Save Ellice Street Park
After working for a not-for-profit for seven years and witnessing how much money is eaten up in order to pay ridiculously high salaries and benefits to non-profit management who do nothing more than sit behind a desk for as little as 20 hours a week while spouting off how hard they work to end the vicious cycle of homelessness and poverty, while poverty and homelessness continues to rise every year, I can say that none of these non-profits truly have any intentions of helping end poverty or homelessness, let alone find the root causes becasue they are the root cause. Without poverty and homelessness these non-profits would not exist nor would the $65000+ salaries with benefits the executive collect each year.
One only needs to look at where most of the executive directors of these non-profits reside - Sooke, Shawnigan Lake, etc. Far away from Victoria, the poverty and the homeless. Yet these very people try to dictate to the taxpaying residents of Victoria where and how they will build homeless shelters or safe-injection sites. They expect us to give up our basic rights of safety and security for ourselves and our children while they retreat to the safety and comfort of their $600000 homes in Sooke, Brentwood Bay and Shawnigan Lake.
How much time and money do these executives invest in their non-profit organizations? Do they donate any time or money. I can tell you first hand that the executive director of the non-profit I worked for rarely, if ever, donated any time or personal money. The only time the executive director gave anything was if personal gain was to be made. Poverty and homelessness never played into the picture.
Cool Aid's proposal to build a homeless shelter in Ellice Park is nothing more than a popularity contest to make the executive look good in its own eyes, while bringing the misery from downtown to Ellice Park and destroying another neighborhood in the process. Don't be fooled by the "good neighbour" nonsense that is spouted off. At the end of the day, Cool Aid only wants to justify its existence and the ridiculously high salaries its pays itself at the expense of the taxpaying public and the exploitation of poverty and the homeless.
