Old Royal Vic to aid itinerants

Details here on how the old Royal Vic will continue to be pressed into service to help the itinerant population, particularly with an eye to moving them into permanent living quarters.

How long are we going to hear about getting people permanent places to live? I’ve been doing his blog for nearly two decades, during which endless articles have been published about how studies have shown that the main thing that gets a person off the street is having a long-term place to live, along with whatever medical and social support they need for their mental health and addiction problems. And every so often a project comes along that is supposed to provide this, and then it doesn’t happen, or it’s temporary.

Yes, it’s an expensive venture. Getting a homeless person an apartment, fixing them up with the support they need – and this pretty much forever, because, as a social worker quoted in the piece says, these are people unlikely to return to the labour market – costs money, and there’s a strong social undertow against spending money to support unproductive members of society (although the people who have the biggest problem with this tend not to have the same concerns about prisons or about the idle rich).

Another problem is mentioned here: people who’ve tended to live outside often find some kind of community there, whereas if you place them, one by one, into individual apartments, and tell them they’ve got to live quietly and stay sober, they get bored and lonely. These are people who probably weren’t overly resourceful to begin with. I don’t know that we have a handy social fix for that.

All that said, it’s good that the old Vic is being put to social benefit, since that’s what it was originally intended for by its founders – and not turned into upscale condos.