Unsafe Cities

Several days ago I was shopping on Davie Street in Vancouver’s downtown core and while I was feeding a parking meter a crazed, large young man rushed down the street, waving his arms aggresively, and screaming threats. He wasn’t aiming them at me particularly but at that moment I was afraid. Although I am still a fairly large man, I am seventy five and my ability to defend myself is limited. Later I thought maybe I should carry a heavy cane in case I needed it to ward off an attack which got me thinking about the state of my city, Vancouver and, for that matter, so many other cities across the western world.

It has become an almost daily occurence in Vancouver where a drug addicted, mentally damaged person assaults someone. And that only includes the attacks that are reported. On the same day as my experience, a young woman who was pushing a baby carriage was chased and nearly assaulted on the seawall in Yaletown. Fortunately, passersby intervened and protected her. The police were called and they picked up the potential assailant and took him to jail only to release him shortly thereafter because of a lack of charges which, presumably, allowed him to continue his rampage elsewhere. Several days earlier another crazed and, presumably drug damaged, man stabbed two people along Granville Street, including the intersection with Davie. That assailant is still at large. At about the same time, another stabbing occured further up Granville. The police arrested the suspect and I presume, though I do not know, he is still in jail. These attacks are no longer the exception, they are now the norm. And this is intolerable.

I moved to Vancouver as a teenager over sixty years ago. I have no recollection of people begging on the streets, of homeless encampments, of crazed and violent people running rampant when I was growing up in the city. Even east Hastings, while not the nicest place in the city, was safe to walk through. But somewhere along the way, something changed.

Of course this is not unique to Vancouver or Canada. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, has issued an order to remove homeless encampments across the state. Anyone who has been to San Francisco, LA or San Diego in the last few years will know how rampant those encampments are and how they have alienated whole districts of those cities for other citizens. It is estimated there are 180,000 people living in homeless encampments in California which makes Vancouver’s problems seem minor but we are catching up quickly. But ordering their removal raises the obvious question: “where are they going to go?”.

The question I have is: how did we get here? How, over a relatively short span of time, did we move from a mostly non existent problem to one that is making our cities increasingly unliveable? There are people better equipped than me to answer those questions but I’ve heard a number of theories, most of which seem inadequate to explain the problem but almost certainly add to the complexity of it.

The mass deinstitutionalization of people with mental disorders in the 1980’s, with inadequate or non existant support structures in place to look after their needs in the communities they were released into, certainly contributed. This happened all across North America and, in Vancouver, is best illustrated by the closing of Riverview Hospital in one of its suburbs. While that almost certainly had an immediate and noticeable impact, it doesn’t fully explain the scope and complexity of the problem even then, not to mention now thirty years later.

The rising cost of living in these cities has also contributed to the crisis. Why costs rose so dramatically in them differs but the end result is similar. And that is especially true for housing costs, particularly in Vancouver, where housing costs are now stratospheric compared to the average income in the city. A significant contributor to those costs is international immigration, particularly the influx of wealthy Asians seeking a safe haven for their money, if not their lives, in Canada. And it’s not just wealthy individuals, as Canada’s immigration policy has leaned so far into encouraging immigration that the inevitable and, one would have thought, predictable strains on the country’s ability to provide housing and basic services such as medical care are severely testing Canadians’ traditional support for immigration.

And then there’s the drug crisis. It’s hard to determine to what extent this is a cause or an effect of the other stressors, but there’s no doubt it is now a signficant reason for the chaos and random violence on our streets. It’s not just people who are drugged but also those who are both psychologically and physically permanently impaired because of their drug use. I say “permanently” because it seems to me that, for some at least, there is no possible recovery from the state they are now in. And these are likely the most dangerous to the other citizens of the city.

While important, all these seem secondary to something else: the fundamental change in how capitalist societies organize and reward work. For decades now we’ve been assured that globalization would be a tide that would lift all. While it is likely correct that it’s contributed to the dramatic reduction in poverty in countries like China and India, as well as large areas of the global south, it has had the opposite effect in the major western countries like the United States, Canada and much of Europe where well paying, often union, jobs have been lost to “offshoring” where labour costs are much lower. As this was happening we were assured that new “knowledge based” jobs would replace them but, as I think should be clear by now, expecting workers in industries like manufacturing and resource extraction to pivot easily to these new jobs is largely unrealistic, at least for current workers. And so there has been the loss of, for lack of a better term, lower middle class jobs and incomes leading to the breakdown of families and, ultimately, the despair on our streets. For both strategic and political reasons, countries are now trying to repatriate some of those industries but, given the goal of lowering costs, still accept the disappearance of many of them to low wage, albeit friendlier, jurisdictions. Even if there was a wholesale reversal, the damage is done at least for a generation and, without some kind of dramatic intervention, much longer.

What we are witnessing is not just a failure, but the possibility of civilizational collapse. Not all at once. Not with a French Revolution type overthrow. But rather with a slow grinding down of the bonds that cement our societies with the increasing isolation of the “haves” from the “have nots”. We are already seeing examples of this, particularly south of the border in America.

There hasn’t been this type of income discrepancy in the western world since the days of the “Robber Barons” in America. In fact, I’m not even sure that was as great in these days when a very few are multi billionaires, with some testing the stratosphere of trillionaires, own an enormous percentage of the wealth being created. And, as history tells us clearly, this cannot continue or, for greater clarity, it will not. The only thing we might have some control over is how it will end and, even then, the acceptable options are limited.

I have little faith in the religion of government taking over, making choices for everyone, deciding who is going to be a winner and who a loser. And I have great faith in ideas of individual liberty and capitalist free will. That said, even the least regulated societies and economies, if they are to succeed, need some guardrails and, absent anyone else, that’s where government comes in. What is striking across the western world today is the lack of leadership on this issue. In Canada, neither the Prime Minister nor his likely successor are arguing for the type of fundamental changes necessary to get at the root problem of income disparity. It’s probably true that a relatively small country and economy cannot go alone on this but to not even be raising the issue strikes me as sleepwalking to disaster.

I’m not qualified to offer the answers on how to rebalance the distribution of wealth in advanced, democratic, capitalist societies without undermining the very forces that have made those societies economically successful. However I’m pretty confident it would start with reforms to our taxation systems that ensure the wealthiest amongst us pay their fair share. I’m also interested in the idea of a guaranteed minimum annual income, one that would replace all the boutique programs that we now have including Old Age Security, Welfare, all other income and housing supplements etc. The current programs cost tens of billions a year, if not more, and while their elimination probably wouldn’t fully cover the costs of a guaranteed minimum annual income, they would go some distance in that direction. I do understand the critics who claim such a plan would be a disincentive for people getting ahead, working hard and succeeeding. But I wonder if that’s really the case. I’m not suggesting an income that will be particularly comfortable, just one that ensures all Canadians have a roof over their heads, clothing on their backs and food on their tables.

In the meantime we should be addressing the immediate problems of homelessness, drug addiction and general civic disorder. And we should do so in a way that is effective, not one that genuflexes to the orthodoxies that claim the rights of drug addicts and petty criminals somehow supercede the rights of everyone else to have an orderly and safe city. As for the bigger problem, it sure would be nice if some mainstream politicians at least showed some awareness of the challenges in front of us because the alternative is unthinkable.

Just sayin

GH

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