Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[esquire]

I realize I'm getting off topic here, but a number of the media reports I've read suggest that the surge in homelessness recently has been linked to the increased availability of chemical drugs like fentanyl, meth, etc., which makes it more complex than merely being a housing issue. In other words, you can't just put a meth addict into a vacant condo and call it a day. It takes much more than that, and there is considerable time and money that it takes to line these services up and provide them to people who need them.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by esquire

you can't just put a meth addict into a vacant condo and call it a day

Toronto did just that - taking a 4 star hotel that was suffering due to the pandemic - and renting out 205 rooms for a makeshift homeless shelter. The results were predictably disastrous.

While I'm not a callous Montgomery Burns type of person, I think that the left has been kind of naive in recent years about selling simple solutions to complex problems.

The solution to homelessness was "give people a home" and the solution to the social impacts of poverty was "give people money (UBI)". We gave people money with CERB and we gave homeless people 4 star hotel rooms that they didn't even have to share. The result is spiraling deficits, inflation and weak economic growth during a time when we actually have a labour shortage with CERB, and homeless people basically trashing the rooms they were given thus making it less likely that they'll get nice things in the future.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

The solution to homelessness was "give people a home" and the solution to the social impacts of poverty was "give people money (UBI)". We gave people money with CERB and we gave homeless people 4 star hotel rooms that they didn't even have to share. The result is spiraling deficits, inflation and weak economic growth during a time when we actually have a labour shortage with CERB, and homeless people basically trashing the rooms they were given thus making it less likely that they'll get nice things in the future.

I'm not very ideologically driven and I tend to be interested in seeing experiments and empirical studies. To me, CERB downgraded my opinion of UBI-type measures a bit. Not so much because of the deficits but because of the immediately visible impact of the disincentive to work.

The "hotel rooms" scheme seems to be part of a suite of measures that have been deployed in some cities for many years and clearly don't work well. Though maybe that could be part of a better program. If you look at even some extreme left-leaning cities like San Francisco that are overflowing with cash and try this style of approach, they tend to have poor results. But it doesn't matter because the city councillors just think they haven't spent enough or didn't implement the full Trotskyite program hard enough or whatever. As I said with the covid NPIs, this is not what success looks like. I don't think the heavy social safety net European countries implement policies of this style.

[kool maudit]

These problems are very deep, and relate to atomization, addiction, income inequality, real estate bubbles and so on -- the very nature of Our Times. Our expectations for policy should likely be on the level of "some mitigation".

[esquire]

Originally Posted by someone123

I'm not very ideologically driven and I tend to be interested in seeing experiments and empirical studies. To me, CERB downgraded my opinion of UBI-type measures a bit. Not so much because of the deficits but because of the immediately visible impact of the disincentive to work.

The "hotel rooms" scheme seems to be part of a suite of measures that have been deployed in some cities for many years and clearly don't work well. Though maybe that could be part of a better program. If you look at even some extreme left-leaning cities like San Francisco that are overflowing with cash and try this style of approach, they tend to have poor results. But it doesn't matter because the city councillors just think they haven't spent enough or didn't implement the full Trotskyite program hard enough or whatever. As I said with the covid NPIs, this is not what success looks like. I don't think the heavy social safety net European countries implement policies of this style.

I mean, if you spend more theoretically at some point you will reach an endpoint where a sufficient amount of housing, medical services and addiction treatment is provided to turn someone's life around. It just costs a —-ton of money. The problem is that when you have a large number of people with those types of needs, eventually even a place like San Francisco runs out of money to provide all of those things.

This highlights the pernicious nature of the newer breed of street drugs. It is so simple and relatively cheap to engage in extremely self-destructive behaviour that will then come at a significant social cost to either deal with (in terms of policing, shelters and what not) or to clean up (treatment, transitional housing, etc.).

Maybe I've led a sheltered life but it is amazing to me how there is a seemingly never ending stream of people willing to give these drugs a go in spite of the abundant evidence of where it is likely to lead. It's not as though there are a ton of resources available to someone who wants to get off the merry-go-round. You are pretty much on your own. The system was not set up to handle huge numbers of meth addicts trying to get clean and get their lives back on track.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by esquire

I mean, if you spend more theoretically at some point you will reach an endpoint where a sufficient amount of housing, medical services and addiction treatment is provided to turn someone's life around. It just costs a —-ton of money. The problem is that when you have a large number of people with those types of needs, eventually even a place like San Francisco runs out of money to provide all of those things.

