Give a Man a Fish …
We’ve all heard the saying before: “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”
An anti-poverty group in Vancouver has challenged our local politicians to spend two months living homeless on the streets of the Downtown Eastside to see what it’s like to be poor. Never being without a reason or two for why they can’t do something, the city councillors and Mayor Sam Sullivan are feverishly offering reasons why they can’t take part in the latest reality TV show, Survivor: Vancouver.
But all jokes aside, I don’t think these elected officials should have to spend their summer wearing the same pair of ratty clothes, and squatting behind garbage bins to relieve themselves. Even if 50% of the politicians took part in this challenge, it wouldn’t be a realistic experience. The media would be all over the positions of the participants, and I’m sure that reporters or camera crews would start to share meals or even purchase the occasional latte in exchange for an interview.
And what result would come from this? More funding for our poorly funded programs?
Seriously, it doesn’t matter how much money we throw at people. All we would be doing is creating a two-tier welfare system. Instead, what’s needed is not for the councillors to show they can step down off the social ladder, but for them to demonstrate how downtrodden people can take a step up on it.
Employers are looking for people all over British Columbia. Alberta is willing to take the most rookie person and train them for a high-paying skilled labor job. According to a 2005 survey conducted by the Social Planning and Research Council of BC, there were 2,174 homeless people in the Greater Vancouver region, which was almost double the count just three years prior. Considering how this report is two years old, and the trends discussed within, we can assume that there are now approximately 3,400 homeless or incredibly poverty-striken people in the city.
In my treks downtown and around the areas where homelessness is more often felt, I see that many of these people are relatively young (under 40) and physically capable of working some sort of labor job. With proper meals and the basics of shelter, many of these people could easily regain control of their lives. The problem is, the tools to do so are not easily available when you’re that down. I’ve talked to several of the younger people who hold up signs saying “Hungry” and even shared the occasional lunch with them when downtown, and each one tends to have a similar story. If they could get back on their feet, many of them would. There was only one that refused to get back into the workforce because he didn’t want the government to continue deducting his wages for the back child support payments he owed.
To this end, I’d like to see some institutions and progressive employers propose challenges of their own. Only this time, the challenge would be given to the homeless and destitute.
It would be along the lines of: We’ll give you a job for eight weeks, and arrage some temporary accommodation. if it works out, we’ll make the job permanent and you can start looking for a place to live full time.
Now, I’ll admit that some jobs pay so poorly that it’s often better (from a financial standpoint) to be on welfare, but I believe that people who are prepared to work hard (if given the opportunity) will be able to feed and house themselves. Homelessness is something that’s been around as long as civilization itself, and there will always be those that refuse to do anything for themselves, believing that the government (or society, or some diety, or whatever) owes them. If that’s the lifestyle they prefer, then we can’t force them to change. But we can offer an olive branch to those that truly want it.
The goal here should be to make poverty history, not to use it as a guilt-trip against others who have achived success in their lives.