A coalition of advocacy organizations is taking a previously proposed Barrie bylaw amendment to the United Nations as an example of a policy that criminalizes homelessness in Canada.
In May and June, the city north of Toronto proposed and then walked back two bylaw amendments that would have made it illegal for people and charitable groups to distribute food, literature, clothes, tents and tarps to unhoused people on public property.
The proposal was sent back to staff for review in June but was discussed again at a community safety committee meeting on Tuesday. A date for another council vote on the bylaw has yet to be set.
After Tuesday’s meeting, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition and Pivot Legal society sent the proposed bylaw amendments to the UN’s rapporteurs on the right to adequate housing and extreme poverty. The intergovernmental agency has put out a call for laws impacting unhoused people for a report on decriminalizing homelessness, with a submission deadline of early October.
Instead of spending so much energy trying to ‘get rid of’ or remove the sight of poor people or the homeless … which is what these regulations are trying to do.
Why not spend more energy trying to make a more equitable society so that you don’t have as many poor people around.
It’s economics … either spend money now directly helping people so that they don’t become poor or destitute.
Or spend lots of money later in policing, judicial, legal, political, social, medical and security services to try to deal with the poor and in trying to get rid of a problem that you created.
There has been many studies in the past that dealt with this issue … it’s cheaper to just directly help people now rather than in trying to hide the problem (which never works anyway)
We need to transition out thinking from “personal responsibility”, which essentially puts the blame on individual people as if we existed in a vacuum, to “how can we improve the system so that this is less likely to happen in the future?”. This applies to all sorts of societal issues, from homelessness, to pedestrian/cyclist deaths, to obesity.
I want to believe this is true and it certainly sounds reasonable. Do you have any links to the studies you’re talking about?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A coalition of advocacy organizations is taking a previously proposed Barrie bylaw amendment to the United Nations as an example of a policy that criminalizes homelessness in Canada.
After Tuesday’s meeting, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition and Pivot Legal society sent the proposed bylaw amendments to the UN’s rapporteurs on the right to adequate housing and extreme poverty.
The intergovernmental agency has put out a call for laws impacting unhoused people for a report on decriminalizing homelessness, with a submission deadline of early October.
“We’re very concerned about the direction that the city [of Barrie] is taking and so we thought it was important to raise alongside a number of other bylaws across the country for consideration and context for the United Nations analysis,” said DJ Larkin, the executive director of the drug policy coalition.
When introduced, the proposed bylaw amendments also appeared to make it illegal for charitable organizations to provide supplies to unhoused people on city property.
“At the United Nations level, we are hoping to demonstrate how Canada’s failure to address the overlapping crises of toxic drugs, homelessness and income insecurity are playing out on our streets,” Larkin said.
The original article contains 611 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
This is very disingenuous. The obvious meaning is that the city is targeting homeless people with laws specifically aimed at making their life harder. Is the city able to literally prosecute and imprison homeless people over these laws? No, but the implication is pretty obvious and one wonders why you are intentionally avoiding it with what amounts to wordplay.
Removed by mod
Why is the word choice more important than the issue? You’ve certainly spent more time worrying over that than the issue of laws being targeted at homeless people.
Removed by mod
Targeting vulnerable populations with laws intended to make their lives specifically worse is obviously bad. You shouldn’t even need a story to understand that that’s bad. So you’re giving off the strong impression that your actual problem here is that anyone is questioning the targeting of homeless people with the law.
Removed by mod
It’s a feeling I have. We are in a lemmy forum and not a moderated debate stage so I’m not sure why you think calling logical fallacy is going to separate me from my intuition.
I for one am with you on denouncing sensationalism.
The situation is bad enough on its own that such sensationalism is not necessary.
Removed by mod
This is about giving food to people, not bears.
Don’t bother. They are either scum or edgy scum. Either way not worth it with a troll
