a time honoured Vancouver Pastime
and let me tell you, it sucks to be poor here.
aletta 1954 (Age 58) Female Vancouvver I'm an opinionated old crone, but I've bloody well earned it. I still believe in the individual's opinions and energies having the possibility to change the world. Ripples from casting a stone in the water of time. Indifference is a sin, so I cannot in good conscience keep my mouth shut.
It was on the news the last few days. I have to wonder how they didn't see that coming? There have been enormous outbreaks of infestation in the east end for at least a couple of years. I've blogged about it for at least two. The health department knew it, I spoke to them about it. The social worker (I am on disability) I spoke to about my fears of the infestation knew all about it. It was someone from the department of health who told me about lavender, also boric acid, but I knew about that already. I took the photo below in August 2006, when the problem as already being addressed in our building in east Vancouver.
I grew lavender on my balcony, it was sprinkled into my carpet on rinsed into the bed sheets. Now I understand why in the old country people, old people, did that. I was horrified at the thought of being infested. we looked into better housing but that is easier said than done on what disability allows for shelter.
I had read about bedbugs in vancouver dating back to 2004. They didn't see it coming? Example of previously know instances; http://bedbugregistry.com/location/BC/V5L/Vancouver/1855-E-Georgia-St/ , just run a Google search on "bedbugs vancouver 2004 2005 2006" and there is plenty. So why claim this is new to Vancouver? Why blame overseas travel? More like it's not a problem as long as it happens to the poor and destitute. Short sighted thinking. eventually if you don't deal with it from the beginning, it will spread. Just like tuberculosis is going to spread, and an assortment of other maladies. There will be roaches everywhere, bedbugs in the best hotels during the Olympics. Shameful. Where does the fault lie.
The commentators blame overseas travel as the source. well guaranteed on the pitiful disability and welfare allowances for shelter and food we are not traveling abroad and bringing them back with us. What utter crap. It just means no one wants to take responsibility for having turned a blind eye to a part of the population crying out for better circumstances and not being listened to, not a bit. The poor are being wished away and swept under the carpet.
Well, last summer we found one. I went berserk, I took it as a personal failing that it happened to me. Even though I knew the building manager had not, even with professionals on the job. managed to get it under control in the "red zone" units. As I mentioned I am disabled. I struggle to maintain an acceptable level of housekeeping. Eight years ago I was assessed by the health department as requiring daily help with my housekeeping and very briefly someone came in to help me, but then the government changed and all the services ended. I am not the only disabled or elderly person struggling just with the daily housekeeping, there are many. I spend so much of my day that it it leaves little to no time and energy for anything else, like enjoying my life, or seeing a friend now and then. It feels a lot like punishment, though I've done nothing wrong. I am fighting war against squalor and there is no government department who will help directly.
As I was saying we found one last summer, now it may have been a straggler brought in from the hallway or even elsewhere, but tat didn't matter, what mattered was it was here and we could not know how settled it had become. So we searched the Internet for solutions beyond the lavender and boric acid. We found a product called "Thwart" and ordered it, the testimonials seemed real enough and their claims supported. We spend a full and exhausting week cleaning everything inside out and spraying as directed. It isn't toxic to an or pets so we could stay in,and if it worked not one stick of furniture needed to be discarded. Within a couple of weeks no other had made an appearance and with the stuff active for six months we could relax a little. Just to be completely safe we also bought, at London Drugs, something called diatomaceous earth, (read about it here: http://www.tallmanscientific.com/bed-bug-control.php and here http://biopestcontrol.com/html/diatom_dust.html) basically dried sharp edge diatoms as found in seawater, so sharp it cuts into he bugs walking over it and dehydrates them from the outside in, whereas the boric acid works when licked off dehydrating them from the inside out. We did both. Our landlord (whatever the typical image of a landlord in the east side) refunded the outlay of the spray bought on-line and the manager delighted that it had worked. So there was hope.
The battle however is ongoing. As long as there is poverty and insufficient help for those who need it, whether it is better housing, more expendable income to take care of an infestation, or housekeeping for those too ill to it for themselves. For as long as there are the poor, the rest of the population will blame them, the poor here, and the poor abroad, even though, as mentioned before, we can't afford to travel. Poverty will keep infestations like this and others, communicable illnesses, addictions, mental illness and crime which uses the desperation of the poor to let them do the dirty work with promises of getting them out of the rut. The poor will use discarded items keep or resell items and not know they are infested and it starts again elsewhere. Bugs don't care if you are rich or poor, as long as your blood is warm.
