Penny-Pinching From Poorest? Or Incompetence? Always Worth A Check

A variety of people crowd a sidewalk
Balloon Man photo by Mark Faviell is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Street Life in Vancouver, B.C.'s Downtown East Side.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Homeless Industrial Complex? At the very least it seems to be a phenomenon on North America’s west coast. It’s hardly as financially fattening as the famed American Military Industrial Complex, true. But intercepting government funds that are earmarked for the poorest can provide tidy little incomes to folks who claim to professional pauper stoppers. They are filled with supposed higher social purpose as they dip their hands to empty the homelessness cookie jar before its potential benefits actually reach their intended targets.

Canada’s west coast poverty and homelessness stories often focus on Vancouver’s DTES (Downtown East Side), an older section of the city. It is here that the ‘Homeless Industrial Complex’ flourishes, defined in the following article as an ” . . . ecosystem of special interests (e.g. nonprofits, bureaucrats, and professional activists) that claim to improve social outcomes . . .”

But when authorities actually bother to check up on the good-hearted citizens who intercept flows of public money in order to provide shelter and care for the poorest, it seems that many are at best incompetent and at worst, corrupt.

Affordablehousingaction.org credits the west coast of the United States with the origin of the term — Homeless Industrial Complex — including the construction of an eight million dollar tent1.

Read more about some of the individuals and organizations that superficially at least appear to ‘help’ provide British Columbia’s contribution to the never-ending sadness of the DTES, in THE DAILY HIVE: Opinion: Downtown Eastside organizations finally receiving overdue scrutiny

Footnotes

  1. Try: Corruption And The Homeless Industrial Complex: Does It Exist?