What you describe is BCTeenChallenge. They are self sufficient and provide a camp like setting. They are contracted out on vocational labour gigs for various company's. They are funded by corp charitable $ and they buy and sell cars as well. So, what you speak of is possible. More on it later.

What do we do with those who choose not to work? :confused:

There are only 3 basic human needs. Eat, Shit, Sleep.

There are plenty of mental stable people in the "homeless" population in Vancouver who just choose to be homeless. In Canada, especially in BC, it is fairly easy to "walk the earth" because those basic needs are easily met. Soup kitchens, mild weather, green space, clothing donation and bleeding hearts help pave that way.

What if you bring "homeless" to a labour camp and they refuse to work? What then? Firing squad or gas chamber? The humane option would be jail. But that becomes a burden on taxpayers and now taxpayers are providing a mentally stable person free housing. Albeit, their freedom rights would have to be stripped because it would have to be against the law to be unemployed and homeless in order to keep them there. I'd like to see a politician push that agenda in BC. Illegal to be lazy.

What about those passive drug users who are mentally unstable? When you put them in a labour camp, good luck getting any labour out of them. They suffer from mental illness and they are expected to function as unskilled labour? This brings back the Riverview debate, which is, free housing for the mentally unstable, from the wallets of taxpayers. However, there is also a loss of freedom rights as they are confined to a prison like setting.

Prison with free will. That would mean a person who chooses not to work and chooses not to live under the rules and regulations of the "prison" or "labour camp" is free to go back on the street and resume smoking crack. :chairdance:

^

those who are stable and enjoy being homeless can continue the way they are. if they enjoy sleeping in the rain/cold and pan handling making 10$ a day and eating scraps then so be it. they're not forced to do anything. but if someone were to tell you that they've got a deal of a lifetime for them at no real cost to them. 3 meals a day, warm place to sleep, fresh clothes, a job, and a chance to start over, you'd probably take it. a lot of homeless people are just people who were down on their luck, made poor financial decisions and lost their gfs/wives, house, job, car etc. those people would probably jump on board in a heart beat...sure beats holding a squeegee at a red light.

I said the program cant be applied to everyone for obvious reasons. shitty? yes. but until theres other options for them, not much can be done.

if they refuse to work then they're no longer welcome to stay and reap the benefits. simple. if they feel that they would rather sit in an alley and smoke crack and shoot up, then go for it. theres the door, close it on your way out. obviously you cant put everyone in a shelter all at once, so there would need to be some sort of wait list to get in. so if they leave and want to come back...they're going to have to wait it out.

This is the stupidest shit ever. Maybe less stupid than safe injection sites, but it's up there.
This is just a circle jerk for people with too much time to tell anyone who'll listen: "look at all this good I'm doing".
This is cutting a weed. Either pull the weed by the root or come to terms with a garden full of weeds.
Concentrate on providing people who want to get clean the means to get clean. Concentrate on providing a place for those with mental problems (the ones who are actually victims of circumstance and fall into drug use) to go to. And for the rest, decide either to force them to get clean or to get rid of them.

Labour camps for the homeless would turn into centers of brutality so fucking fast it would make Abu Ghraib look like a happy granny tea party

Please realize that being homeless does permanent change to your self-worth!

I'm 35 and even though I was only homeless for a few months here and there from when I was like 15-18, it still has an effect on me today. You definitely develop social awareness to subtle changes in the way people treat you, and you can detect immediately when you come across as an "outsider" which can make it difficult to deal with people. When certain events happen in someone's life, they leave imprints on people that affect them in ways they don't even perceive consciously.

Hardcore addicts lose their sense of identity completely when they're totally fucked. (of course, if you're wealthy and on drugs you don't really lose your identity as much because you can still afford the upkeep on the rest of your life, the poor do not have that luxury.)

To clean up, those addicts have to rebuild their own self-identity from the ground up.

How do they learn to eat a healthy diet again?
How about dressing in clothes to suit social situations?
How to deal with finding a significant other?
How to find hobbies and activities away from previous lifelong pursuits?
How to find employment that they enjoy?
How to pay bills on time and manage money?