It is hard not to smile a little when hearing t hit the other side of the city has the problem now too, but really i ant the problem and others like it to be addressed ad eliminated - for all of us. I once lived in the west End for 12 years, my kids went to school there and I worked there. Then I became ill with a progressive neurological illness and dependent on the safety net. The same one I had paid into for thirty years. Only to find out it had gaping holes that no one is/was interested in fixing. Disillusioned that I had been taken advantage of all the years I worked, and now had to skip meals to afford some bedbug diatomaceous dust.
You skip meals for every little added expense, or when the price of something like a loaf of bread goes up. My days are taken up with cleaning which hurts and exhausts me. To depersonalise and insult the disabled further we no longer have our own workers, we are numbers only. Find it insulting that disability has no distinction, our cheques are the same as welfare checks, I feel insults us, and we are given no system of our own, trained to help us specially.
When the hoops are just too hard to jump through, you make do, because there is no energy to fight for your rights and needs. Forced to live as we are, when we have no energy left for housekeeping at all, the bugs, the rats, and crime will take what little there is left. Reality is that many if not most of us cannot work, we get progressively weaker. The mayor's much applauded plan to have many disabled working during the Olympics disregards those of us who struggle for a breath, a day upright, and a future of worse days. The Mayor insults and ignores us, much like the province does. We live in fear, and listen to announcements of surplus, corporate bailouts, expensive studies into problems which are obvious and have obvious answers. Pardon me if I smile a little. You might want to think about he spread of old foes such as tuberculosis, because now is he time to do something, the bedbug is a warning.
The best way to deal with crime, mental illness and the spread of these plagues is to address poverty, not by studying it, but by making sure everyone has their basic needs - food, shelter, safety, belonging and acceptance (love), health - met and their dignity back. Until that is done, here will be plagues and outbreaks on your side of the city as well as mine, I was mugged a few months ago, and there have been robberies in Kerrisdale too. When it happens to the other side I cannot help smile,but it comes from my pain. Fix it and we can all smile for far better reasons.
At least I have housing,my own bathroom and I have my dog. Life is tenuous when you are poor, and most of the poor here are either disabled as a result of poverty or became this poor because of a disability. You live here in a daily sense of loss and a fear of future losses.
So pardon me if I smile a little that the other side has some bedbugs, at least they can afford it. If the other side wants to prevent this sort of thing they are going to have to address poverty. Instead of bailing out corporations perhaps they should work on a real safety net and rid this city of its poverty, now that, and not the Olympics would be a true achievement.
I am tired of all the negativity projected onto my building by a residents association I had never heard of until reading and article interviewing them on the building I live in, brought on by the mass evictions at 2100 block of Pandora Street. That building, which after a flood brought on by a despicable lack on maintenance had the city mass evict the tenants. Those tenants are having a very rough time finding housing, mostly because there is none, none that would approach the level of housing they had in that fated building. They had their own place, their own kitchen and bathroom. Most of the housing out there at their level of income will have neither.
The arguments goes, well they won't have bed bugs and mice, and floods at least. No one can guarantee that. Bedbugs have no notion of what is and what is not the appropriate building to infest. It takes on traveller on a coat to start and infestation. The bug doesn't suddenly realize he's in the Hyatt and immdiately packs up and leaves to the Lower East Side. I've seen mice and rats on Granville Island, well fed. Lots of expensive, yet leaky condos sport molds, fungus and floods, every bit as noxious. If it was so much worse at the building at 2100 Pandora it was for one reason, the tenants were poor and the landlord knew he would have tenants whether he spent money on the building or not. The landlord has no competition, he doesn't have to try. If there were sufficient units for people in low income groups to rent they would choose the best for their money and this slumlord would soon find himself with a largely vacant building. With more buildings to choose from tenants could be choosier as to hygiene, upkeep and other tenants. Most of us would, given the choice choose to live somewhere safe from the criminal element.
