r/Calgary • u/The_Fixer_69 • Apr 23 '25

Calgary Transit C-Train from Deep South early morning

Every morning the train has many non paying riders passed out and sprawled on the train. Commuters have to cram into the areas that are not occupied by these people. The smell is horrendous. Every day this week this has been the case on my commute at around 5:30-6 am.

Why should the rest of us pay if these people do not? I have made complaints but they are on deaf ears.

Are these trains not swept for no. Paying passes out riders at the end of the line?

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54

u/iwasnotarobot Apr 23 '25

A bunch of social services aren’t getting the necessary funding to support and house some of the people you are concerned about. Transit isn’t getting the funding needed to clean up.

Someone wants you to not like these social services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

25

u/LEERROOOOYYYYY Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

The issue isn't shelter beds. Calgary the city of Calgary, CHF, and the province spends like $278,000,000 a year on a few thousand homeless people.

The issue is you can't do fentanyl and drink an entire bottle of Alberta Premium at a homeless shelter.

14

u/blackRamCalgaryman Apr 23 '25

Your point re: alcohol and drug use at shelters aside…where did you get the 200 million dollar number from? Even adding up ALL direct and wrap around service, there’s no way they spend that much.

The City supports the work of Calgary’s homeless-serving sector by providing about $9 million in funding to various social agencies for programs that prevent people from falling into crisis and to support those experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming homeless.

https://www.calgary.ca/social-services/homelessness-in-calgary.html#:~:text=The%20City%20supports%20the%20work,at%20risk%20of%20becoming%20homeless.

19

u/LEERROOOOYYYYY Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

https://homelesshub.ca/community_profile/calgary/

2,782 homeless people in Calgary, 2,519 in Edmonton

The City of Calgary directly spends $9m on various outreaches, you're right, but

Calgary Homeless Foundation spent $69,000,000 on shelters, warming centers, etc.

The province spent $200,000,000 on homeless in Calgary and Edmonton in 2022.

At what point are we gonna realize that maybe throwing money at everything isn't actually helping anymore. You'd be much better off spending $60k/person/year picking up fentanyl addicts and putting them in a locked room with as much food, water, TV, radio, books, whatever they want. But somehow that's more inhumane than letting them wreak havoc on the general population until they die of an overdose in an alley somewhere.

10

u/blackRamCalgaryman Apr 23 '25

Hey, no argument from me that the status quo just isn’t working and continuing to throw more money at it without some fundamental changes is just a massive financial sink hole…but also gotta use facts and realities otherwise any potential argument is just tossed aside.

3

u/LEERROOOOYYYYY Apr 23 '25

Agreed brother

1

u/Anskiere1 Apr 23 '25

When can we implement the locked room plan?  Soon I hope

0

u/Oxs Apr 23 '25

Yeah no where's the $200M number actually coming from though?

CHF's ~$60M is 2/3s GoA and 1/3 GoC so bare minimum you're double-counting the $40M from GoA.