'We solved housing for Olympic athletes — why not for homeless people?' asks BC Today caller

Yes, hello. What are your thoughts on the budget? Well, when I first heard it, when I heard like the $17 billion or something for housing and stuff, I went, oh, well, that sounds encouraging, but I didn’t hear anything for right now. I’ll give you an example. I live in a small town at Squamish. You’ve probably heard of it. We’re building more than any other community in BC We’ve got condos going up everywhere all over. Not one of them is affordable. If you don’t make 40 to $50,000 a year, you can’t live there. Our average rent in this town for old places is $2000 a month. I don’t even get that much. I’m getting 1400 a month on disability total. That’s with my CPP, my disability. So what I’m saying is, if we had the Olympics right now, I just mentioned this to your producer, that if we had the Olympics right now, there’d be housing everywhere because Whistler doesn’t have the room, so Squamish would probably pick up the slack. And we build, we bring in housing, we bring in all this infrastructure that we needed to get to house the athletes. What I’m saying is US homeless people need that type of attitude. We need emergency housing, we need trailers. We need something to get us off the streets. Because I know I don’t want to live in a tent. I’m I’m close to living in a tent because the place I’m living in is for sale and I have zero place to go. I’ve tried everywhere. I’ve I phoned BC Housing, I phoned everyone, I phoned the MLA, Ras Kowloon. I phoned every person I can. I’ve I’ve been on CBC with federal in Ontario. I’ve been on everywhere trying to say we’ve got to do something now because it’s getting way worse than I’ve ever seen it. And so I’m sorry you didn’t hear anything in this. I didn’t hear anything. I’m sorry I didn’t hear anything in the budget that’s helping us right now. That’s what I’m saying. Yes. No, I I hear you and our guest earlier from UBC said as much that while there was a lot for housing, it not much to address the issue of homelessness, which is is urgent and is is current and as you know, it’s illegal. Yeah, I don’t know if you know about the Crab Park situation. I’ve been down there, I’ve seen it and it’s pretty sad. They won’t even give them washrooms there. They won’t give them a garbage, big garbage cans to throw their stuff away. They won’t. They just don’t want them there. They just keep saying we don’t want you here. We want to give our back, our part to our people, but there’s no place for those people to go. And they would all go somewhere if there was emergency housing or something where they could go and stay in a trailer or whatever. And and then, you know, I have a washroom trailer, you know, a little kitchen trailer, everything. People would use that. Most people would, right. They don’t want to live in tents. They really don’t. Most people don’t want to. I know I didn’t like it. I did it two years ago and it was hard. It was OK in the summer, but I still had to take my tent down every day and hide. And you know, I had to go to different places because I wasn’t allowed to. Our our town here has signs everywhere saying no camping, and there’s only one camping spot and you’re only allowed to stay there a couple of weeks, so you have to hide outside yet. So I did it, but once November started, I couldn’t do it. So I had to go to Lac Lahash all the way, you know, 2-3 hundred kilometers from where I was grown up because I couldn’t get any housing in Squamish or Burnaby or Vancouver anywhere. So I had to go to Lac Lahash to stay in a motel for six months that a realtor was renting out. And that was the cheapest place I could find. That was 900 a month, so and now you’re you’re in Squamish, so I’m in Squamish, but I’m in a house that’s for sale, so I’m I’m renting a room with all my stuff is in bins. I’ve had my stuff in bins now for over 2 years because I sold my place and unfortunately I’m crazy. I gave most of the money to my family and my kids, right, My grandson and paid off all our bills and stuff. And now I’ve got maybe a couple $1000 put away in a savings count for when I get a place and I’ve been told even my old age home here I have to wait up to two years maybe three years before I get in. Rick, can I ask you, I know you you’ve been speaking about the budget but you also mentioned you know that you have lived in a tent you you you don’t want to but that people are being moved from encampment you know to another encampment and the the feeling of the message is that we don’t want you here. How can you, What would you like to say about the stigma that that people who are who are homeless face? Well, I just want to say this, that not everybody now, everybody. A lot of almost people do have mental issues. There’s no doubt about it, right? We’ve had homelessness in Squamish since I moved here in 1974. But a lot of those people wanted to be, they don’t want to pay rent. They wanted that freedom of living in a tent and that that they gave that that was their decision. Now there is no decision anymore. You have no choice. So what I’m saying to people is these people have no choice. They don’t want to be intense. If you talk to most of them, they say no, this is horrible. It’s a horrible way to live. You got to deal with rats. You got to deal with other people right beside you and stuff. It’s just horrible. You know, you have no privacy, that you’ve got nowhere to go to the washroom, you got nowhere to clean up. You have to find a place. It’s just a horrible way to live. And and for our country to be like this, to say in our constitution even that home homes are for all Canadians. And then to say, well, you’re on your own because you don’t make enough money, it’s wrong. That’s what our town’s doing. Our town is, like I said, I’m not exaggerating when you said I say you have to make Ford 5 to $5000 a month to afford rent here because the cheapest place is $2000, That’s for a dump. Yeah. I’m sorry that you’re in this precarious situation right now and I I sure I appreciate you listening now. And like I said also, I was worried about with the budget. I mean they’re always talking about numbers and deficits and stuff like that, which I, as a layman and most Canadians don’t understand. We just say if we have to spend money on housing spending, we’re going to spend money on military. You’re going to spend money when we have the Olympics. So let’s spend money when we need housing Now. That’s all I’m saying. We hear you, Rick. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.