Tent city stays past deadline
The Hochelaga tent city was given and end-of-August deadline to pack up and leave, but it’s still there. Residents are being asked to move into shelters, but one man says that in official shelters they’re treated like children and forced to sleep in large groups in spaces like school gyms.
david266 00:13 on 2020-09-02 Permalink
Well, yeah, because if you can’t properly function as an adult, living like a child (shelter, care, food, etc) instead of an animal (scrounging, defecating in bushes, etc) is a significant promotion.
Kate 11:32 on 2020-09-02 Permalink
david∞ that raises a really interesting question: is obedience a prerequisite for mature behaviour? See, I can see both sides of this coin. I can see why the authorities want the tents cleared away and the homeless to become biddable units you can bed down in a big dormitory out of sight – I really can. But I can also feel the undisciplined energy of the people involved, who simply want to be left alone to sleep where they please and associate with who they want to, not who they’re forced to in a big dormitory.
Once you get everybody rounded up, then you have to impose order – people have to eat at certain times, lights go out at 11 p.m., no drinking or smoking on the premises. You have to do this, or you end up with vermin, disease and chaos. But you can also see why some people simply do not want this imposed on them, even if it means hardship and inconvenience.