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With our homeless numbers exploding, rising 19% over the last three years alone, as seen in the Homeless Count done last month, this is really becoming something we can't pretend isn't there, especially when panhandling is becoming more and more aggressive as time goes by.Sam Sullivan has introduced something called the Civil City' initiative, which aims to cut homelessness by 50% by 2010, which is coincidentally when we will be hosts to the world for a few weeks.Sullivan and the city can only go so far with their initiatives without some help from the provincial Liberals and Gordon Campbell.
In Campbell's tenure, there hasn't been too much action on problems like homelessness, or healthcare, or student loans, as the province's finance has been pointed towards a better business climate, and the Olympics. The Liberals just put out their budget, and it did nothing to try and solve the homeless issue, as there weren't any commitments for new social housing, and they only maintained levels of money they were providing for temporary shelters. With, at the very minimum, a 19% jump in the homeless numbers, maintaining funding at the same levels just simply doesn't make sense. Healthcare is the main reason, the BC Liberals say, that we have funding shortfalls in other areas.
This is where the buck gets passed up the chain again, from Sullivan, to Campbell, and all the way up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as the ruling party in Ottawa decides how much of the tax revenue each year gets transferred back to each province, and therefore, how much each province has to spend on areas that are theirs to maintain, such as Healthcare. While I do see the Olympics as very much an investment into our city, province and country, issues like homelessness cannot be pushed to the back burner to make way for them. We have the resources, the means, and clearly the need to provide social housing to the homeless, we just need the will to make changes that might not look pretty around election time, but will transform the lives of people who sleep on concrete every night and beg for scraps by day.
There will be a Legacy of sorts for social housing after the Olympics depart, as there is a plan in place to convert some of the athlete's village over to social housing, but right now, according to the Vancouver 2010 website, out of everything being built, only 250 of those units will be converted to social housing.Is 250 single-occupant units enough of a Legacy' for 2010 to leave behind? Is this, plus the profit we make from the Games enough of a benefit afterwards to neglect the issues impacting BC now? Is the civil city initiative enough to deal with the homeless problem here, or is a new approach needed? If there is a new approach needed, is it enough to kick Sam Sullivan out of City Hall?
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