Tories say 'rough sleeping is a lifestyle choice

Post Reply New Topic

Agreed.

Not to mention billionaires hoarding their wealth in off-shore accounts and avoiding being taxed in this country.

Nobody chooses to be homeless.

tell that to the ableists.

Some sorta do. I know ppl that live at the beach who Could be housed somewhere, but they have a better life outdoors at the beach than indoors in a place that looks like it’s a set from a horror movie. The only times they have it bad and want to be indoors is during the coldest parts of winter when it’s hard to keep warm and the cold causes nerve damage in their hands.

Quite a number of people have spent years living at the beach. One musician lived under a tree for 14 years. He’s talented - has a record deal when he was a teenager, plays and sings and busks and records etc. Another chose the beach for 6 years vs renting a room in a rooming house after his divorce. Etc. Another guy has lived half of the last 45 years or so at the beach or in the woods nearby just so he could keep partying whenever he wasn’t at work lol

There was one beach dealer that packed all his stuff into dry bags loaded on a 2nd kayak he towed behind his main kayak as he paddled off into the sunset to sleep on some little island where the raccoons wouldn’t bother him. Then he’d return to “work,” every morning. Pretty sure he moved back to the DTES area when his gf got pregnant, and then based on some things I saw online I think he died of an accidental overdose.

Depending on where and how you live outdoors, sometimes it’s way better healthier living. In that dealer’s case it may have kept him alive if he’d stayed away from the bad area and the drugs there.

If I had to choose between living in the DTES or roughing it on a beautiful beach with such a strong community of people for support of various kinds (work, food, water, entertainment, conversation etc) I’d be doing what my beach dwelling friend does and building a hidden camp somewhere. I totally understand his choice to be homeless there vs live in accommodations that are made of nightmares.. weapons, crazies, constant overdoses, threats etc vs listening to the waves crash on the beach. He would choose a more normal home for sure but one isn’t available to him soooo I completely understand his choice.

There are definitely some that do. I would say overall, that they are a minority, however.

If you live in Britain, you do not choose to be homeless. The weather and temperature are not reliable enough, you can get rained on, frozen etc. at any time of year, even in July. Or even get a heatwave in October.

It’s only in the Vancouver area that it’s possible to Choose to live outdoors and survive with relative ease Most of the time. Very few people die of exposure here. Everywhere else in BC and the rest of the country has a WAY higher chance of freezing to death in the winter, with much of the entire country being an almost certainty that you’ll die overnight in the winter - kinda like being in Siberia or Alaska in the middle of Winter.

But here on the West Coast in the very Southern corner it’s a bit more like Northern California than the rest of Canada. Cold and wet, but almost no one dies from it.. not no one - homeless people do freeze to death or die from fires they’re trying to keep warm by, but very few.. so few that it’s news when it happens vs just a “thing,” that a bunch of people die from like the 6 people per day that are dying from fentanyl in BC.