Right to Adequate Houses

http://www.chbc.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=13538 This link is very important. Especially to me, because it speaks to why my interests and research is so very important. The Okanagan is a lovely place, it is picturesque and mildly seasonal. However, like most communities across the country and around the world the Okanagan has its fair share of social 'problems'.
I remember reading recently that the government felt that poverty was way to expensive to fix. I wouldn't argue with that if I was approaching poverty the same way the government does. Certainly, it is expensive, and so were the ways that most of our people became homeless..."just a paycheque away".
Bruce Porter has written an article in 2004, where he makes a really good argument for the ammendment to the Charter, where housing would be included. This is an idea I support 100%, if not more. I mentioned this idea to a colleague and he responded with, "what do you do if they wreck their home?". I blinked at him and thought about the other freedoms we have under the Charter...speech...religion....and we abuse those and somehow the public finds ways to put people in thier place for that abuse. But what struck me even harder is how willing people are ready to jump to an excuse or reason why the solution to the 'problem' is problematic. Which, when I think on ALL the literature I have read, is why we may have such an exacerbated 'problem' now. Along the line, our country has had a large amount of people who are community minded come up with incredibly viable solutions that will, not only help those who are need, but create a stronger sense of community. Yet, these people have been quashed by excuses and reasons.
I recognize the resistance comes from a history where our country has been moving into the idea "every person for himself", the woman somehow is implied in there. I would argue the individual idea went REALLY wrong. All these countries wanting Independence, and from that hard desire to be an independent nation, inspired an even harder desire to be independent as people. FLAWED.
So, I am in a class with a woman from Ghanna. She is flabbergasted that there is a need for my kind of research. In her country, homelessness doesn't manifest in the same way as it does here, why? Because of aunts, uncles, moms, dads, close friends, bosses....the way she talks about her country is that there is a strong support network within the communities and if the families have to relocate (which says is rare) then the place they are going to usually has a connection for them so that they aren't on the street.
I know have a couple of friends who have first hand experienced the wealth of community. I have even tasted that sweet nectar myself. So I know that when they read this, they will understand what I am talking about. But what about the 30 million people who make up Canada? Do they know what they are missing? And if they did would they be willing to work toward creating a community in their communities??
Here is where the idea of community becomes incredibly fantastic...if we built a community that actually lived by the mandate of what community means, it means there would be no more soup kitchens, no more homeless shelters, no more overcrowded jails, LESSENED crime, lessened occurances of drug addictions, depreciated amounts of poverty and the list goes on...
I am optimistic...maybe not in my life time, but I know it can happen.
And here is the kicker, it would cost the government less money to facilitate a community, to create housing as a right, than it would to solve poverty on the whole...and then maybe shelters wouldn't have to turn away over a hundred women and children during the winter, and maybe men's shelters wouldn't have to create safe places for women to sleep...and just maybe we could put more attention into an issue that we couldn't see because we were being too busy being independent.