How widespread are the homeless/mental health/addiction issues in your city/province?

[niwell]

^Absolutely.

I've brought this up quite a few times but you used to be able to get a shitty SRO in a rooming house in Toronto for a couple hundred bucks a month. This gave you enough money with a combo of ODSP or other assistance and panhandling to afford rent and booze/drugs. Plus having a roof over your head and privacy really does help stave off the worst of the effects. A ton of these SROs have been converted to more expensive apartments and there is far too much demand for the remaining ones, plus they are almost impossible to build new (even if economically viable).

[lio45]

Yep. I can vouch for that. The “double whammy” of the war on SROs from the government combined with the rise in real estate prices that makes owners want to convert them / remove them to boost land values has generated at least an extra ~35 homeless people in my city in just the last year (all of whom could afford SRO rent + drugs + booze on their welfare checks, pre-pandemic).

With the current housing crisis, you really should have your head examined if you accept to rent to addicts when you can instead rent to nice South Asian TFWs who are hard-working and not demanding.

[whatnext]

A timely piece from the Victoria Times-Colonist:

Comment: 'Downtown Canada' no longer the urban dream
“I am noticing more and more that when I walk through a Canadian city or a town lately, I feel this experience of poverty, addiction, and mental health issues quite viscerally.”
Shelley Robinson
about 9 hours ago

I had to go for two car appointments last week in Victoria, and leave my car in the shop for a few hours.

I have been in a few Canadian cities, walking the streets for whatever reasons, whether it is that I am visiting as a tourist, or that I am staying with friends and family.

When we are in our cars, we slip right past the problems without having the emotional impact of being in the middle of it, but I am noticing more and more that when I walk through a Canadian city or a town lately, I feel this experience of poverty, addiction, and mental health issues quite viscerally.

I am recognizing firsthand how much it is getting worse and how onlookers are getting frustrated.

The first day, the auto dealership warned me against walking along Government Street to the downtown core. “Take a cab.” When I insisted on walking, he said, “Well… Try Douglas Street, but it is bad.”

And it was. I came across a business owner picking up the glass from his broken front window. I stopped and told him that I was sorry for him.

He was so angry about the vandalism and blamed the provincial government for not doing more to incarcerate people for breaking the law.

“They buy the homeless people hotels, but fail to realize that these people cannot live by any rules. They need to be managed and if it means arresting them first, then so be it. I will need to close my business soon.”...

....Even with our efforts to choose the route carefully by day (never by night now), the homeless situation shows up and it feels unsafe and unwell. My hometown of Calgary is no longer a feel-safe city where I could go out dancing as a single lady and get home by bus.

My downtown Canada that I have visited (Yellowknife, Saint John, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, Charlottetown, Saint John’s, Halifax, Winnipeg, Regina, and others) feels like it has reached a saturation point.

It is the holding tank of these cities’ problems so that suburbia can rest a bit more easily at night. What happens when we think of problems as matters of municipal territory is that we overlook the systemic issues of the whole city.

Laws are meant to be enforced. Mental health issues require interventions and ongoing management. These systems work together to help facilitate change and protect the population at large from danger....

https://www.timescolonist.com/opinio...m_campaign=snd

[giallo]

That's definitely been my impression since moving back to Canada, but where I live probably affects this perception of rapidly growing poverty.

I mostly exist within the Mount Pleasant and the downtown area, and it's got its good days, but man, does it have its bad days. Sometimes I feel like its almost a 50/50 split between people who look like they're doing ok, and others that are in the middle of a complete mental breakdown.

For instance, I was on the Skytrain from VCC to Brentwood yesterday, and half of my car was people passed out or nodding off when I boarded at VCC. It was cold outside, so I guess they stay in the train to keep warm, but it was another day of seeing something I hadn't seen before. Basically, a small encampment inside the train. You can imagine how bad the train car smelled.

I'm sure if I lived in Kits, White Rock or Port Moody, I'd be like "Wow. Things are great. What are these people complaining about?", but for those of us living in the inner city, it can be really grim out there some days.

[giallo]

This guy has been documenting the DTES on Youtube for a few months now. Here's the current state of it since the tents were removed from East Hastings.