Like there is so much more I can go into, the nature of rebooting who you are as a person is not very easy. As an artist myself, I can say that it takes a good year or more for me to adjust my lifestyle and self-indentity to a point where my friends notice the shift. That's after years of practice, a good income, a safe place to live, and supportive friends.

Now imagine being Joe McSurrey and trying to get off heroin in a $300 SRO. Rats, cockroaches, canned food, complete boredom and McDonald's as a prospect for employment, your life is basically complete shit and you're supposed to put a smile on your face and rejoin the world? That's a long climb up the social ladder. Chances are you can't get any dates either, or the women you'd be dating are also DTES people which probably won't be the best influence on you.

Shit, if any of you people really want to help the DTES, go make some friends down here with the poor people. Let me tell you, I tried to make friends with Ken Foster and he ended up stealing shit from my studio! At no time did I get mad about it though, it is just one of the likely things to happen when dealing with the lower classes. Now, do you want to deal with helping these people directly, or would you rather the government do it?

We need places in society where the lower classes can exist in their natural states of chaos. This allows the most freedom, but at a cost of higher tax. If we try to change it, ALL people will lose their freedoms one by one.

Damn that coffee I had at midnight was strong!

Ken Foster's a good example of a talented, intelligent person who lost everything due to mental illness and the scars of a terrible childhood.

HIV/AIDS treatment isn't cheap. Personally I don't have the most knowledge in diseases which are transferrable by saliva, but the small price of a crack pipe vending machine is minuscule compared to some of the other idiotic expenditures this country make. This one might even save some money in the long run.

i would love to know the ages of the people who are against this idea. i know when i was younger, say about 18-24, i couldn't care less about what they did with the homeless problem. but now that im a bit older and wiser. i have a totally different view on these types of things

sorry to hear that about you, but just because it had that effect on you doesn't mean it will for everybody.

and yes, they have to rebuild from ground up. it doesn't happen overnight, it takes years. if they're in a "camp" like I was talking about, they can easily learn about diet and health since they'll be eating healthy while there. learning new hobbies and interests is one of the things they will learn while there..hell there was a story not to long ago about a guy who offered a homeless man a programming book/laptop or a 100$ bill. the man took the book/laptop, studies while living on the streets, and now hes a programmer working for the guy who gave it to him. finding new hobbies are easy when you've access to them. finding a S/O takes time. as for money management, theres easy free ways to learn...when I was in elementary school I remember my teacher gave us a project that lasted for months. every pay day we would each get "1000$", and from that we'd get to look through magazines, buy items we liked, cut them out and put them in our "house", figure out the taxes, balance a checkbook, all while having a set amount of money that we needed to save for food/rent/and utilities. if I could do it in elementary school im sure they can as well with a little help and guidance. finding a job they enjoy...lets face it, most of us may have jobs in our desired field, but that doesn't mean we enjoy our job, probably just the money that the job can get us.

as for joe mcsurrey, if he has to put a fake smile on his face working at mcdonalds just to make ends meat then do it. climbing up a social ladder isn't easy, but you've got to start somewhere, and its better to start sooner than to late.



28 this year. im against seeing my tax money going towards homeless having a safer drug experience. if my money was going towards getting them out of drugs and help them out with detox and attempt to get them into a work force, then by all means take my tax money and put it to good use. im just tired of seeing bullshit about the gov. catering to drug addicted homeless people. do I feel sorry/sympathetic for them? yeah, I do. would I like to help them? of course. but in no way do I think that giving them 25c crack pipes is a way of helping them...its just a bs way of telling them to continue on being drug addicts, but heres a crack pipe to show we care. I just find it stupid.

If the government doesn't take care of them two things will happen:


1. Poor people will get in the faces of the rich and fuck shit up
2. The government will enact harsh laws that take away ALL people's freedoms for stability

to get each and every one off drugs is going to cost far more money than the government can afford. if clean needles and pipes helps reduce the transmission of diseases then it can only help in the long run. spend a little money up front to save a lot of money down the road.

and again, the money spent on this is just a minuscule drop in the governments budget.

