Solving homelessness — beyond spin

Francis Bula
January 6th, 2009

Just before Christmas, MLA David Chudnovsky sent a little missile in my direction, saying that I had been suckered by government propaganda (yet again, I think was the implication) when I put up a blog item about the provincial government delaying the bid process on some of its 12 social housing projects to try to get better prices on construction costs.

I thought it was important to respond to this for a few reasons. A minor one is to help people understand how little bits of news like this actually get gathered. A much more important one is to weigh in on the debate about homelessness and the province’s actions or lack of same, especially when David makes criticisms like this. And I have to say, these kinds of messages trouble me — not because they’re personal and so clearly buy in unthinkingly to the comfortable theory that all reporters are just moronic dupes of the capitalist machine (I’ve kind of gotten used to that, more or less, in my 25 years), but because they contribute so little to focusing attention on the real issues around homelessness.

Read the rest here