I've always wondered about the "folded" pose you see a lot these days. I thought it was due to fentanyl, but apparently, it's due to xylazine. It's a drug that's now being cut into the fentanyl. The street name is 'Tranq'.

• Video Link

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by lio45

Yep. I can vouch for that. The “double whammy” of the war on SROs from the government combined with the rise in real estate prices that makes owners want to convert them / remove them to boost land values has generated at least an extra ~35 homeless people in my city in just the last year (all of whom could afford SRO rent + drugs + booze on their welfare checks, pre-pandemic).

With the current housing crisis, you really should have your head examined if you accept to rent to addicts when you can instead rent to nice South Asian TFWs who are hard-working and not demanding.

It's not like rooming houses were a beacon of calm and order. I certainly get that they were personally better off having taxpayers pay for their drugs and room than being stuck in a shelter and begging for drug money but to take it to an extreme if we bought high rise hotels and filled them with the current addict homeless would there be an improvement?

[esquire]

Just read an article in the Star about the Allan Gardens homelessness situation in Toronto. And I do have a question: why does all news coverage refer to homeless settlements as "encampments" instead of just "camps"? Is there an actual difference in terms of meaning?

[WhipperSnapper]

Worse than drug addiction is divorce with kids and a mortgage. Somebody is ended up in an "encampment"

Toronto and Vancouver are always 1, 2, or 3 in best places for young people to live so the world is one fucked up place right now.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by esquire

Just read an article in the Star about the Allan Gardens homelessness situation in Toronto. And I do have a question: why does all news coverage refer to homeless settlements as "encampments" instead of just "camps"? Is there an actual difference in terms of meaning?

Camp is an abbreviated version of encampment. Same reason the newspaper probably doesn't say a student is in "uni" (they'd say university) or report that Russia is low on "ammo" (they'd say ammunition) or talk about selling "coke" on the streets (they'd say cocaine). I think it's a style guide thing to avoid abbreviated terms.

[Acajack]

There is currently a buzz on local Ottawa social media about retailers leaving downtown due to problems with theft and other bad behaviour.

There was of course the infamous Rideau St. McDonald's (of raccoon fame) that closed down in the past year but now the talk is about Rexall closing down one of the shiny new downtown drugstores they've opened downtown in recent years. Apparently losses from theft are in the thousands of dollars every week.

[1overcosc]

My husband just attended a guest lecture on housing laws at the Queen's law school.

Here's something interesting he heard.

This guest professor thinks, that if we reach the point where a group of people are simply unable to acquire any sort of roof over their head at all - they are not able to afford any market housing, there is no non-market housing available without huge waitlists, and no short term shelter capacity available either - that it would be unconstitutional to prevent them from building shantytowns on government-owned land.

Fun times ahead!

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by giallo

This guy has been documenting the DTES on Youtube for a few months now. Here's the current state of it since the tents were removed from East Hastings.

I've always wondered about the "folded" pose you see a lot these days. I thought it was due to fentanyl, but apparently, it's due to xylazine. It's a drug that's now being cut into the fentanyl. The street name is 'Tranq'.

• Video Link

I was told it was the Fentanyl stoop but makes sense if it's something else that's cut with the fentanyl.
Fentanyl abuse is a North America wide crisis at this point. One local guy I talked to said "one hit and you're instantly hooked. Stronger than anything else on the market"

I can't imagine how hard it must be to get clean. Makes meth, crack, even heroin look kinda mild by comparison.

[giallo]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I was told it was the Fentanyl stoop but makes sense if it's something else that's cut with the fentanyl.
Fentanyl abuse is a North America wide crisis at this point. One local guy I talked to said "one hit and you're instantly hooked. Stronger than anything else on the market"

I can't imagine how hard it must be to get clean. Makes meth, crack, even heroin look kinda mild by comparison.

One of my best friends is a fent addict, and yeah, it seems to be near impossible to stay clean. He's been in and out of rehab since 2017, but he just can't stay off of it. I saw him in May, and he was clean, and looking great. I just heard today that he back on it, and totalled a rental car (probably fell asleep at the wheel).

