Better ways to help homeless survive

Times Colonist
January 6, 2009

Before Housing Minister Rich Coleman sinks money and time into finding ways to lock up homeless people, he should take the obvious and easy steps that would help prevent people from dying on the streets on cold winter nights.

Coleman wants the Mental Health Act changed so people can be forced into shelters. The protection of individual rights should not mean that people must be allowed to die after refusing shelter, he says.

It is an interesting theoretical issue. Practically, it seems irrelevant, or at the least a distraction from meaningful actions to reduce street deaths.

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