August 28, 2006

Surrey's mayor dehumanizes the homeless live on CBC

The mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts, was interviewed by Rick Cluff this morning on our local CBC Radio morning program. The interview was about how Surrey moved a camp of homeless people from a baseball diamond in order to host the Little League World Series.

At the beginning of the interview Dianne Watts framed her approach to the homeless thusly: 'As we all know, these people have a lot of mental health issues.' Rick Cluff said nothing, which prompts this rhetoric.

  • Q: Is Rick Cluff the worst interviewer to be heard on radio? He was more engaged with his job 5 minutes later discussing a stall on the Oak Street Bridge.

  • Q2: How widely accepted is the stigma around 'mental issues'? We wash our hands of any responsibility for homeless people by calling into question their mental fitness, to make sure it's well understood that they're just crazy and we'd try but there's nothing we can do about it.

  • Q3: How marginalized are 'homeless people'? (who, as Carlin points out are not homeless, they're houseless) Replace 'homeless people' with another group: 'As we all know, retired lawyers have a lot of mental health issues.' or 'As we all know, junior hockey players have a lot of mental health issues.'

It's more than a little frustrating to have blatant misconceptions spread, unchallenged by an intellectually lazy mayor and radio host. Do many homeless people have mental health issues? Do those in Surrey? Can we call anyone 'these people'?

Lucky the Surrey RCMP were feeding 'these people' Slurpees to prepare them for the roundup and relocation.

Update: CBC says the real story is that a packaging business has to move its offices.

Posted by James Sherrett at August 28, 2006 09:41 AM
Comments

A: Not sure about worst on radio, but the worst interviewer on all media is almost certainly the celebrity journalista that NBC had working the red carpet at the Emmys last night. I had my head in the oven for 20 minutes before I remembered ours is not gas-powered.

A2: Seems to me there's some recent research that identified (i) mental illness and (ii) drug addiction as two of the major causal factors of home/houselessness. I couldn't quote chapter and verse but the round numbers I remember suggested that roughly 1/3 of the homeless in Canada were dealing with significant mental health issues, another third with drug addiction. A bit irresponsible of me to cite it here, but I remember being impressed by it at the time.

Locally, I believe it's generally acknowledged that the number of homeless in the Lower Mainland spiked several years ago in the wake of major bed reductions at Riverview Hospital (i.e., residental patients were discharged with the idea that they would be integrated into the wider community with outpatient care--the usual story: cost-cutting disguised as a new approach to health care, the "innovative care model" never materializes and/or is never adequately funded or was just a really bad idea in the first place [or all three]).

A3. In some cases at least: pretty marginalized. Which maybe raises Q4: how do people get out on the margins in the first place? Because we think they're somebody else's problem. Because we don't demand or support in a meaningful way adequate investment in housing, (mental) health care, or treatment programs. Probably. But maybe it's more honest to say we just don't care enough. If we did, homelessness wouldn't disappear entirely but some of the people who are without a home today might get the help that they need.

Posted by: Craig at August 28, 2006 05:56 PM