What Is Your Opinion on Homeless People and Traffic Greater Vancouver?

Question by Kristine A: What is your opinion on homeless people and traffic Greater Vancouver?
Quite often when I’m walking in downtown Vancouver I see homeless people on the streets begging for money. I also can tell that many of the homeless people are mentally unstable and have drug problems. In my opinion there should be more shelters and drug addiction programs so that this people can be off the street and have better quality lives. I think that people and private companies need to be more involved as well I also think that only giving money to the homelessness at Christmas is ludicrous. People are homeless all year round and I think the Salvation Army should do a kettle all year round, not just Christmas. I also read in the paper that about a few hundred homeless shelters recently opened because of the winter whether. I think that homeless shelters should be open all year round. There are homeless people in the summer, spring, fall, and winter. Also, more involvement with volunteers to assist- sometimes some of it has to do with the lack of support and resources. everywhere in Vancouver we are experiencing this problem of homelessness. People at one time another had everything: jobs,money,home,friends,popularity,famil… and you name it, they had it. Then just as quickly as getting there, they got fired,or sick,or a natural disaster as earthquake,fire, divorce, or pestilence they lost it. The first area that needs to be taken into consideration is main street. forget the exact area (i think it’s by Chinatown) but there’s a huge community of homeless people or people living well below their means.
Many of these people come from abused homes and many young girls turn to prostitution I think they should also have shelters for prostitute

Stupid idiotic people come up to me on the street asking for drugs and also sick men keep hitting on me! What pathetic people they are! Greater Vancouver is the home to people with mentally illness, the homeless, drug-addicts, alcoholics, rapists, and street attackers and street gangs! Those people disgust me! People don’t even drive care in this pathetic metropolis! Greater Vancouver must have the highest crime, drug and traffic right in the province! I think there should be more money spent on drug rehab programs, homeless shelters, the police should put mentally ill people in the hospital or prison. They should also have more cross guards and more traffic lights that have a timer on it! BC Transit has too many buses that are running late!! They should have more bus drivers and the buses should come more often! I think Greater Victoria is much better metropolis area! And it’s not just the city of Vancouver that has drug and homelessness. The most recent homeless count on the North Shore was a minimum of 117 and that is actually down from the previous count of 123. According to SPARK, CCPA, and the Public Health Assoc. of B.C. a comprehensive poverty reduction and homelessness plan would cost British Columbians $ 3-4 billion per year. The cost of doing nothing to fix homelessness is at least $ 8 billion. Page 62 of the New DNV OCP promises to do a number of things to do with wrestling with poverty in the community such as working with senior members of levels of government!.
Thank you!

Best answer:

Answer by Austin
I think your meaning to refer to the DTES (Downtown East Side). Greater Vancouver refers to all the areas surrounding and some beyond Vancouver, almost all of which are very good neighborhoods.

I agree that it is a major problem, but what you may not realize is the government spends on average $ 80’000 per homeless person in Vancouver, due to the extraneous accommodation, food, and essentially every other thing is more expensive in Vancouver. To throw more money in is just to feed the addiction of the 5’000 out there homeless in the DTES.

What seriously needs to happen is relocation, and rehabilitation, something similar to Norway’s prison system, in harm reduction and rehabilitation. These people, they don’t know how to live any other way. They only know the streets, and drugs, and crime. Punishment won’t work. Only rehabilitation. They are institutionalized to the streets. And what needs to happen is deinstitutionalization.

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