Poverty and homelessness are big issues for me.
I’ve lived on the street, on the road, in tent cities, in protest camps, in a boat, in vehicles and a variety of other situations.
My situation is complicated. I try to share a bit about it whenever I can.
I used to repost a lot of articles from the mainstream media, but these days my blog generally contains content I’ve created myself.
Follow these links to read my writing (and reposted articles) on poverty and homelessness.
Homelessness
Latest Post:
Poverty in British Columbia: By The Numbers
A compendium of figures related to poverty in Canada and British Columbia, including various poverty measures, welfare rates and costs of living. With links to sources.
Poverty rates in Canada:
Canada has no official poverty line, and tends to use three different measurements.
The most widely accepted is the Low Income Cut-Off, which is often used as the unofficial poverty line (although it does not measure poverty per se, and the government insists it should not be called a poverty measure.) People living under the LICO spend 20 percentage points more of their gross income on food, shelter and clothing than the average Canadian.
The Low-Income Measure, is 50% of the median income, and the Market Basket Measure is a calculation of basic living costs.
Read More
I have been cooking and serving, along with listening to many of the homeless for over a year. We should be able to come up with a solution that is much better than what we have now. Living in the woods, parking lots, under bridges is not only unsanitary, but an eye sore. This problem is just getting bigger and bigger with our economy. It is a bigger problem than what each individual community can handle on their own. The communities are not trained to handle the problems of mental health, addictions, women menstating in their clothes because tampons aren’t available, wet dirty smelly folks walking in the coffee shops, in order to get out of the bad weather. There are many, many problems such as these. No-one is hearing as to what really is happening. I would suggest that we the government/people can build single room homes for the homeless. Tent size rooms with….Community Kitchens, Showers, Education,…Training the homeless…Commuinty Gardens.. These people need a helping hand up, some self-worth.
I have many ideas that I know will work!
Christine Carson
I look at my taxes as investing in my community and country. Our taxes are to help people with health services, eduaction, food, shelter et cetera. Since all businesses like to hire from other countries, to take advantage of government kick backs, drive down liveable wages locally,, thereby creating the situation that causes immigrant workers to send money out of the country to thier families overseas, no ones lives will ever improve. Businesses want me to shop local. I tell them I will as soon as they start hiring local and paying a liveable wage with enough hours in the work week In Indiana Applebees was paying thier workers $2.35 per hour( I boycott Applebees), Ryan’s was paying workers $4.00 per hour for “experienced” workers. Las Vegas, a town built on the backs of women, experienced workers were working for just tips. Mainly women that were working for whatever pittance they could get. The fear in thier eyes if you did not tip them was hard to bear. That is what Stephen Harper and Christy Clark want to do to our wages.
Government is to be run “for the people” not as a profit generating business as per the corporate agenda. No one will have a liveable wage or a job if they keep operating the way they are and all our resources will be depleted before we know it.
The rates need to be raised to a liveable level so people can pay thier rent, buy food and pay utilities in one month thus stimulating the local economy and creating jobs due to the revitalization of “supply & demand”. Christy Clark just spent 348 million dollars to take the biggest delegation of her mover and shaker buddies to China to open one office. According to various anti-poverty groups, had she raised the rates to a liveable level it would have only cost $292 million dollars. The rest could be put back into the health care system the politicians have destroyed with corporate instructions. I’m an equal opportunity activist and I reserve the right to complain bitterly to all politicians until they do something to help the people.
If you live in a region where water is very contaminated,
it would be wise to consider another solution such as differing
filters that you can fit around your home (shower filter,
faucet filter or even a whole house filtration
system which would ensure all of your water is as a good as getting it direct
from one of natures springs. A multi-stage carbon filter costs only about
10 cents per gallon and isn’t hard to install. Though some environmental organizations see nuclear energy as a solution to the growing climate change, others remain wary.
If we continue accepting that the Gov’t is doing for us then we are not far behind the US. SeveraL states are riping up paved roads. RaLph KLine paved AB, LoL. Good Luck in maintaining what peopLe think they must have. I’m a 56yr. oLd femaLe wanting to Live on the grid.