Introduction:

Continuing a trend I began with my last column, I'm going to remain somewhat off-topic for this one, looking this time at the issue of homelessness. However, there are a lot of parallels in the homelessness industry that echo the education industry, specifically, that failure for clients breeds success for the governing bureaucracy.

The other connection to education is that students in schools are being aggressively groomed to be a future source of funds for the homelessness industry. As this happens, the degree to which this industry is unlikely to ever end or even reduce homelessness needs to be understood by parents and citizens, and of course ideally by teachers (and I know there are some out there who understood this long before I did). This industry is poised to feed off of gullible students on two counts: if students end up homeless, they become a tool for extracting money by playing on the compassion of the students who don't end up homeless.

The comments printed below are actually the text of a presentation I made to Vancouver city council last week in the context of a public hearing about a zoning change that would allow a low barrier housing project currently under development to be made larger under the sponsorship of the Portland Hotel Society (aka PHS Community Services Society) at 111 Princess Street. It is coincidental that by some mysterious mechanism, this week has been declared in Vancouver to be "Gratitude Week to end Homelessness."

I spoke at city hall because I live close enough to the downtown east side that the street population affects me, and I incur regular losses because of it. These losses include loss of stuff, peace of mind, privacy, and security. And my time.

In order to make this presentation - one is only permitted 5 minutes at a time, and this took me two turns - I had to attend a full five and a half hours of hearings over two evenings in addition to preparing the presentation itself. Prior to the hearing, I attended several community meetings and engaged in sundry conversation, inquiry, and research about the proposal on the table. Twenty hours minimum, probably more like thirty.

I took the time to present to city council because the dialogue about the use of property is one of the few venues we still have where some form of rational discourse in the public interest can be hoped for. But the opportunity was not grasped by this particular city council, which voted unanimously in favour of a larger building for low-barrier housing almost as soon as I finished speaking the second time. Councillors were obviously swayed by the compassion industry, which showed up in full force: at least ten agencies that profit from street-dwellers presented, including several people who work for the PHS itself, taking up nearly two thirds of the presentation time and thus pretty much swamping the impression that any ordinary citizens could make.

In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that some apparently ordinary citizens did speak in favour of the proposal - not everyone is bothered by the constraints of life near the street scene. I think living nearby makes some people feel either tough and edgy, or especially virtuous and tolerant, but interestingly, some of those citizens spoke denigratingly of citizens who are feeling attacked and invaded (one guy wished the rest of us had had to apply for admission into the neighbourhood, upon which he would have denied us entry - tolerant, real tolerant). The dynamic of the conversation is in fact fascinating, and something that city council should have paid much more attention to, since the street scene is establishing outposts all over the city and these conversations will be happening again.

The conversations are often derailed into arguments about drugs, mental illness, and stupid housing policies. These are certainly relevant, but not in a way that supports low-barrier housing as a solution. I'll address those in more detail in future posts (I've done some writing on the topic of addiction previously, having been to hell and back with my addicted brother-in-law and thus learned the hard way all about enabling). Suffice it to say for the moment that engaging on those issues leads us only deeper into a polarized conversation pegging as uncompassionate anyone who does not agree with the industry's version of compassion.

Sound familiar? In education, people in favour of ineffective reading instruction also position themselves as being more "pro-child", so if you are for effective reading instruction, you are automatically portrayed as hating children and wanting to bring back the strap.

City councils may not understand the conversations, but the rest of us have no political reason for turning a blind eye to how they proceed. Homelessness is the biggest growth industry we've got, and one of the most job-rich "problems" a society can have. Some 2000 people are employed by it in Vancouver alone, where the population of homeless is currently postulated to be about 2600.

The economic output is the key reason why it has become a global phenomenon, and why city councils all over the world, given every opportunity to reverse the trend, fail to do so. If citizens are truly compassionate, we will not let this culture grow.



My comments:
 Quote:

I am not a big fan of the polarized pro/anti conversation that takes place when a specific proposal is on the table, so I’m going to pull back from the edge of the precipice and speak in general terms. My comments apply as much to any already existing and future projects as they do to this one, although the sheer magnitude of this project makes it one that merits speaking out.

The city does not need low barrier housing, it certainly does not need more of it on the downtown east side, and it most certainly does not need it provided by a single institutional landlord who controls both housing and other services.

Developments of this nature further entrench the degradation of the downtown east side, making it more of an inescapable sinkhole for individuals, and more of a black hole for the city, sucking productive life out of an increasing zone around it.

A low barrier culture is inherently degrading and alienating. Low barrier equals low expectations, and the lower the barriers go for behaviour on the downtown east side, the lower goes the behaviour. We have now apparently infantilized the adults who live there to the extent that they cannot be expected to cross the street by themselves.

The lower the behavioural expectations on the downtown east side go relative to normal citizenship, the higher, in effect, become the barriers for any needy person wanting to live or function somewhere other than in the DTES or its satellite outposts. And the converse also applies: the greater the differential between the two cultures, the less likely it is that normal citizens will be able to use the DTES as part of our city.

