The City of Victoria is headed in the right direction by considering offering odd jobs to homeless people or people with disabilities, but care should be taken to avoid hazards and pitfalls that might lie along the way.
In proposing the concept, Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe said she wasn鈥檛 looking to provide full-time jobs, but sees the plan as a way 鈥渢o empower individuals who can maybe only do two hours a week or four hours.鈥�
A few hours of employment a week could mean a lot to someone whose every dollar is dedicated to staying alive. Beyond what the money would buy, the work could provide a sense of worth and of contributing to the community. As Mayor Lisa Helps said of the proposal: 鈥淭here is dignity in work.鈥�
Such a program could help defuse criticism of the homeless as lazy bums who don鈥檛 want to work. There are undoubtedly such people among the homeless, but there are also useless slackers drawing salaries in workplaces. That鈥檚 human nature.
We should not make blanket assumptions. Being homeless is not synonymous with being lazy. Many street people work long days scraping together enough to survive. We have all seen people trundling huge bundles of cans and bottles to a recycling depot 鈥� that鈥檚 hard work.
There are people who, because of mental illness, addictions or other disabilities, might not be able to work a full day, but could work an hour or two at a time. There are people who would work if they could.
We鈥檝e been down this road before, and there are ditches and risky side streets. The concept stirs memories of 1975, when premier Bill Bennett named Bill Vander Zalm as human resources minister. Within minutes of being sworn in, Vander Zalm was talking tough about welfare recipients.
鈥淚f anybody is able to work but he refuses to pick up a shovel, we will have ways and means of dealing with him,鈥� he said, sparking headlines like this one: 鈥淰ander Zalm says give them a shovel.鈥�
Thornton-Joe鈥檚 proposal is the opposite of Vander Zalm鈥檚 heavy-handed approach. She鈥檚 offering people a chance to pick up a shovel, figuratively speaking, not thrusting it into their hands and threatening consequences if they don鈥檛 use it. Her concept would offer an opportunity, not an ultimatum. And that鈥檚 the way it should be 鈥� it should not involve any element of coercion.
In a 2004 paper on various work-for-welfare programs, Christopher Leo and Todd Andres of the University of Manitoba said that for such a program to be successful, participation should be voluntary and the work should consist of jobs that 鈥渁re a genuine benefit to the community, not make-work that produces net costs instead of benefits and does little to boost the self-respect of the workers.鈥�
While the U of M researchers were studying programs with far wider scope than the concept being considered by Victoria, it is important that the work be meaningful, something that achieves visible or measurable results. Such work should provide value to the community; in doing so, it would bring even more value to the worker, giving him or her a hand up, not a slap down.
It should not deprive others of employment 鈥� Leo and Andres found that many employers in Quebec were taking advantage of a provincial program to use subsidized labour instead of hiring workers at full wages. This isn鈥檛 likely to be the case in Victoria, however.
This isn鈥檛 a plan that will erase homelessness. It won鈥檛 solve all the problems of the downtown core. It鈥檚 a modest plan, but one that can make a big difference in the lives of individuals.
