Good news! There are no homeless people in Whistler. And if there are homeless people, there's only half a dozen of them. And they're not being pushed out of Whistler because of the Olympics, either.
This news may come as a surprise to the people living in their cars or couch-surfing from place to place because they can't afford to live in the town they work in. It may be especially surprising to the people who live in their cars who suddenly can't park them in Whistler anymore because VANOC is taking over their usual parking spaces.
But don't worry, they're not being pushed out it's just coincidence that VANOC happens to need all that parking, according to Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed.
Oh, and they're not homeless people, either, they're "under-housed."
Hmm. Sounds under-accurate to us.
"Under-housed" is a lovely instance of double-speak. If you don't have an assured permanent shelter to sleep in every night, you're not under-housed, you're homeless. People living in their cars count in most people's estimation. You could also argue that people who are "couch-surfing" from place to place to place are homeless, which in Whistler's case would drive the number a lot higher than the "four to six" admitted by Greg McDonnell of the Whistler Community Services Society.
Clearly everyone is trying to avoid comparisons to Expo '86, which actually did create homelessness, as ruthless landlords looking to capitalize on visitors to the World's Fair displaced lower-income people from their Vancouver homes.
Of course, that isn't the case here. Neither VANOC nor Whistler's local government is trying to displace anyone, and some of the social services these people need happen to be available in 老澳门六合彩开奖记录资料 but not Whistler, which can make it look like people are being given the proverbial bus ticket and told to get out of town.
But trying to sugar coat the issue isn't the solution. The fact is that Whistler's economy runs on the back of a workforce that largely can't afford to live there, and the advent of the Olympics is indirectly responsible for the displacement of some of that workforce.
Pretending that it's not related to the Olympics doesn't help. Acknowledging what is happening and calling for the proper resources to do something about it just might, though.
Clearly having community and social services in 老澳门六合彩开奖记录资料 to serve people in Whistler isn't sufficient, and having the eyes of the world on Whistler might just encourage our provincial government to miraculously find some additional funds to help these people to avoid the inevitable negative publicity.
Now isn't that an Olympic legacy worth having?
Tim Shoults