SF pays over $100,000 per homeless person per year. I'm not sure there is such a thing as addiction treatment that if you sink enough resources in can overcome any structural social problems. The idea that the poor people all make their way to places like SF is misleading too. It has a kernel of truth but we can watch the same problems materializing in different cities all around North America right now as they recreate the same social context that has existed on the West Coast for years. It is the outcome when people do not have true social support and purpose in life, and giving them free stuff does not fix it.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Toronto did just that - taking a 4 star hotel that was suffering due to the pandemic - and renting out 205 rooms for a makeshift homeless shelter. The results were predictably disastrous.

While I'm not a callous Montgomery Burns type of person, I think that the left has been kind of naive in recent years about selling simple solutions to complex problems.

The solution to homelessness was "give people a home" and the solution to the social impacts of poverty was "give people money (UBI)". We gave people money with CERB and we gave homeless people 4 star hotel rooms that they didn't even have to share. The result is spiraling deficits, inflation and weak economic growth during a time when we actually have a labour shortage with CERB, and homeless people basically trashing the rooms they were given thus making it less likely that they'll get nice things in the future.

The pandemic threw so many things out of whack that it's difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions based on it at this time. Prior to the pandemic, a housing first strategy to combat homelessness was showing strong promise. Providing assistance to struggling people is far easier (and less expensive) when they have permanent rooves over their heads. It is next to impossible to get sober or find a job when you're sleeping under a bridge every night.

Why then didn't this work (or work as well) during the pandemic? We can identify several causes:

• The composition of the homeless community significantly and rapidly changed: In order to reduce transmission in prisons, governments released thousands of inmates from prison and other institutions early, including violent offenders. This dramatically increased the strain on services, which were already struggling to cope with the pandemic. This also increased the risk of violence the rest of the homeless community faced, which predictably led to a compounding of trauma and deteriorating mental/physical health.
• Border closures and other logistical challenges posed by the pandemic interrupted the black market just as much as it did the rest of the economy, resulting in shortages of drugs. This led to struggles with withdrawal, decreased quality/safety and the use of alternative (and more dangerous) substances. This also led to an increased risk of violence, traumatization and the deterioration of mental/physical health, even among those who aren't addicts.
• Already underfunded and under-resourced social services struggled with staffing, PPD and other logistics, while simultaneously experiencing significantly increased demand. The introduction of expanded virtual care also presented barriers to those without access to the required technology.
• Panhandling became much more difficult for those who relied on it. Work from home led to many fewer people walking the streets in normally high-traffic areas. Of those who were still out and about in our cities, many stopped carrying hard currency as the popularity of contactless payment increased substantially.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. The hotel set-up itself had significant problems. We know, for example, that integrated housing is much better at providing a stable environment for people in need. An established housing site, where those in need trickle-in to a pre-existing community with members at different levels of recovery, could undoubtedly offer a much more constructive experience for all involved.

[Rico Rommheim]

skyline winter from PJD by eva blue 04 by Montréal, on Flickr


32 axles, 34 mph by Michael Berry, on Flickr


CN 305 by Michael Berry, on Flickr


Montréal winter skyline… by Demetrius Chaskis, on Flickr


Vague de froid - Montréal by Axel Drainville, on Flickr


Montreal Downtown Skyline at Golden Hour by Thierry Gauvin, on Flickr

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Toronto did just that - taking a 4 star hotel that was suffering due to the pandemic - and renting out 205 rooms for a makeshift homeless shelter. The results were predictably disastrous.

While I'm not a callous Montgomery Burns type of person, I think that the left has been kind of naive in recent years about selling simple solutions to complex problems.

The solution to homelessness was "give people a home" and the solution to the social impacts of poverty was "give people money (UBI)". We gave people money with CERB and we gave homeless people 4 star hotel rooms that they didn't even have to share. The result is spiraling deficits, inflation and weak economic growth during a time when we actually have a labour shortage with CERB, and homeless people basically trashing the rooms they were given thus making it less likely that they'll get nice things in the future.

