A thread I can relate to over at the bowen-island-bc.com forum about homelessness on the island, having first hand experience with it here and elsewhere over the past half dozen years. Since about the turn of the century when I stopped working full time to be exact, but then just six or seven short years ago it was easy enough to find a shared space in the very posh Dunbar neighbourhood of Vancouver in the mid $300’s or so for rent.

Good technical forums usually have moderators that brutally weed out irrelevant content and remarks but social ones as BowenOnline are a sounding board for many, so things can get personal real fast. Which is a good thing and a bad thing, good because (within the limits of the non-lurkers that actually post) there’s a range of views to be had about issues on the island and bad because well… the best way to put it is – things sometimes get “off-topic”.

There’s a start on literature available over at the Bowen Community Housing Association for those that are trying to make a difference, and families making less than 28K/year with child can get some assistance from the provincial government.

2001 and United Parcel Service, out at the Vancouver International Airport working alongside Customs started my path towards what can probably be called opting out of the workforce, and that’s when brother number one suggested getting a business licence too come to think of it. Wasn’t too long after that and I was a Bowen resident, go figure. The chart below tells the story money wise for myself, it’s the gross dollar amount before taxes with an estimate for this year. There’s no one to blame but myself for the low income, there isn’t an entrepreneurial bone in my body and have totally lost any desire to make money if there ever was one. Easy enough to do for someone that wants for little; as the song says, for the rest of it you get what you need. Rental assistance would be a great help if that ever happens, averaged out over the past seven years 30% of my income is a little over two hundred a month.

Total = 60173 / 7years = 8596 per year
30% x 716 per month = 214.80 rent