A new place for the homeless to warm up
There’s a new service – what’s the English for halte-chaleur? – to give homeless folks a place to warm up near the Quartier des spectacles.
TVA also has a bit about students inventing a portable shelter for homeless folks. Thing is, they have reinvented the bivy sack. Mind you, theirs is cheaper than even the cheapest MEC model, but it’s a very old idea.
Myles 15:34 on 2019-11-28 Permalink
I’ve heard people say ‘warming station,’ which doesn’t have much of a ring to it.
Filp 17:38 on 2019-11-28 Permalink
The idea of those students is commendable, but I fear that the mass proliferation of those will just encourage tent cities to form. Is this really a good idea? When someone is encouraged to spend the night in a shelter, it offers them access to support services, which would otherwise not be visited voluntarily. Once tent cities form, that contact isn’t as frequent or easy, and they basically become a hot potato issue for the city, and the area is avoided by basically everyone. Sure, you can convince some residents to move over to a shelter. But what I’ve seen in Vancouver is that, once they form there is almost no housing acceptable for some of the residents, who want the freedom to do things on their own terms. Which, can’t really blame them. Shelters can be pretty rough places. But those residents are now out of the loop of social services. Where do you go from there?
Kate 17:49 on 2019-11-28 Permalink
Flip, you make the same argument I’ve seen against the idea of handing out sleeping bags and other means to make street life more tolerable. Here, all-weather tent cities have not been a thing (except for a few exceptionally hardy and antisocial folks who have camped in Viger Square) – it’s more that such things put people at risk of exposure on our coldest days and nights. It really is much safer to bring them inside than to equip them to stay out.