It's unfortunate. 4 star accommodations doesn't change that it still a temporary housing offering limited aid and only propels the stereotype that they don't deserve any better with some having trashed the hotels (like people that don't give a — don't exist in every income bracket)

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

I'm not very ideologically driven and I tend to be interested in seeing experiments and empirical studies. To me, CERB downgraded my opinion of UBI-type measures a bit. Not so much because of the deficits but because of the immediately visible impact of the disincentive to work.

I doubt that CERB was a disincentive to work. Seems more like the disincentive would be the pandemic which made many people feel uneasy about jobs that couldn't be done from home, with CERB simply empowering them to act on that uneasiness. Which is basically what it was designed to do. The government wanted stuff to close and for people to stay home without suffering detrimental effects. A system where people feel pressured to work out of desperation when it isn't in their best interests isn't a feature; it's a bug.

[ue]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Toronto did just that - taking a 4 star hotel that was suffering due to the pandemic - and renting out 205 rooms for a makeshift homeless shelter. The results were predictably disastrous.

While I'm not a callous Montgomery Burns type of person, I think that the left has been kind of naive in recent years about selling simple solutions to complex problems.

The solution to homelessness was "give people a home" and the solution to the social impacts of poverty was "give people money (UBI)". We gave people money with CERB and we gave homeless people 4 star hotel rooms that they didn't even have to share. The result is spiraling deficits, inflation and weak economic growth during a time when we actually have a labour shortage with CERB, and homeless people basically trashing the rooms they were given thus making it less likely that they'll get nice things in the future.

Of course it isn't that simple, and it never really was. For some, simply providing housing goes a long way, but that in and of itself won't solve the whole crisis. It's complex and multi-faceted and there isn't one elixir to make it all go away. But providing everyone with housing is one step, of many, towards helping people in need.

[Nouvellecosse]

^ That's also an extremely important point that can be easy for forget. We can't view taking an action such as providing people with shelter or benefits as only being valid if it solves all of their problems. Sometimes just providing them with shelter for awhile when they wouldn't otherwise have it is a worthy goal in and of itself. Saying that it's a failure because it didn't fix their entire lives is also a bit simplistic. Several of them could have died of covid or of exposure had they not been sheltered and didn't. But because sheltering them costed money or damaged a hotel people think that what? We should have just let them be without shelter in a pandemic? Not finding that acceptable has nothing to do with being naive.

[ue]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

^ That's also an extremely important point that can be easy for forget. We can't view taking an action such as providing people with shelter or benefits as only being valid if it solves all of their problems. Sometimes just providing them with shelter for awhile when they wouldn't otherwise have it is a worthy goal in and of itself. Saying that it's a failure because it didn't fix their entire lives is also a bit simplistic. Several of them could have died of covid or of exposure had they not been sheltered and didn't. But because sheltering them costed money or damaged a hotel people think that what? We should have just let them be without shelter in a pandemic? Not finding that acceptable has nothing to do with being naive.

Absolutely. I think we have a tendency to look for panaceas that'll be the one thing to fix everything. Another area this happens a lot is in environmentalism. If you'd believe the rhetoric so many spew out, electric vehicles are going to be our lord and saviour. But, they won't, because nothing is ever that simple, especially when it never asks people to actually change their behaviour (you can still drive everywhere, just use a different engine, ignoring the harm that causes).

Housing is a very important initial step that should be done for anyone who lacks shelter. For some, that might be all they need, but just housing everyone won't fix everything, as others still need other support. So housing needs to be adopted as part of a much more comprehensive, multi-faceted policy to deal with addiction, abuse, and poverty. We tend to look for a simple, easy-to-digest solution, especially because it wins certain people political points very easily, but if anyone is serious about dealing with this issue and has real compassion for those who are suffering due to the lack of equity and support our society currently provides, then you can't just be looking for an elixir. And just because one thing doesn't fix everything, doesn't mean it doesn't have benefit. It just means more needs to be done!

[Pavlov]

This thread needs more Cowtown:

[IMG]yyc Storm Sept 12 (1) by John Andersen, on Flickr[/IMG]

Late Sept Calgary by itspoots, on Flickr

Calgary Skyline, Alberta, Canada. by TK Ngo, on Flickr

Calgary panorama skyline, Alberta. by TK Ngo, on Flickr

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

This is by no means an exhaustive list. The hotel set-up itself had significant problems. We know, for example, that integrated housing is much better at providing a stable environment for people in need. An established housing site, where those in need trickle-in to a pre-existing community with members at different levels of recovery, could undoubtedly offer a much more constructive experience for all involved.

