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April 28, 2007

Comments

Mayor Quimby

Sometimes I wonder, what ever happened to "walk a mile in their shoes", most of these people have had very hard lives and adolescence, usually involving some sort of neglect and/or abuse.

I applaud your stance, people are people and we should treat them how we would like to be treated in that situation. According to Stats Canada, about 30% of Canadians are a paycheck away from poverty. We all need to be a little more thankful for what we have, sometimes. Morals aside the economics of turning homeless into homeowner is well worth any and all investments by the city and province.

Skylark

The suggestion to turn every homeless person into a homeowner was once made by a fellow from IHA at a local forum on homelessness.

I responded that not every homeless person WANTS to be a homeowner, and that we need to create not one solution and ask everyone to fit it, but to allow for a wide variety of options.

Depending on the individual, home ownership can be very stressful --as can maintaining a large apartment, having to stay in one spot, etc.

Some people are happiest "owning" (or mortgaging) a home. Others are happiest owning a van or camper and being left in peace to park it here and there overnights while they sleep. Others prefer to live in the wild, others prefer to live in shelters, with lots of human contact, meals prepared and some support. Many want a tiny apt (easier to manage) that is self-contained (privacy and security). Many crave not ownership but supported housing --a small room in a shared house with a listening ear and help preparing communal meals in turns.

Optimal housing is different for everyone. We need to create more options overall, and make all of them equally acceptable.

So many folks would be ecstatic to receive a year's worth of welfare rent amounts to use as downpayment against a camper, for example.

I agree with all comments made here by Arjun and MQ, but wanted to put this forth also.

Mike

Skylark - I find your perspective on this intriguing. I can agree that there's more than one positive result that can be achieved for each individual situation. What I find it difficult to see is how this is actually something we can achieve.

It's always important to consider here is the economic impact these alternatives. How do we accomodate so many variables in a cost effective way?

Humanitarian causes can have huge costs with little effect. When someone doesn't honestly want to get help, it can be a long and difficult road helping them turn their life around. In a larger scale, I was reading an article recently on how the billions of dollars of aid that have been poured into many areas of Africa seem to have had a long-term effect of making the next generation's situations worse than the generation that we initially set out to help.

How do we keep the financial burden of these initiatives modest?
How do we manage these initiatives effectively?
How do we measure the effectiveness of the initiatives?
How do we know that the people we're setting out to change really honestly want to change?

I think that's the part where governments always get stuck. Some good idea comes along, and between the costs, insurance, legal issues, moral implications and actual effectiveness it becomes a very complex situation.

I'm all for helping people that want to be helped to find their way (as evidence see http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=573030028 ), but I also think you can do little to help those whom are not interested or ready for the help.

Arjun Singh

Appreciate the comments Mayor Quimby and Skylark. If we do not ask people to aim to become homeowners, we do need to help them with self esteem and other issues so that they can take more responsibility for their lives. It's become cliche but it is true - better a hand up than a hand out - that is my view.

Mayor Quimby

Mike
Some questions and/or answers to your questions:

How do we keep the financial burden of these initiatives modest?

- Why does the cost need to be modest ? The multiplier effect will create more dollars from each invested. The economic upside of this is worth nearly any amount. By stabilizing the current cohort, you stabilize future generation and stop the cycle.

How do we manage these initiatives effectively?

-It depends on the initiative, each would be managed differently.

How do we measure the effectiveness of the initiatives?

-Less homeless= effective

How do we know that the people we're setting out to change really honestly want to change?

-Via collaboration not just a hand out, one would have to be active in helping them with their life choices. Many need to learn even basic life skills, grocery shopping, cooking, etc. You teach them these skills and employment skills, help find suitable housing(possibly subsidized) and help along the way as they need once they have reached a stable point. In the end some will have ill intent but by making the program about helping hands not hand outs will drastically reduce. it.

Skylark

Great conversation!

A lot can be achieved by changing law. We've seen steps forward and steps back initiated by changes in laws that directly impact the homeless and at-risk of homelessness.

For example, when we successfully pressed to have welfare's definition of "spouse" tightened to reflect a more common understanding than welfare had been using, we saw fewer people lose their income (and therefore homes).

A disabled person receiving Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits may spend her money how she chooses. She may buy a tent, van, camper, condo, or house --and independently or jointly. She may also choose to pay no rent and use her income for counselling, nutritional therapies, etc, toward wellness and increased capacity for work.

A disabled person receiving welfare, on the other hand, is required to spend a large portion of her income on rent or mortgage of a static space, whether or not this is the most suitable environment for her, and regardless of whether this is the most primary need in her life or the most likely to resolve her situation longterm.

