Quote:
Originally Posted by Skook
Changing city, you are right, this conversation doesn’t belong in this thread and should have it’s own location. This will be my last post on the subject, but felt compelled to respond since my comments were being addressed directly.
Also, you make an excellent point about the services in the DTES likely being best placed to deal with the current OD crisis. In this case, our sad concentration of misery might actually turn out to be beneficial. On the whole, though, I remain convinced it causes more problems than it solves (see SFU study noted earlier).
As for my “authoritarian” fantasy in a previous comment – thanks for that, Marshall – it seems that Marshall disagrees with forcing people out of a shithole, while I disagree with forcing them in. You are correct that we will always have social problems, I debate whether our current practice of concentrating the bulk of those problems into a single, spectacularly dysfunctional neighbourhood is helpful.
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Fair enough. Except, still no detailed attempt at what your alternative would look like. There is a lesson though in the DTES being a concentrated situation which facilitates access to services and economic advantage in running them. We can forget about the DTES, like I said, it is fated to a wholesale rejuvination. So, as these people are pushed out, what policies should be followed so they don't become invisible, so that they can be helped best, so that their crime is managed, so that they have the possibilities of some kind of social existence where they can easily (it needs to be easily - this is a character of dysfunction that must be acknowledged) avoid isolation. The DTES only gets bad press, but there are a number of things that should be recognized and learned from.
By the way, one of the solutions, for a certain segment, is the re-opening of a modernized progressive Riverview. Another would be social housing that relates to clusters of services that include social/community centres (obviously, of a specialized character), rehabilitation facilities, drug safety facilities (needle exchange, etc.), mental health outreach and care, and so on. But this is just covering base needs.
The DTES is ugly, but in it these people eek out a form of life which involves "a place they possess" (shrinking every day), activity (selling goods/stolen goods/distribution/drug dealing/sex) and community of like souls. Of course, a lot of this is repugnant to many of us; but again, there is a point. The DTES facilitates activity. Forget what kind it is. The lesson is that human beings, across all ranks and kinds, need to have something to do, to fill the days. Moving these people is going to happen, we must address these issues. Once we divest ourselves of them, we had better make it reasonably easy to pursue some form of activity. If troubled people have nothing to do, they turn dangerous pretty quickly.
There are examples all over the world: on a big scale, Somalia; a DTES scale would be the Paris social housing slums, or worse the ones in Marseilles. I have toured both of these with city officials, health providers and architects: we like to awe ourselves with having the most troubled neighbourhood, but these French situations are many times larger, more dangerous and desperate. People there are living lost lives, children born into zero opportunity, suicide rates akin to some of Canada's worse reserves. This had better not be in the character of what we eventually do post DTES . . . especially if we just let it happen incrementally through the neglect of needed policy and action.
I too will leave it there. back to projects, buildings and constructions.
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