Apparently this residents association has a problem with tenants who have no choice but to live where they do, and have the expectation that by moving out some of these tenants everything will change. It wasn't mentioned that often the trouble comes from drug trafficking done in the park opposite. It would also seem obvious that people using drugs in the alleys haven't got apartments here or they'd be using their drugs indoors. The laws should have more teeth and a police presence by way of patrolling the park and area regularly might help a lot. It might help also if the city had a less lax attitude to drug use. It sends mixed messages by providing safe injection sites and at the same time complaining that people use drugs. No one bats and eye when marijuana is smoked on public streets and in the park. It may be "only" marijuana, but it is illegal and with that comes drug trade, and whom easier to recruit to sell than the poorest who need to scrape by. What the residents association really wants is to get rid of the unsightly poor which is keeping their property values from skyrocketing as in other neighbourhoods in Vancouver.
The attack is on the victims of poverty, and it should be on poverty itself. If you have people living in conditions not even suitable for a dog, you cannot expect them to live with the same civility as those who live in comfort with no worries where the next meal comes from with no certainly one day to the next of having shelter. Give the poor the basics of a dignified and life and the tools to maintain and improve their standing in society and many of the crime typically associated with the poor will go away, there will be no need for self-medicating or panhandling for a meal and some shelter,
Build sufficient housing, not SROs which have all the same problems of no dignity, no security, no privacy. How can someone who's been victimised in the sex trade or in domestic violence heal in an environment where they have to share washroom facilities? Can a paranoid personality do well in such an environment? Will depression cease when all you have is a small room and live with people you don't know in such close quarters? These are nothing more than poorhouses, we're taking a giant step back as a society.
Sufficient housing, apartments, the same size as anyone else would have not the Major's eco-density which is a spectacularly bad idea, we've done all those experiments with rats in our social psychology classes, you deprive rats of private space and they will turn on each other, there will be mahem, chaos and all that comes with it. Give them more space and all settles down. Everyone should have a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a balcony. Safe, Clean with communal space for socialising. The best example I have seen of this is the PAL building for performing artists in coal harbour.
If you put the poor exclusively in SROs what becomes of the children, are they put in foster care while the parents try to find against all odds a place to live together? Living in illegal suites, dealing with yet another unscrupulous landlord (of which there seem to be plenty). Better they have dignified suitably sized apartments, safe play space for the kids. Surly providing this kind of housing ultimately saves lost of money. Instead of spending lots of money on emergency shelter in hotels, crisis funds for resettlement, and foster care. Health will improve, hopelessness will be replaced by a sense of dignity a sense that we are a part of the community not the target for jibes by the upwardly mobile. Build sufficient rental housing to ensure a market which allows a tenant to make choices about where they would like to live instead of being relocated to places they have no support, no history. Charge them what is fair, on a sliding scale, as they have more they pay more, but always as a percentage to leave them also with enough for food. The subsidy can be paid directly to the landlord. All tenants pay but what they pay is between them and the landlord and social workers, they can be part of a community no more or less worthy than the next.
Do the sick, elderly and disabled have to share bathroom facilities? Are we not allowed some dignity and privacy, at minimum a self contained rental unit with bathroom and kitchen facilities. For the past few years I feel constantly under threat of losing what little I have. Obviously it is not paranoia, it is happening. The extra stress is having impact on my health, I cannot imagine coping with having to relocate with little time and a near 0 vacancy rate. What further will I be asked or expected to give up? I take some joy from living with my son, and my pets. I need the pets, they give me reason to get up. I need my son, he helps me when my illness requires someone help me and goodness knows there is no home care of any kind, without him I face living in a home. So I would lose my independence, the relationships that are therapeutic and provide me with love and dignity, I would lose (well have lost this already) security and safety. Probably it ould mean living with fewer and fewer of my belongings as the living spaces available become smaller and smaller and less and less private.
Once upon a time I felt like a human being who mattered, and I was convinced that paying high rates of taxation which left my paycheck smaller even when I received raises, well it provided for a safety net for those folks who were left disabled, or ill, unable to manage, and, I reasoned, it might one day even be me. Well it is me, the tax rates are still high, and there is no safety net, no kindness and no dignity.
My fellow human being, the ones having the face to once introduce themselves to me as their "neighbours" now have a residency association, one to which I was never invited. Their little group manage a newspaper article calling my building and affront to their sensibilities. Yes, there have been and may still be a drug dealer or two here, I see strange people going in and out of my building. Pretty much as it has been in any large building with many suites which I've lived in, most of those in far more "upscale" areas. What they did not mention were the tenants who lives here who use a wheelchair, walk with a cane, walk with difficulty, are elderly, are new to this country, young families with little children, middle aged ladies who found themselves single, poor and wanting to have a pet. Many of us are pet owners. Many of us are former victims of crime, some are recovering alcoholics or drug users.
