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Originally Posted by MonctonianSentinel01
I agree 100%. They must be expecting this to go away on it's own? Or perhaps that because the issue is so widespread all over North America they think that it's the new normal? If we try to understand why they are doing nothing about it, we'll drive ourselves mad trying to figure it out. I pray that when we get a new Prime Minister that he virtue signals that this type of behavior is unacceptable and actually tries to do something about it. We need new leadership, I understand that it is more than this, but it would be a good place to start. The liberation of drugs isn't good.
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I have to really respectfully disagree with the notion that the issue in our society is that people on welfare are spending it on drugs and that giving them less welfare will somehow fix the problem. We already have one of the lowest welfare payments in Canada.
We can absolutely agree that there is a direct correlation between drug addiction & mental health but how that has come to be we are very far apart.
The current welfare payments in New Brunswick would not even give someone enough to access housing in todays market, and there is no where to house them if it did. So the idea that we shouldn't even give someone welfare if they don't have an address, when the payment itself isn't enough to house themselves sounds like more of something that would make the issue exponentially worse.
The current housing market in the province is losing approximately affordable 50-100 units per month to renovictions and increased rent prices. We have barely invested anything into building new ones. The most recent investment of $100 million dollars was only to create 380 units over 4 years. The math on that does not sound good to me.
I don't know if you've ever spoken with people who work with homeless and vulnerable populations, but I'd really like to understand what people believe is the path for someone who currently has no house, is on a lengthy waitlist for rehab and mental addictions help and potentially unemployable due to those issues.
If our serious solutions to our current issues are mandatory jailing and rehab for drug addictions and removing support systems like welfare I am terrified for what this province is in 10 years. When you have 2 year wait lists for subsidized housing, and 6 month waitlists for addiction and mental health treatment. It doesn't matter how hard you yell at those people to try harder, or to take away the only money they have. They will never get better without a safe roof over their heads and support system in place.
There was a time when our provincial government had a large chunk of its budget dedicated to public housing (have to go back to the 80s I believe), but that's has shrunk to roughly 2% and the rest of the issue is passed down to non profit organizations who are stuck working with landlords who have zero incentive to work with them, and those non profits do not have the resources to build housing themselves.
If we had endless amounts of available housing, and addictions specialists twiddling their thumbs waiting for patients I would surely agree with you, because the base support that is needed would be there. But until we ever catch up on the root cause of this issue, it will only continue to get worse.
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(Look at the Empire State Building.....102 stories in 1 year and 45 days start to finish)
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