^ I'm all up for the gov helping them, but helping them this way seems quite stupid. They're not solving a problem at the source which they should be doing. This is like sweeping dust under the carpet.

They don't need to take any freedoms away.
Help them the proper way to attempt to have them return as a contributing member of society, or flat out stop funding them with their insite program and crack pipe shit.
If they would like to return, they have to make the initial first step...if not, they can go back to using shared needles/pipes and for us to quit giving them handouts. If that's the life they want to live then let them live it.

The direction this shit is going we might as well give them free crack/weed/heroin/coke and meth...throw in some malt liquor as well while they're at it.
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Treating them with dignity and removing the stigma which surrounds addiction and mental illness an important step. Improving their basic needs, such as their health and wellbeing is a start. Nothing is going to eliminate drug use. These programs acknowledge this and seek to at least improve peoples lives. Human beings will always be effected by addiction and mental illness and there isn't much we can do about it realistically. However, we can change how we as a society choose to perceive people effected by these issues.

I'm posting just to throw this into the mix. Some of you may have seen these articles a few weeks ago, but here are some links in case you didn't.

BBC News - Amsterdam alcoholics paid in beer for collecting litter

Amsterdam pays alcoholic workers in beer, lets them work buzzed - The Globe and Mail

Wow you're very stubborn. The gov. can fund all your ideas of a 'PROPER' way to fighting this. You will only find that you're no where near cleaning up anybody. We're dealing with people with mental illnesses. I don't think you FULLY understand what this means so please educate yourself by clicking this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder. <----PLEASE CLICK HERE. Not everyone can be cured from a disorder. Most will live this way the rest of their lives. While you go on with your ignorant good life, what would you say about these people? lazy? incapable? useless?

For all you know, they were ALL born NORMAL JUST LIKE YOU but made some wrong decisions, did some crack and got addicted. Now live on the streets and got what they deserved. Sounds like a true hollywood story right? Open up you're sheltered mind, go out to the downtown eastside and ask these defenseless people how they ended up there. And until you do so, please stop posting your pointless arguments about how wrong a 25 cent crack pipe is.

Over the last 10 years, safe injection sites have reduced the spread of HIV/AIDS by 40%. Any idea how much money in tax that saved you? Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I know where you can get one.

We in Canada are lucky enough to have public health care. A lot of us benefit from it, but there are some negatives. Negatively, we have to care for everyone. Including those who you might not think deserve it. If we didn't have health care you could let them die out on the streets, but we do. Yes, finding a solution to the issue in the first place would be great. For now, this saves you money. Figure it out.

These things don't come by if it didn't save the Government money.

oh really? cause I happen to have some of the things on that list..and some that aren't on it...I take 20+ pills a fucking day just to be able to walk down the street on my own(even though im not supposed to), ive lost my ability to drive and can no longer work my job because of it, but you don't see me shoving a fucking needle in my arm to take the pain away.

care to live a day in my life?

Perspective changes everything.

What is this Public health care you speak of? For those of us who work for themselves, we get an MSP bill in the mail every month and if you don't pay it, no public heath care for you... Maybe those who live on the street get "free" health care, I know I sure as hell don't.

You're not refuting Hud's point since MSP rates are set following significant Federal and Provincial subsidy. It is public rather than private healthcare. It's just not free healthcare if you're past a certain income level. (For the record, I think the entire MSP system is a bureaucratic inefficiency.)
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I might be more supportive of these things if some asshole didn't break into my car in Chinatown but since that happened, fuck 'em.

FYI, not self employed, I still pay the $700 per year. It's not free for us rich people. But that wasn't the point.

again ill say this. i seem to be one of the few to not be going broke by taxes in this province. please correct me if im wrong. but id love to pay more in tax if it meant we had more to spend on things like educaton, health and social problems.