I think this is one of the most important considerations. This 50-unit, modular supportive housing development for homeless individuals opened around the corner from my old apartment in 2020, for example - and there didn't seem to be any measurable increase in crime or public disorder as a result:


https://www.montgomerysisam.com/project/modular-transitional-housing/

It's a small development amd within an established community so its impact on the neighbourhood is low, while the sense of normalcy & community that it allows the formerly-homeless residents to participate in is high.

On the other hand, cram a few hundred units together and you're invariably going to get some of the problems that come along with large numbers of people experiencing mental illness or addiction problems - which then negatively impacts the surrounding area and further exacerbates the problem. It's the same lesson we learned with massive, segregated public housing developments of the mid-20th century.

[hipster duck]

I've followed those small-scale modular housing projects with some interest and think they've generally performed quite well. I believe the residents were probably more carefully selected based on their suitability to live independently.

I'm not against 'housing first' strategies, I just think that the Novotel experiment was a massive failure. They obviously just did what esquire cautioned against: moved a bunch of people into some rooms and called it a day. This strategy works for groups of people who don't have substance abuse or serious mental health issues - for example, recent refugees from Afghanistan and Syria - but in this context, selecting a 4-star hotel in the heart of the city to run this experiment was not only bound to fail but bound to attract attention.

For those who think that this project was still a "win" in the sense that it may have saved a couple of people from living on the street, I'd say it was at best a pyrrhic victory that has to be weighed against the PR fallout. Will councilors be reluctant to try this approach again somewhere else, thus saving far more people from life on the streets in perpetuity? 1,200 people signed a petition asking for the facility to be removed, several media outlets covered the story and there is now a pending application to tear down this hotel and replace it with a condo tower.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

1,200 people signed a petition asking for the facility to be removed, several media outlets covered the story and there is now a pending application to tear down this hotel and replace it with a condo tower.

I wonder how many were nearing end of life, even nicer ones (which nevertheless are often suddenly torn down or remodeled once they hit a certain age), with the owners thinking they could easily be at low occupancy for a couple of years due to covid. If you could get some government money for a while before tearing down your hotel, maybe that would be the best option financially, trashing or no trashing.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

We gave people money with CERB

CERB turned at least three people I personally know from stable tenants into fully homeless people. They got so used to their new CERB + provincial welfare monthly budget that when CERB stopped, it's their rent that got the axe to try and balance the new welfare-only budget.

[Innsertnamehere]

Novotel almost certainly took the deal because they knew they were selling.

The other hotels the City managed to book, mostly in the suburbs, are similar deals, reaching end of life either before requiring a gut reno or demolition.

Nobody is signing leases with the city for homeless shelters on newly renovated hotels, expecting to get them back like-new afterwards.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I've followed those small-scale modular housing projects with some interest and think they've generally performed quite well. I believe the residents were probably more carefully selected based on their suitability to live independently.

I'm not against 'housing first' strategies, I just think that the Novotel experiment was a massive failure. They obviously just did what esquire cautioned against: moved a bunch of people into some rooms and called it a day. This strategy works for groups of people who don't have substance abuse or serious mental health issues - for example, recent refugees from Afghanistan and Syria - but in this context, selecting a 4-star hotel in the heart of the city to run this experiment was not only bound to fail but bound to attract attention.

For those who think that this project was still a "win" in the sense that it may have saved a couple of people from living on the street, I'd say it was at best a pyrrhic victory that has to be weighed against the PR fallout. Will councilors be reluctant to try this approach again somewhere else, thus saving far more people from life on the streets in perpetuity? 1,200 people signed a petition asking for the facility to be removed, several media outlets covered the story and there is now a pending application to tear down this hotel and replace it with a condo tower.

I just don't think that emergency actions prompted by an unforeseen event like a pandemic can be reasonably judged by the same metrics as a planned and studied official housing strategy. I don't think it was a win or a loss, it was just doing what could be done on short notice. The whole situation was negative and resulted in negative outcomes but probably less negative than otherwise.

Hopefully we don't have an emergency event like this every year that requires officials to make such decisions.