Homelessness, fire alarms and the moon

I spent today at the University of Ottawa, participating in the Homelessness Forum, which is an annual one-day conference organized by the Ottawa Alliance to End Homelessness.

This is a unusual event in that it’s free and people without homes are strongly encouraged to participate. This kind of diversity tends to create an interesting group dynamic.

The welcome address was interrupted by an unexpected appearance and speech from former Minister of Justice Allan Rock, which in turn was interrupted by an unexpected fire alarm, which put us all out on the cold street for fifteen minutes.

Once we got back in the building, there were two back-to-back panels (one about the criminalization of homelessness, and the other about homelessness and the media). Then we broke into smaller groups to discuss various topics over lunch. I was in the harm reduction group, but it was a really tough choice – the media group looked good too.

This was followed by a keynote address by Michael Shapcott, who is one of the top housing policy wonks in Canada AND he’s a blogger.

Speaking of bloggers, Ottawa Citizen blogger Kate Heartfield was there too, as part of the media panel. She addressed an interesting question about the thin line between pitching a human interest story and exploiting people who are vulnerable, especially as it pertains to organizations trying to attract media attention.

I had an interesting conversation with some of the people at my table about Mayor Larry O’Brien. Some of them work at City Hall. They were upset not only because their manager, Russell Mawby, just got axed, but because Mayor Larry expressed such glee over it. It would be easier to cut Mayor Larry some slack for being a moron if he wasn’t such a jerk, you know what I mean?

Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired, so I’m just going to share one of the highlights from today:

Michael Shapcott’s kind of pissed about the bailout of the banking industry. It makes him think about the time he went begging to the government for money to eliminate homelessness. He had a solution, but he needed two billion dollars to implement it. He felt awful asking for two billion dollars, because he knew two billion dollars was a lot of money.

At least he thought he knew that. Now he realizes two billion dollars is nothing. Governments who say they have no money for homelessness can clap their hands and make four point five trillion dollars materialize out of nowhere, for banks. If they’re motivated, anything is do-able.

He was also having some trouble wrapping his head around what four point five trillion dollars means. It’s a lot, we all know that, but how much? $4,500,000,000,000. (Is that right?) Well, apparently if you stacked four point five trillion American dollar bills one on top of the other, your stack would reach from here to the moon.

“I took my 17-year-old son outside one night,” he said, “and I pointed at the moon, and I told him this. And he was kind of interested and then he went back inside to his life.”

But Michael Shapcott didn’t stop there. He then tried to Canadianize the experience of comprehending that much money. Here’s what he came up with. For four point five trillion dollars, you could take every single human being on the planet out for dinner at Tim Horton’s every day for four months. Soup, sandwich, donut and coffee.

It’s a wacky world we live in. I’m not finished with this subject, but I’m beat. More wackiness tomorrow.

P.S. I wish XUP had attended this event. She has some opinions on drug policy.

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