Rethinking

June 16,2009
Sadly my stay has been too short, due to over stressed resources I have been told shelter space is reserved for in province residents only. I spent the afternoon hanging out with some of the locals... plus talked to social workers, to try and get some idea of the situation. These shelters are billing the province $65 per day per bed. That includes the Salvation Army mens hostle. The locals (pre-rehab users) have formed a close community and when one gets a place they open doors to others...this has the obvious downfall of evictions and inevitable loss of housing in a tight market. When this happens there are areas along the river which are sufficently hidden from police and preditors, according to a native woman I was talking with. Her boyfriend, a man well over 6' disagrees on that. So I am thinking you would have to get seriously loaded to sleep in the park.
Tonight I am moving on to my next destination... but this experience has given me cause to retink the way I am approaching the problem. There seems to be denial within the civilian population about there even being a homeless problem in this province (to be named later). If we don't provide any services...we don't collect any statistic... therefore we don't have any homeless people. BRILLIANT