4 October 2004

Beating A Dead Horse

It’s Civic election time here in Edmonton. That means we get the unrivaled joy of electing a new Mayor and a new City Council. Given some of the asinine things the current city council has done over the course of their term this is probably a good thing, but unfortunately it means that we have to be exposed to even more campaigning. As if we didn’t get enough during the Federal Election.

Naturally the Mayoral candidates are going out of their way to make sure that they’re as visible to the public as possible. That means they’re appearing at various forums throughout the city and participating in several debates. Between that and the platform and policy information on their web sites I think we can all get a pretty good idea of where each candidate stands and what he or she would do during their term in orifice. I could take some time to go over all of that information and come up with a synopsis of their platforms and policies like I did for the Federal election, and I suppose that I probably will, but for the time being I’m more concerned with something else.

At a recent forum the Mayoral candidates were asked various questions about the homeless problem. All of them stated that they were very concerned about the problem but none of them had any answers when asked what they were going to do to solve it. To me that demonstrates the apathy that seems to pervade the political system about this particular issue. It also demonstrates that neither the candidates nor their advisors has given this issue any thought at all, because there’s an answer to the problem staring them right in the face.

Last year I published my blueprint for solving the homeless problem in this city. Those of my subscribers who were with me when I published that essay probably have at least a vague memory of the plan, but given the fact that we’re facing an election I think that it’s probably time to go over it again. Besides, those of you who weren’t with me when I first published it might find this a little interesting.

The Blueprint goes something like this.

Over the last few years as Alberta has been trying like hell to balance the books and pay off our debt the Klein government has been hacking and slashing health care and education for all its worth. A direct consequence of these cuts has been the closure of hospital beds. In one case an entire hospital has been closed, although in all fairness I think that the hospital in question was closed before the de-Klein of health care in Alberta. The hospital in question is the Charles Camsell, which is located a few blocks away from Westmount Mall.

It’s a rather sizeable building on a rather sizeable piece of property. Unfortunately, the building now sits empty and the property hasn’t been maintained properly for several years. A small security force patrols the building to protect it from intruders, but otherwise the building and the property are abandoned. The property is owned by the Provincial Government and the last time I looked it was for sale for a bargain basement price of six million dollars. On occasion I have heard rumors of a pending sale for the site, but nothing ever comes of it.

So, what can you possibly do with an abandoned hospital? Simple. You renovate the building and turn it into an apartment-style condo complex. You tear down the auxiliary structures and re-landscape the property. Once the renovation has been done you can rent out the suites. The building will be managed by a non-profit organization, which means that any and all profits made have to be spent on some good, charitable work. Those profits would be used to build low-income housing throughout the city, which would then be donated lock, stock, and land title to the Capital Region Housing Authority to help them with their three-year-plus waiting list for low-income housing.

Now, that’s all well and good and would allow us to ease the shortage of housing for the working poor over a period of several years, but there’s some question about how much housing we would be able to build with those profits. Sure, one apartment building a year would be a significant improvement, but at that rate it would take us several years to solve the problem. Some families don’t have that long. There has to be a way to speed things up some, and there is.

See, after the renovation there will be a lot of empty real estate around the building. Turning that into parking lots and parks is all well and good, but I have a better idea. Move the parking for the building underground and build a strip mall around the building. All the available parking would then be used by the retail patrons. The strip mall would be managed by the same company that manages the apartment building, therefore all the profits would go to our stated purpose of building low-income housing. The extra infusion of cash would allow us to build more low-income housing and solve the shortage faster.

But that money could be used for another purpose as well.

This city also has a shortage of homeless shelters. Some of that money could be used to address that shortage by building more shelters along the lines of the Single Mens Hostel and the Salvation Army Shelter, thus giving our homeless and working poor who depend on the shelter system more options to get the hell out of the cold.

Last winter when temperatures dropped to forty below the City opened up a number of fire stations and LRT stations in the downtown core so that our homeless population could take shelter there. I find it admirable that they did this, but why should they have to when we as a people have it in our reach to solve the problem by constructing more shelters? What I mean is that opening the fire stations and transit stations is a good idea, but it’s a band-aid solution; it covers the problem, but doesn’t actually do anything towards healing the problem.

Now, it occurs to me that this kind of blueprint, in the hands of someone who was running for public office with the intention of actually doing some good, could actually serve to make or break their election hopes. I’ve been toying with the notion of meeting with the candidates and explaining the Blueprint to them. Their reactions to the Blueprint would determine whether or not I would be interested in voting for them.

What do I expect from such a scheme? Not a lot, really. The Mayoral candidates would probably tell me that it’s a wonderful idea, but there isn’t any way that the City could possibly be involved in that kind of program. That’s okay, though. There’s a Provincial election coming up too, and I think that the local Member of Parliament might be able to get some mileage from such a scheme.

Why involve the politicians at all, you ask? Well, it comes down to a matter of resources. They have them and I don’t. I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of laying my hands on the kind of money that I would need to fund this little project and keep it going, but a well motivated government agency would have not only the money but also the connections necessary to make it happen.

Otherwise this is all just a pipe dream and all I’m doing by hanging on to this little scheme is beating a dead horse. Still and all, I suppose it’s better than a stuffed monkey.