If she shares the space with another, the person can be named her "spouse", and her income reduced. Etc.

People who have survived extremely difficult circumstances, disabilities, etc, often have more initiative, creativity, etc, than those who have sailed through our system.

When people with these resources are indeed *allowed* to take responsibility for how they will manage their budget, many will find their way.

I don't have my head in the clouds: I completed over 6,000 hours of welfare advocacy --I did see the handful that truly lacked budgeting skills-- but I saw that far more had run businesses, run households, raised children, paid off debts, etc, before falling into circumstances that led them to welfare.

Forcing people to remain in the cycle is an expensive approach. Give folks some leeway --give $700/mo and let each choose their path.

Don't require him to give $350 every month to a landlord. Let him do a work exchange for rent, if he wants, letting him save up for a mortgage or work clothes.

Let her spend four months every year working on a farm for free rent, and saving up for a suitable (drug-free, quiet, safe) winter apartment.

Let him buy a home co-operatively, without "marrying" him off.

Let her buy a van and use her rent money for gas and campsite fees. (The musician Jewel is not the only person who found her way to stability after time living in a vehicle allowed her to prepare for her career.)

Welfare spends a lot more money on emergency housing than necessary --use that money to give real options that work.

I believe that when an individual's needs are truly met over a period of time, she will begin to recover and find her place in our society.

I believe in social programs. They need to serve as platforms, though, not traps.

What our society has to decide is: Are we willing to house and feed even those people who do not share the common desire to own property, etc? Must a person desire and aim for ownership to be deemed worthy of a monthly allowance? Etc.

Mike

Indeed no one should ever be forced into homelessness.

I tried on the shoes of homelessness once (very briefly) and was once on welfare. I can vouch that systems like this can be very helpful.
http://www.picotalk.com/index.php/MSFT/2005/11/01/living_in_the_back_of_a_car

"- Why does the cost need to be modest ? The multiplier effect will create more dollars from each invested. The economic upside of this is worth nearly any amount. By stabilizing the current cohort, you stabilize future generation and stop the cycle."

It seems incredible that investing into these types of social programs would garner an overall financial gain for the city, province, or country. Businesses and governments around the world - if they knew they could actually turn a profit from this type of program they'd be all over it. I would guess that statistics claiming that social programs like this are financially beneficial to a society are best-case scenario statistics rather than real-world applied stats.

Still, stopping the cycle would definitely be the best reward even if, at the end of the day, the bean counting does show a moderate deficit to accomplish the task.

Something must be actively going on to, as has been stated here, help up those that simply need a hand to hold or some education on how to find a better path. I believe as a society we need to be there to help each other when we fall off the track.

As a business owner I also see how difficult it is to run and manage a business in a cost-effective way. The wider the range of services a business offers, the more expensive and difficult to manage it becomes.

A restaurant might be good example of this. Restaurants need a wide variety of food choices to match their clients tastes. Even on huge menus with a huge variety of dishes, sometimes we just can't find something we'd like to eat. A restaurant that has such a wide variety of dishes has to have a lot of various ingredients on hand. If they don't have sufficient volume for all the dishes, then some of the food spoils and they have the cost of the lost food. They also have to have enough cooks on all the time with the skills to cook all the menu choices. Having a restaurant that is large enough to handle the volume and has sufficient parking needed to support the large menu costs more. As the manager or owner of a restaurant, it can be a delicate balance to keep the business on the plus side with all these variables in place.

Consider that the restaurant with all these variables is far less difficult to run and manage than a social program where there's so many indirect or inferred variables at play - it's a daunting task.

Anyway, I'm not meaning in any way to say we shouldn't explore these ideas... in fact I think the ideas in this list are very positive. I'm just encouraging that we explore more than just the concept of helping people, but the actual implementation of these good ideas. If at any time these ideas were presented to someone with the power to do something with them, they'll be thinking far more critically.

Mayor Quimby

Mike,

Your analogy would not work so well with this situation, except to show the difficulties in pleasing everyone. A business owner can only add to the economy, beyond the current additions, by increasing wages or doing capital investments to the business. A government, at any level, via investment can add much more to the economy.

Let's take 10 "average" homeless people, a program is developed to give them life skills, adequate income and a small income. It cost on average $20k per person per year, or $2 million a year. Out of these 10, 3 change their lives get employment, buy or rent, etc. 3 more fill there spots so no savings there. But the gain in a taxpayer and productive citizen adds from $5-10k per year to various tax coffers. But the real savings come with the fact that 2 of 3 would have been incarcerated, statistically, now that savings their are at least $100k per year just for not having 2 new prisoners. The fact that 2 less criminals are in the system each year means reduced need for police officers saving another $50-60 k per year. Now a 2 million investment has garnered $510k in savings. This doesn't take into account the effect of adding another wage earner to the economy. Even at $20k in wages per year average between the 3 is $60k more with even a small multiplier effect you are looking at another $900 k or more. Now that 2 million spent nets out at less then $600k. That isn't much to get 10 people off the street,about $6.66 per person.