The neighbours complain of whistling to get the attention of "drug dealers". Purely an assumption. I've whistled to get my son's attention if he's on the Internet and I foolishly forgot my key. I've seen people do it behind the more upscale building of condos at the corner of Garden and Pandora, and someone then threw him a key. The neighbours assume we are poor so must be up to no good and wouldn't the property values just go up is we were gone. Some neighbours. They can't see that they have at least 50 neighbours in this building. I've been nothing but friendly to my neighbours and their two-faced-ness hurts me. Thanks to them I might find myself homeless, disabled, losing for the last months or (hopefully) years of my life privacy, dignity, freedom, not because I am a criminal, but because I am now poor. Regardless all the tax I have paid, decades of working in the not for profit sector, raising good kids to adulthood, being a grandma. None of it matters, I am poor, no one cares, and the landlord, well he might choose to take advantage of the moment, my neighbours have set me and 50 neighbours up for being homeless with no place to go. I love my little apartment, I've lived here seven years and it is my home. There are no modern conveniences such as dishwashers, or in suite washer/dryers, no thermostats no thermal glass windows, the rugs are very old, but it is my home. It took months to get this apartment, landlords don't like renting to the poor, disabled or welfare makes no difference to them. I am happy here, and the building manager is doing an amazing job considering she has to manage 56 suites by herself with no help. If I need a new washer for a tap, or if a board breaks on my balcony, they fix it right away.
this is my home of seven years
Today we were given notices, shoved under the door, I'll keep it simple and just post the scan right here for you to read. I feel intimidated. I am terribly sad. It is making me more ill, I've been in bed for days with worsening of my symptoms, emotionally my son and I are both wound tight and unable to enjoy much of anything. I am not sure I can live through being evicted and relocated, or worse endlessly being jockeyed from a night here in one shelter or someone's couch for goodness knows how long. These fear raising tactics are cruel. You can't threaten a rich person by doing this, the rich have options, choices, we only have fear.
Still have the same bloody headache so the last few weeks have not been terribly productive. Nonetheless there has been movement. In another week I can pick up my passport after which I can get the local Identification (which required a passport or local birth certificate, hence the passport first. Yesterday I finally got my replacement bus pass, so that means I can get about, and it won';t cost me every time.
Unfortunately my knee isn't getting better as I would like and it caused me grief, in time it might get better. The police are closing my file, or rather it is now inactive as nothing new has happened or come up (nothing found, and the only likely suspect cannot be called in on what they have currently), sigh. I still find myself not quite as resolute of step and am still looking over my shoulder far too much.
I still have a lot of paperwork to do, much of it futile. The victim's assistance will only help with medical and counselling costs but not with replacing stolen goods, maybe with added transportations costs (stolen bus pass), but for that alone it is a lot of paperwork. That 20 dollar cheque that social services had agreed to add in for those emergency funds, never materialised, something they said to get me out of the building. I expected it, they take joy in the misery of others (shadenfreude).
I'll be back to my jolly self if I can get a break from this headache. Certainly I know who values me, friends and family, and devalues me, the government and agencies designed to help out those in need (throwing the helpless on the compost heap). I've passed through the worst of my nightmare, but if I have an ounce of spare energy here and there it will be spent screaming at the people in charge over their utter failure to help the needy, and that includes the media, who failed to do any kind of follow up when the people a block away from me suddenly found themselves homeless, quite a few now wander all day long with their few possessions, shelter to shelter. It sickens me to see the sanctimonious lot fawning over the 2010 Olympics and the surplus of tax monies in this province.
no dignity when money runs out
_____________ a bit more reading on topic if interested _________
this time about my building:
Drugs, noise anger neighbours
City loath to close low-income housing despite drugs and crime
Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, October 23, 2007
VANCOUVER - Paul Sahota isn't the only landlord with an east Vancouver apartment building that has been a longtime source of woe for neighbours, police and city inspectors.
Living a block away from an apartment building closed due to despicable lack of maintenance on the landlord's part, and read in various publications where this is blamed as much on the tenants as the landlord. My building is another dangerously close to being closed thanks to neighbourhood obsession with goings on, the age of the building, the socio economic state of the tenants and the desirability of something more upscale in it's place.
