City workers to “help” tent dwellers
A team of city workers is supposed to be helping move the tent dwellers from the Notre-Dame East encampment into shelters. How much will be “help” and how much will be enforcement isn’t clear, but this piece does say the city’s offering to store their camping goods over the winter.
Update: In addition, the STM is giving a bus to the Old Brewery Mission so they can circulate around town, picking people up and bringing them to shelters.
david245 13:30 on 2020-11-24 Permalink
Don’t do it, homeless! Ask the lost port police building stones/bricks what city storage means!
Kate 15:08 on 2020-11-24 Permalink
Bit of a difference between storing some tents and sleeping bags, vs. demolishing a building.
Michael Black 16:32 on 2020-11-24 Permalink
It’s not just “camping gear”, it’s their stuff.
From tv interviews, some have stuff from when they had homes. And surely that factors into what’s going on. They don’t want shelters because it’s not what they are used to, and they have stuff. They want homes and right now, a tent is all they have.
Again, the stories don’t differentiate, but by not doing so, this particular story doesn’t fit the usual narrative of “homelessness”. They want to be together, and they may not be well prepared for surviving outside during the winter. A tent doesn’t offer much warmth, thiugh a barrier from wind. But it’s a sense of place.
dmdiem 17:14 on 2020-11-24 Permalink
This isn’t your traditional “mental illness and addiction” type of homelessness. This is an economic event. It’s happening all over North America and it’s going to get much, much worse.
Chris 21:53 on 2020-11-24 Permalink
>It’s happening all over North America and it’s going to get much, much worse.
Why?
dmdiem 08:12 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
Mass unemployment coupled with insane housing costs. Keep an eye on the warmer regions of North America. That’s where tent cities will start popping up in the next couple of months.
Covid isn’t just a health crisis. It’s a slow motion economic catastrophe.
Government stimulus might help stem the tide. We’ll see.
Raymond Lutz 09:49 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
It’s going to get much, much worse because we built for centuries an unsustainable system. Economically, biologically and physically unsustainable (yes, climate science IS applied physics).
Since the 2008 financial crisis, all we had was a jobless recovery (which showed, again, growing inequality). The US (and others?) surfed on a growing student debt bumble and chickenization of multiple sectors. Covid-19? Some argue that emerging zoonoses are linked to animal habitat destruction. And you ain’t seen nothing yet: wait for the complete arctic see ice disappearance event in less than 10 years and the major agricultural collapses it will bring in the northern hemisphere. So, yay, there’s no going back to ‘normal’.
It’s that simple: I’ve begun to explain to my children (for now the older one) she and her generation will have to choose between (and fight for) emergence of fascism or emergence of anarchism (or any flavour thereof).
Raymond Lutz 09:51 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
Bumble? Covfefe! 😎
Chris 11:08 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
I was curious if dmdiem thought things were going to get much worse because of covid, which seems to be what he’s saying. I don’t think I agree though, since multiple effective vaccines will be here soon. Maybe reckoning with the debt we’ve created will cause more economic trouble though, but it probably will be on the order of magnitude of 2008, which I wouldn’t characterize as “much, much worse”.
I largely agree with Raymond’s longer term forecast though.
dmdiem 13:12 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
It’s going to take time to roll out the vaccine. The logistics of vaccinating a whole planet is insane. I’ve heard estimates that a full year is entirely possible.
There’s already a massive expansion of the tent cities in California and lines for food banks in Texas that stretch for miles. It’s already bad. Of course it’s going to get worse before the vaccine gets here.
Chris 13:36 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
dmdiem, the USA is a whole other thing, I thought you meant here. Yes, vaccinating will take a long time, but once it starts, I think the worst will be behind us.
dmdiem 14:18 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
Sorry. I was referring to North America in general. You know the old saying “if America coughs, Canada catches a cold.” In this case it’s literally true.
Our government seems to be at least trying to help people and small businesses weather the storm. And locally they seem to be managing to get the excess homeless into shelters for the winter. But in the States? “Here’s $1200. Stop being poor.”
It looks like the rollout for the vaccine is going to start around March/April. Directed at first, and then going out to the general population a few months later. Unfortunately that means making it through flu season. And with our lunatic neighbours to the south, who are 100% going to celebrate thanksgiving and Christmas, the thought of this winter is terrifying.
The upside is that by this time next year this goddamn bug should be fully extinct. Good riddance.
Chris 18:59 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
Extinct? Very unlikely. We’ve been vaccinating for various other bugs for decades (ex: MMR) and they’re not extinct. Only smallpox got truly extinguished. SARS-CoV-2 will be around for decades I’d wager, but will become a small problem.
Hey, I just noticed we passed a milestone: global covid deaths have just surpassed global motor vehicle deaths!
dmdiem 19:57 on 2020-11-25 Permalink
People who got SARS-CoV-1 are still immune to this day. The thinking right now is that the same permanent immunity will be acquired from the vaccine to SARS-CoV-2. However, only time will tell for sure.
Chris 00:39 on 2020-11-26 Permalink
Reinfection seems rare so far, but there are documented cases. Also, don’t forget: life likes to live, the virus could mutate too, to keep itself around.
dmdiem 01:39 on 2020-11-26 Permalink
Viruses aren’t alive. They don’t respond to evolutionary pressure outside their host organism. They mutate based on the organism they infect. Usually that means more infectivity and less lethality. Although you could argue a stray cosmic particle here and there could make things worse. Right now, reinfection is so rare that it’s nearly impossible to study.
SARS-CoV-1 is extinct. Hopefully by this time next year SARS-CoV-2 will be as well.
Chris 08:37 on 2020-11-26 Permalink
>Viruses aren’t alive.
That’s debatable. But I appreciate your pedantry. 🙂
>They don’t respond to evolutionary pressure outside their host organism.
Their host organism is their whole environment. Mammals don’t evolve outside their environment either. So what? They evolve.
>SARS-CoV-1 is extinct. Hopefully by this time next year SARS-CoV-2 will be as well.
How about chickenpox? Caused by VZV virus. Airborne. Reinfection very rare. Vaccine exists since 1995. Yet VZV is not extinct.