress and actually delivering housing for everyone is more important than idealism. It is a human right to have shelter, and I think it's a human right to have a safe home. It's not necessarily a human right to have a shower in your house, and if we treat it that way it's going to be an obstacle to progress.