While there are tenants I would not approve of and rather not live in the same building as, this would make me homeless, and living on the street with a progressive illness terrifies me more than any of my neighbours. Frankly I've never lived in a building anywhere on any income level which did not have problem tenants, or mice, but don't the poor make for a handy target. Retroactive NIMBY.
So while my neighbours cheerily wish me a good day they are also busy-bodying doing all they can to see me homeless, doubtless no more than a shrug and an expression of too bad there has to be some collateral damage. That collateral damage consists of people - families, elderly, disabled, people recovering from years of tortuous life on the street, just barely scraping by spending more than half their income on basic housing only to have their housing security threatened by the "well-intentioned" neighbours? I would offer my wishes for a good day to these "neighbours" the upwardly mobile who bought fixer uppers next to our building, thinking what nice people, but noticing more and more that they were on fishing expeditions. I'm not stupid, the driving force of the local economy is the brisk trade in real estate, there is no room for those whose incomes do not let them play.
I mentioned a little while ago that I was concerned the city could close my apartment building for criminal activity or repairs not being done. Already one apartment building in East Vancouver and several residential hotels "SRO" (single room occupancy, had been closed down. Residents are/were given three hours to collect up their things and get out. Temporary shelter was found for one to three days, then they were told they would have help "relocating".
This terrifies me. I realize the city is looking for more space to build accommodations for the Olympics. Poverty is an ugly and unpleasant sight and they want it gone, or at the very least swept under the rug for the duration. They have two more years in which to accomplish this. So the poor need to be relocated, quickly, minimal fuss, and land needs to be found for the city to build what it needs to live up to their "world-class" promises.
There was a storm last night. The rain came down in a deluge and the wind was furious, the kind of storm that took the roof off my sister's North Vancouver home last year. She too was relocated, but ownership of the house remained my sister's and she was relocated to a very nice house while repairs were made. She was given ample help keeping the property secure and moving out her belongings to the rental home. Not so for the residents of an apartment building one block away from my building. Same age building as mine, probably the same owner, a nearly 60 unit building full of tenant in the lowest tax bracket. Families, elderly, disabled, addicts, recovering addicts, the entire strata that call this neighbourhood home.
The roof which was supposed to be repaired could not stand up to the storms and collapsed sending a veritable waterfall through the apartments on the west side of the building. Tenants tried in vain to manage the damage to their apartments with buckets, pots and pans. The damage was assessed by the fire department as unsafe, fearing short circuits and further collapse. The tenants were given three hours to collect their stuff and get out, leaving behind what the could not carry. Rooms were found at motels, emergency stays will be covered by the city for three days, then the city will "relocate" the tenants. The building will not be habitable again according to the news. However my sister's house was made habitable again and she moved back in.
I passed by the building today while walking the dog and it was silent, no kids playing around and coming home for lunch as was usual. Their bicycles are still there, pull wagons and other today on the lower balconies sit left as they were yesterday. I noticed no security, makes for easy pillage. The side of the building not damaged by the roof collapse is in the same shape my building is in. I worry, a lot. If this building were closed down, with no vacancies in my price range in Vancouver, just exactly where are they relocating people? Not something I see on the news as a follow-up.
It doesn't seem to concern anyone that these people have lives rooted in this community. This is where they go to school, have friends, shop, socialize. Wit little money a sense of community is even more important. I have lived in this apartment for seven years, with rental availability being what it is, if I lose this apartment in all likelihood the next place I am moved to will be worse, and more than likely outside of this city, away from my doctor, my family, my community. We're not people who have insurance to cover these eventualities. I am not understanding why the building repairs cannot be made, charged to the owner and the tenants, who pay their rent, stay put and the few who were displaced, given the option to move back in after repairs or not.
I get ther feeling what the city wants, the city gets, the city wants us moved away, they want to take over these properties and use them as part of their 2010 Olympic overhaul. The statistics will say that the city got rid of most of their poverty and homelessness, because they will be "relocated" to other communities and it will become their statistic and the major will look like some kind of hero.
Eventually if this kind of callous relocation does not stir up any outrage it opens the way for abusing the poor by using them in forced labour, putting people in cramped poorhouses, The poor can't fight back, they have no lawyers, no legal aid. We have to accept what we are given, causing a ruckus over it might cause a sudden loss of paperwork, who knows, they are holding all the cards.
