A shopping mall and office complex in downtown Montreal is being criticized for using the popular children's song 'Baby Shark' to discourage unhoused people from loitering in its emergency exit stairwells.
And what are we supposed to do? Legalize all drugs and being drunk in public just to avoid having to fine them, and install beds everywhere in the Underground City (and in this post’s case, in emergency stairwells at the Complexe Desjardins) with no regard for their regular use?
Sure, let’s work on proposing more accessible legal alternatives. Just take note that these laws weren’t created to punish the homeless, but to have a clean and safe public space - which have been degrading for some time now.
That sound pretty much like the “If you’re poor, just buy a house” people.
I think you don’t know much about Montréal. There are solutions already in place to help homeless people who want to go out of the street, but the housing crisis is pretty new and it will take years to solve. It wasn’t so bad a few years ago.
It’s actually nothing like that at all. What you’re describing is putting a societal problem on the shoulders of individuals. What I’m suggesting is that society should actually fix the problems it has created.
Every place that has taken a “housing first” approach has seen success out of it. But people insist on making the problem more complicated than it is, because we’ve built an entire society on the false idea that poor people somehow deserve to be poor and anything done to help them is somehow unjust.
You might not be aware of that, but there is what we call a “housing crisis” right now. There is not enough place to house everyone, and there are not enough construction sites to fix the problem rapidly considering the recent increase in population. It will take years to adjust. You can’t just make a bunch of apartments appear out of nowhere. Doesn’t matter the policy you apply to distribute them.
And about social housing, yeah, everybody likes that. It’s more a matter of government inefficiency rather than a lack of will from the population.
And what are we supposed to do? Legalize all drugs and being drunk in public just to avoid having to fine them, and install beds everywhere in the Underground City (and in this post’s case, in emergency stairwells at the Complexe Desjardins) with no regard for their regular use?
Sure, let’s work on proposing more accessible legal alternatives. Just take note that these laws weren’t created to punish the homeless, but to have a clean and safe public space - which have been degrading for some time now.
We could just house them. That seems to work.
They would be less easy to exploit! And to whom would we feel superior? And what would be the punishment for not obeying our
lordsbosses?!That sound pretty much like the “If you’re poor, just buy a house” people.
I think you don’t know much about Montréal. There are solutions already in place to help homeless people who want to go out of the street, but the housing crisis is pretty new and it will take years to solve. It wasn’t so bad a few years ago.
It’s actually nothing like that at all. What you’re describing is putting a societal problem on the shoulders of individuals. What I’m suggesting is that society should actually fix the problems it has created.
Every place that has taken a “housing first” approach has seen success out of it. But people insist on making the problem more complicated than it is, because we’ve built an entire society on the false idea that poor people somehow deserve to be poor and anything done to help them is somehow unjust.
You might not be aware of that, but there is what we call a “housing crisis” right now. There is not enough place to house everyone, and there are not enough construction sites to fix the problem rapidly considering the recent increase in population. It will take years to adjust. You can’t just make a bunch of apartments appear out of nowhere. Doesn’t matter the policy you apply to distribute them.
And about social housing, yeah, everybody likes that. It’s more a matter of government inefficiency rather than a lack of will from the population.
So build more. Yes, that takes time. So start now.
This is only difficult because we make it difficult.
Stop relying on the for profit home building industry and just build them. Use the military if you must. It’s a crisis as you say, treat it like one.
It’s more complicated than that and you know it.