So, if you’re in there, you’re stuck. As for the rest of us, we will have less and less contact with that zone or with homeless culture in general, and therefore less and less idea of what its needs are as we try to manage it through charity, politics, and dialogue. The more our actions are driven by ignorance, the more we will entrench the culture rather than changing it.

One of the things we do in our ignorance is that we yield to compassion. But when we act out of compassion and through agencies such as the PHS, our compassion is being used to actually hurt and profit from the needy people we want to help.

I absolutely believe that the people of the PHS and similar agencies are empathetic, caring individuals who do what they do for all the right reasons, even if what they do is wrong. What they may not understand is the effect of vesting themselves as an organization, and particularly as employees, on their capacity to see what is truly compassionate.

Manifesting compassion through an organization and receiving either money or status for it leads to a condition of SELECTIVE compassion. This type of compassion is willing to overlook the needs of people other than their clients, and keeps them oblivious to the point at which other peoples’ needs eclipse those of their clients - or even to the fact that other peoples’ needs might become more urgent.

Their vestedness also locks them into a narrow definition of compassion, defining it as only the service they happen to provide, and leads them to ignore or deny any needs that it is not lucrative for them to meet.

Their vestedness in effect renders them wilfully blind to any evidence that their model of compassion might be obsolete or counterproductive or abusive of others. It renders them unable to respond to new information or to a variety of needs. In particular, they become unable to process any evidence of a need for less of their service, rather than more.

So rather than responding and adapting, they find themselves resisting scrutiny, hiding the real effects of what they do, denying that any problems exist. To keep the money flowing they amplify the needs of their clients and either ignore or suppress evidence of the needs of others. For example, no one is examining the brain chemistry and stress levels of local shopkeepers and residents; only that of the hard-to-house who are the agencies’ bread and butter merits that kind of attention.

In the end, they actually become anything but compassionate as they resort to condescension, intimidation, and muzzling of anyone who might challenge them.

That is what we need to understand about agencies that do compassion for a living; that it is not real compassion and that it is not extended to the rest of us who wish to see compassion that actually helps people relative to their real needs, and who wish to have our own needs considered in the mix.

What is supposed to hold agencies in check is their accountability framework, but the accountability framework of an agency funded by either grants or donations unfortunately does not hold them accountable for OUTCOMES. They are held accountable only for providing the service they said they would, whether it is really helping their clients or their neighbourhood or not.

Unfortunately, once compassion becomes a political currency, the accountability framework becomes complicit, and sustaining the ability to access funds no longer motivates agencies to function as good corporate citizens.

This is how an organization like the PHS can enjoy a growth rate of some 15% per year for over 15 years while exercising a consistent negative effect on its city and its clients. With a budget today of over $10 million and well over 100 employees, this has become a large institution with a mindset that is every bit as self-perpetuating as that of any bureaucracy.

No blame for that attaches to any individual involved. That’s simply how organizational dynamics work.

By no stretch of the imagination can housing provided by such an organization be equated to the myriad of smallholdings that was the much-lamented SRO environment of yesteryear. Not to unduly romanticize that time, but clients then had more ability to hold their landlords accountable than they have today, or than any of us have to hold the DTES agencies accountable for how clients are handled and for how the area evolves.

The needs of the agencies actually run counter to the needs of the city as a whole and predispose against any positive evolution in the DTES neighbourhood. The PHS and similar agencies profit by selling UNMET needs to their funding bodies, not by actually meeting those needs. It is neediness, not improved well-being, that is their product, because it is the funder who is their actual customer, not the homeless individual.

Such an organization is motivated to favour client failure, not client success; to keep its current clients captive in a state of continued dependency so that even if they are housed they still have needs that provide an ongoing supply of new project ideas. The less those people improve, the more opportunities the PHS has to grow its income.

It doesn’t matter whether that income is reported as being non-profit. Any organization that is growing is generating income above expenditures and therefore profiting. But what is really key is that the agency business model involves using the neediness of the homeless to generate profit without any obligation to meet the needs that they sell.

The business model of the agencies means that they are also motivated to maintain a constant inventory of unmet needs, preferably glaring ones, on the street and thus in their pipeline - the more homeless and hopelessly addicted people there are out there, the better are the growth prospects for the PHS etc. To a normal citizen it looks like a bottomless pit of human misery, but to an agency it’s a bottomless pit of grant proposals. As such the agencies are motivated to keep the vortex of desperation that is the DTES just the way it is - quite aside from preferring the ease of delivering an increasing range of services to a concentrated and largely captive market.

The belief that PHS low barrier housing, or any other form of low barrier shelter, is a useful option for helping homeless people is exactly that - a belief. A persistent, irrational belief that ignores evidence of failure, evidence of both direct and indirect harm, evidence of Schadenfreude, evidence of empire-building.

As long as the downtown east side remains such a rich vein of human misery, agencies such as the PHS will continue to mine it for income and status, and the rest of us will continue to live in the tailings pond. Low barrier housing, especially in large chunks, will only keep the pickings rich.