Also, that is just the 3, not including the savings from the other 7 on assistance indefinitely.

Mike

"Your analogy would not work so well with this situation, except to show the difficulties in pleasing everyone. A business owner can only add to the economy, beyond the current additions, by increasing wages or doing capital investments to the business."

-- I have to disagree here. I don't expect the analogy is in anyway perfect, but the business may directly benefit our society through taxes paid on profits, city taxes and licensing fees, employment of any number of persons, rent or property ownership, purchasing from the supply-chain etc. etc. To extend this, the restaurant is not taking money out of public coffers to operate yet it puts money directly back into the public domain in various ways. Again it's not a effect comparison, it's more of a concept comparison. Something as "simple" as a restaurant has a huge failure rate. Something as complex as a multi-faceted social program is going to be very difficult to keep on track.

Operating a complex social program is historically difficult and expensive and we cannot easily measure the results in a cos vs. savings way. We don't know that any of those 10 people would ever be incarcerated for any significant length of time. We don't know that helping them out of homelessness will prevent them from being incarcerated. We don't know that they will earn enough to pay taxes.

Using the "Local Multiplier Effect" in this example is a complex idea itself. What is the "root" of the multiplier? Money is being circulated but if every step along the way is counted as the "root" then the theory doesn't hold out. If I understand what I've ready about the LME - the idea is that external money coming into a community circulates x-times before it leaves the community. In this case, depending how you look at it, the money is already inside our own community and may have gone through a few exchanges already before it gets to down to those we're helping.

I think it's a little over-optimistic to think that we can sell off this type of social program as a way of saving a community money. It very likely will make the community a better place to live for everyone, especially those whom are receiving direct assistance from the program; it is just as likely going to cost far (money) more than we'll ever realize to achieve it.

Money is only as good as what's done with it... so I'm all for spending money carefully to help those who need a hand up - but I'd like to know at the end of the day that in spending money on big social programs we're not sliding our lower-income people down further as well.

Jayney

Thanks for linking to my blog!

It's really great to see that some people in the public sphere (like yourself) are on the right track in dealing with this issue compassionately and practically.

Skylark

Mike: The blog you linked to --is that yours? Loved the post!

MQ: Yes, savings in incarceration, emergency housing, etc, could easily offset programs of prevention and alleviation.

One solution implemented before the Kamloops housing market went bananas was for individuals and groups to buy houses and rent out space (rooms or suites). The rents recover the costs. Why did so few groups get on board with this solution? Beats me. Those who did have continuously provided safe, relatively affordable housing to people in recovery or otherwise getting back on their feet while covering costs (and gaining equity).

I agree that solutions need to be economically sound. I think we also miss perfectly good opportunities for solutions because we spend years (!) picking apart proposals --far beyond the point at which a business plan would be accepted as reasonably viable --then deeming them "impossible", disallowing the necessary leap of faith essential to any new business.

Barriers are imposed in the name of "accountability", "credibility", etc. Among other things, this means that financially careful groups are denied funding while wasteful ones are given more. Where a proposal is accepted, the project must be short-lived and show short term results even at the loss of long term ones. It must also use up all funds within the project period, and save none.

My own major project, a directory connecting low-income people to local resources, was denied both municipal and "homelessness" funding. I finally just did it myself.

Had a non-profit been funded to do it, it would have been far cheaper, as we would have been able to access major discounts in advertising, website, etc. The project would have easily paid for itself, and become a revenue generator for the non-profit.

Indeed, we could learn a lot from a business model! Although it may be changing now, funders have not traditionally permitted a business model for social problems, instead demanding that non-profits be ineffective and wasteful.

The only caveat I would propose is that it be the co-op business model, so that money is recirculated to build on the project or mandate, rather than funnelled to a CEO.

Mike Maddison

Skylark - yes www.picotalk.com is where I post my own blog.

"The only caveat I would propose is that it be the co-op business model, so that money is recirculated to build on the project or mandate, rather than funneled to a CEO."

We don't want the money for these programs to go to a CEO or an unnecessarily large management group. Kudos on your efforts to do something directly.

Skylark

I've asked Arjun to post a link to this, but in case some of you are still checking back here...Workshops of great interest to this discussion:

http://soundkamloops.org/2007/05/15/city-planning-workshops/

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