While publicly the government claims more housing for the poor will be made available I am not seeing it, what I am seeing is a sharp reduction of housing using as they continue to close these older buildings. More people will be living on couches ad in rooms and the city will consider that "housed" in their statistics, absolving them from having to provide any further emergency shelter. Since when is a room with shared bath and no cooking facilities a "home"? A home is a place of your own where you can have privacy, feel secure and live with dignity. Chopping up families into different shelters and kids ending in foster care while the parents try desperately to put it all back together is not relocating or housing anyone. This just heaps trauma on top of trauma. Why then is anyone surprised that mental illness is higher among the poor, it should be, they've earned it. They are hurting and the community is indifferent and even manages to make a profit out of their misery. Bastards. If I am wrong, prove it, because what I see around me and have been experiencing after being mugged and with bedbug scares and the building manager terrified the city will also close us down, what I see is not a benevolent government but a tyranny which makes cynical references to the unfortunate. Their unofficial policy is kick 'em while they are down. The public is being sold that the poor are overwhelmingly criminal and lazy, which is not a true representation but it keeps the public from questioning these policies. The poor are made up of the disabled, the elderly, poor families, new immigrants, there are children, grandmothers and lots of family pets.
MLA demands action on run-down building
CKNW, Canada - 4 hours ago
VANCOUVER - The local MLA is demanding the city or province do something about that rain-soaked three-storey apartment building at Pandora and Lakewood in ... ci
Heavy rain reveals dangerous leaks
Vancouver Sun, Canada - 11 hours ago
VANCOUVER - City officials removed more than 50 people from a rundown east-side Vancouver apartment Thursday after ordering it closed immediately because ...
City shuts down apartment building
The Province, Canada - 13 hours ago
Authorities moved about 50 low-income residents from "shameful" living conditions in east Vancouver last night after declaring their building "unsafe to ...
Vancouver police charge 38 alleged drug dealers Vancouver Sun, Canada - 45 minutes ago
He said gangs are involved in supplying street-level dealers, with many high-level drug traffickers living an affluent lifestyle of fancy cars and high-end ...
Downtown Eastside loses 76 rental units
Georgia Straight, Canada - 11 Oct 2007
According to popular folklore, an early Vancouver madam by the name of Marie Gomez once owned a place on this site where weary loggers and travellers sought ...
For those of you interested in visiting this gallery when you are in Vancouver it is on East Hastings, just past the fashionable bits of gastown on the south side of the street, at least it will be there until this block also falls to the demolition plans of the city to restructure everything for those two weeks of the winter olympics without any concerns for the needs of the population which now, because life has handed some lemons is their rat infested, bedbug riddled homes. The question is ...the rest of this article... - Also in Textiled with Textpattern
Are people really so obtuse and unaware, or just block out the unpleasant nature of poverty because they feel no need to acknowledge the man or his condition?
excerpt: So life goes on. I feel badly much of the time that I cannot find the energy to join in more with family functions or attending functions. I'd like to plan a night of visiting art galleries, I really would, but if I am lucky enough to find the energy to make a warm meal and actually eat some too, all I want with what's left of my day is to sit, think, play with my pets and water the plants that constitutes my paradise.
Because it doesn't take a lot of energy and because it does take my mind off pain and the general boredom of my cookie cutter sameness days, I like to edit the photographs I take of my small world, often just the flowers on the balcony or my pets.
locally our city government is making sure that the poor are driven from their neighbourhoods against their will, to make a quick buck during two weeks of Winter Olympics in 2010 - residential hotels closed and upgraded for tourists or demolished for other projects and no new affordable housing even in numbers to replace what was destroyed - Saferide program relocates vagrants out of the area with no resources when they are dumped outside the city's transit boundaries Shame!
Longs days and little to show, his reasons don't matter, it shouldn't happen, not if the world were really kind and evolved, but maybe we're not evolving, maybe we're devolving
My dog, the natural scavenger watches the human forage for scraps, while himself well fed and well housed, steps away from a full bowl of kibble and treats.
What kind of society makes it illegal for humans to let a dog be homeless, unfed or otherwise un-cared for, yet finds it acceptable that humans are homeless, hungry and deprived of respect and companionship. A homeless person is somehow fit to remain in the harsh outdoors but the dog will be rescued from his homeless master?
Does this city commit to billions on amateur sport event hosting and turn it's back on the crisis of poverty and neglect endemic in its own population?
