This follows
Panhandling for a life!
21 Sep, 2015
We also interchangeably, cyclically refer to them all - for short - as Transients or Homeless or Panhandlers or Undesirables or Drug-Addicts or - very popular for a while with the cops through the Nelson Star but not so now - Mentally Ill.
Although we really haven't looked at whether a transient actually is a homeless; a panhandler actually is a transient; a mental actually is a drug-addict; a drug-addict actually is a drug-addict; a homeless actually is mental; an undesirable actually is a panhandler; an undesirable actually could be desirable and on and on and so on. This is altogether too much to get on top of - could drive one mental, too: so to simplify - everybody is everything all the time!
Who/whatever they may be: we don't want them! I mean - really! - they all dress badly because they just won't shop (big one, that!)! are dirty! rude! in our way! and - very important - not attractive. Like - would you want your daughter (or yourself!) to nudge-nudge wink-wink.....?
It's all very (di)stressing - so we best get rid of them all! Have them all stay rid! Keep it clean! Us only! On guard with a heavy-duty bylaw just in case!
Most of the panhandlers are not homeless, most have expensive bicycles, clothes and cell phones. Most do not want to get a job, they feel they are better than the minimum wage yet refuse to educate themselves and get that better employment or even start their own business. Most are on welfare because of this and "professional" panhandlers make a lot of money just by mooching off hard working people. They do not pay taxes yet live off tax-payers. There are a few, very few at that, that are homeless but they do not won a $4000 bike or cell phone and again, there are very few, very few of them. I think they should go to jail if they violate the by law and the by law is a very good thing for the City of Nelson. If you think it is unfair and making being homeless illegal, open your home to them, feed them, cloth them. They then will no longer be homeless.
Nelson launches panhandling bylaw
Nelson Star, Sep 17, 2015
Comment:
Shannon Calhoun
Works at Interior Health Authority
I totally agree with you.
Dirk Jonker
L.V. Rogers Secondary School
So the City wants to institute Panhandling Bylaw No. 3321, 2015. This would be reasonable if they actually had done their field/homework first to determine the (perceived) reason for, size of the problem. Cops and meter-maids are a dubious source at best: they're rarely there here to know. Clearly - while labels like homeless, transients, druggies, panhandlers, mentally-ill have been used very loosely, have become the accepted one-for-all stamp of disapproval: in reality the number of panhandlers-as-such has not been large - is very small right now!
Because with the great flight of tourists back to school - some of these undesirables may have flown the same route. And others may have left because back to school is the definitive signal that summer is about done: now it's time to start squirreling away enough nuts for winter.
In other words: when winter is over and spring comes - so do they! Until fall. Then are mostly gone again. A seasonal thing!
Instead of the cop-shop's as-usual-over-the-top and unsubstantiated by real-time numbers: increase in panhandling and increase in the aggressive behaviors of panhandlers. While anecdotal all: supposedly the basis for this bylaw!
With all carelessly lumped together - a group of similar-like-THAT-looking people just chatting downtown will automatically register in total as panhandlers. This group just being there is a threat to our social habits - while a group of Nelsonites or tourists chatting - blocking the way as is common - is not.
We make people fit our often very prissy assumptions, prejudices. Frequently not doing so well with mindfulness, tolerance, acceptance - no matter how progressive and tree-hugging we claim to be.
We are a pretentious lot!
I can relate: There was a time when friends and I were refused lunch-service in a Toronto restaurant. Money was no problem; we were polite and definitely desirable! But we didn't measure up to suits also frequenting the place: just didn't look/feel right! To them.
That was then - this is now but still then! Could it be that some undesirables here sometimes go into sulk-mode over never-ending unwarranted animosity from the status quo?! And push back a bit!
Eventual adoption of this - literally wall-to-wall - bylaw is not based on an actual threat posed by a small outside-the-accepted-norm group of demi-people to a large group of real-people's safety, well-being and pursuit of happiness - but on the latter group's comfort-level in general and profit-margin in particular.
The recent top multi-group get-together on undesirable mentals/mental undesirables produced no concrete steps forward - except for being the first of its kind: promising more work and more - meetings.
To possibly consider in-depth before locking-in this bylaw:
1.
How many - averages, trends - bottom-line homeless, transients, panhandlers, mentals and drug-addicts do we have permanently, longer-term, short-term/passing through quickly - and why?
2.
Time-frames?
3.
Patterns of combinations of labels?
4.
What particularly attracts undesirables - in terms of the environment, social comforts/services not only available but offered?
5.
To what extent is the proposed bylaw initiated by/geared to special interests?
6.
Has anyone actually connected objectively and in-depth with the total of undesirables present? A survey!
7.
How many of those directly involved in putting this bylaw together at City Hall have actually been out there: fighting the good fight in the battlefield of aggressive behaviors?
8.
Are there comprehensive professional stats? (Nothing from the cop-shop, please!)
Now all this is where an outside-consultant could prove useful, be constructive!
Adopting this bylaw now - what with presently unacknowledged, unaddressed circumstances of prejudicial and discriminatory grandstanding - is regressive: our very own apartheid.
Home is where the fence is!
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