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Her Worship, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, with her PhD in "Woke" (officially known as Urban Sociology) is about to dump $13.7 million into affordable housing initiatives.
What a mistake.
Has she not heard of the ill-fated Dozois Project? That mess occurred in the fifties in Montreal when then-Mayor Jean Drapeau and a bunch of like-minded woke councillors (Drapeau wasn't woke; he smelled money, but the others were) decided to tear down a slum neighbourhood in the centre of the city and replace it with modern, affordable housing for the poor. So, they dumped millions into building new apartment towers into which they re-located the local residents. The thinking was that if you just gave people nice, new homes, they would cease destroying and vandalizing the ones they were living in.
Guess what happened? They promptly destroyed and vandalized the new housing. And as an added bonus, it became a hotbed of prostitution and youth crime -- the latter at the rate of 10 times the city average. One report states that, "The social disintegration of a sector is linked to its physical disintegration." So, as the development became more and more vandalized, crime rose proportionately.
I would have thought that when Mayor Gondek was studying for her PhD, the mistakes and disasters of the Dozois project would have figured prominently in the syllabus, no? Guess not because she is now poised to dump $6 million into Indigenous housing, $7.5 into non-profit housing and the rest into joint projects with the Calgary Homeless Foundation, the United Way and other well-meaning, but hopeless, projects. Oh, and it also includes the waiving of the first and last months' rental payments, meaning that when the units are ultimately trashed, Calgarians will be paying even more for clean-up and repairs.
"This makes us, together with our community partners, nimble and responsive to the needs of our neighbours who require supports to access dignified and affordable housing," bragged the starry-eyed, delusional Gondek. You would also have thought Ms. Gondek would have been aware that many homeless people don't want to move off the streets; their paranoia makes them comfortable staying there. Guess not. Frankly, I'd like to know what the subject of her thesis was. On second thought, maybe I wouldn't.
Gawd, I'm glad I no longer live in Calgary, where taxes are being raised with gay abandon to cover the whims and charitable notions of a misguided, woke council.
People who have grown up in poorer neighborhoods prefer to stay near friends and family and not in pretty high rise buildings.
ReplyDeleteHelping to repurpose space in the core has shown positive results. If public transport is readily available folks of all ages they can benefit, if the fares are reasonable.
Changing preples preferences are not easy, as the Dozois plan demonstrated in Montreal. Homelessness is an urban condition that must be approached thoughtfully. Quick fixes are rarely successful. Those most likely affected must be consulted before action is taken.