Everyone, and I mean everyone has cut him off. Sober, he's a great person and wonderful friend. On opiates, he's an anchor that will drag you down to the depths with him. The most I'll do is answer his call or text just to keep a line of communication open. Outside of that, I don't want him in my life at all until he's a year sober.

[Wigs]

That's really tragic

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I was told it was the Fentanyl stoop but makes sense if it's something else that's cut with the fentanyl.
Fentanyl abuse is a North America wide crisis at this point. One local guy I talked to said "one hit and you're instantly hooked. Stronger than anything else on the market"

I can't imagine how hard it must be to get clean. Makes meth, crack, even heroin look kinda mild by comparison.

It's almost like China deliberately crafted the perfect revenge drug for the opium trade.

[mr.John]

I don't get how anyone can get hooked on fentanyl, isn't a very small amount of it deadly?

[theman23]

Opioids build tolerance. Some junkies can tolerate doses that's are over a hundred times what would knock out a regular person.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I can't imagine how hard it must be to get clean. Makes meth, crack, even heroin look kinda mild by comparison.

My gf is the only one we know who has managed to quit it, and it was really difficult (took about two years). Quitting crack was a lot easier, and quitting alcohol was a breeze that we didn't even notice. Also, it's kinda cheating to say she quit fentanyl because she's still on meds from the pharmacy that are a substitute to opioids; we tried to have her stop this last year (it's kinda annoying to have to go to the pharmacy every single day) and it was just impossible.

The staff at the opioid clinic (that she's been going to for nearly three years now) say she's the only one they're aware of that actually managed to totally quit the fentanyl shoots, and refer to her as the "star" of the program (even asking us if they could use the story to try to justify their funding; they also asked her if she was willing to be there in person as a sample of a patient, on that one day on which some higher healthcare brass were visiting the opioid clinic).

One of the "tools" that ultimately worked to get her off was to have her semi-sequestered (not against her will) at my parents' place, two hours away and in a town where she has no contacts. This phase lasted for many months.

Just to give you an idea, here's a real-life slice of life from this period:

My dad and I were leaving my parents' home early to go to a jobsite; my gf was still sleeping. I told my mom to make sure she didn't escape, as I knew she'd be craving her street opioids upon waking up. (She was on pharmacy substitutes, but it wasn't the same thing at all, according to her and I'm sure that's true.) My mom said, "you can go in peace, trust me, no problem". Then later that morning my mom calls and apologizes, because it turns out my gf, while my mom wasn't looking, pretended to be in a good mood and showing no signs of wanting to escape, and then about 10 seconds later, my mom notices one of the cars is gone from the driveway. I was mad at my mom and gave her shit (basically "you had ONE job!"), she was like "well I didn't know she was THAT bad", I'm like "basic anti-escaping-measures-101 is to hide all the keys really well!!!!" (which only leaves "calling a friend from her drug circles to do the 4-hour round trip to pick her up" as the escape option; something she's also done, and that's harder to prevent as long as she can discreetly access a phone or computer).

Having lived through that process, I think that your friend (giallo) if he's serious about quitting, absolutely needs to move somewhere far away for a while. Quitting if you stay in the same environment in which you were using, is basically impossible. We tried that at first, and realized it was hopeless.

I would also add that since the point of moving away is to make sure you have to make do with the pharmacy's opioid substitution meds, it ideally needs to be a place where you couldn't find street opioids even if you tried really hard (which you will). Like a small town where you know no one. That's even more important than sheer distance.

[harls]

Originally Posted by lio45

I would also add that since the point of moving away is to make sure you have to make do with the pharmacy's opioid substitution meds, it ideally needs to be a place where you couldn't find street opioids even if you tried really hard (which you will). Like a small town where you know no one. That's even more important than sheer distance.

Drugs are pretty rampant in my hometown. Of 2500. In a rural area in the middle of nowhere.

People will always find a way to get that next fix.

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by lio45

My gf is the only one we know who has managed to quit it, and it was really difficult (took about two years). Quitting crack was a lot easier, and quitting alcohol was a breeze that we didn't even notice.

Good on you and your family to stick by her and help! That must have been so hard.