Put them in tiny villages, not in warehouses
Complex questions require complex answers.
It is encouraging that community members are thinking constructively about how to provide therapeutic care to mentally ill and drug addicted citizens enduring homelessness in the midst of plenty.
Two oversimplifications, however, regularly leap off these pages. One is that one enormous warehouse containing every low-functioning person in Canada has any hope of improving the lives of the people swallowed into it.
The other is that unless “we” are able to impose involuntary confinement on “them,” all is lost.
As in every other facet of social life, seeing problems and solutions from “our” perspective only and ignoring “theirs” — negotiating with ourselves, as it were, always with an eye toward minimizing cost to the top of the net-worth pyramid — is guaranteed not to satisfy the needs of subjects decided to be swept out of sight and mind because “our” needs not “theirs” are the subject of conversation.
Tiny villages with embedded mental health and drug treatment supports have the best chance of turning homeless mentally ill and addicted individuals’ lives around because these are the environments that homeless people say they would welcome any time they are asked.
Tiny villages share crucial social characteristics with homeless encampments, which themselves are an organic expression of homeless individuals’ need for stability, security, community, and the opposite of anonymity; to be a person, in other words, in the company of other people.
Leaving aside what it costs to train and employ health-care professionals to provide services to these demographics, tiny villages require plots of land, and land costs a king’s ransom in the financialized economy that defines the parameters of our lives.
Hence, endless suggestions of involuntary confinement of as many bodies as possible in enormous, impersonal warehouses when the most fundamental need of someone thrown out on the street to vanish is to be acknowledged and administered care as a unique individual person.
Bill Appledorf
Victoria
Election signs a blight, should be eliminated
Re: “A sign that you are against democracy,” letter, Sept. 24.
The idea that vandalism of election signs is undemocratic is truly comical. These wasteful signs are a blight on public green spaces, along boulevards and sidewalks.
They often wind up as pollution in roadside ditches long after ballots are cast.
They should only be permitted on private property or ideally eliminated outright.
These signs provide absolutely no information on candidates or the position of their party on important election issues.
The idea that a person should cast their ballot for a candidate simply because they repeatedly read a name on a sign is the real insult to our democracy.
Marlin Smyth
Saanich
Anti-vaccine leaders would have hurt us
What kind of a COVID-19 outcome would B.C. have had if we had not had a premier, health minister and chief public health officer who believe in medical science? Had an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist been in charge, I shudder to think of what the consequences would have been for the people of this province.
Hugh Stephens
Victoria
That siren noise hurts our health
Further to the letters on sirens, I might add that Victoria seems to have a greater density of siren use than Vancouver (and certainly way more than I have experienced in European centres).
I’ve slept through many nights in the West End of Vancouver without being disturbed. In fact fire and ambulance there do sometimes travel with only lights, or occasional bursts of sound, not constant wailing to travel a kilometre or two through virtually empty night time streets.
Adding to the problem of North American sirens is the development in sound technology to make them even louder and more piercing. Siren technology is an exact science, aiming at making the most alarming and unpleasant sound.
There is undoubtedly a time and place for this, but their constant use, by multiple departments, day and night, not only disturbs sleep, but is likely damaging to the population’s general health.
Furthermore, their constant use might actually be worsening the problem of drivers not clearing the road for emergency vehicles.
Robert Creese
Saanich
No family doctor so no refills
Absolutely terrible, at least that’s how we feel, when we’re told that our medical prescriptions could not be refilled because we had no primary caregiver.
Our doctor left this area last year and the Health Ministry had advised us to put our names on the waiting list for a doctor.
We have heard nothing from them about our position on this “list.”
Even the worst businesses don’t have you sitting on “hold” for a year.
Perhaps we should be looking at a harm reduction program that deals with handicapped seniors.
Austin Neithercut
Victoria
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