Friday, June 10, 2005

Housing of a sort

The Conservatives don't want to hear about Canada's lack of social housing:
The Parliamentary Finance Committee had set aside a full hour on Thursday, June 9, to hear from three groups on housing. It would have allowed for ample questions and debate on how the NDP-revised budget would have affected affordable housing. But it was not to be. The Conservatives intervened time and time again with points of order that prevented the presentations from taking place.

Maybe this is more in keeping with their housing strategy:
The ripe stench of human excrement is getting stronger in downtown lanes, curling the stomachs of workers who no longer want to relax by the back door for smoke breaks...
Vancouver is set to commission a study to map the size of the problem and is considering spending more money on maintaining public toilets in the downtown entertainment and business districts.
More funding is needed for permanent public washrooms in the Downtown Eastside slum where thousands of homeless drug users have long used alleys as toilets.

The gall (unfortunately backed by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association) is impressive: let's not try to genuinely help people, but merely find a way to push them further out of mind.

Of course, that's not to say that the associated public health concerns shouldn't get some attention. But there's a bigger issue which won't be solved by putting $5,000 a month into Porta-Potties.

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