It's Time to Come Up With Our Own Solutions (aka the government wants you dead)

What a shock to discover, while scrolling through the news headlines from Victoria yesterday, that Saanich Police (Saanich is one of 14 municipalities in Greater Victoria) were out riding in an RCMP helicopter looking for homeless camps in city parks.
Holy war on the poor, batman! Are you serious? What next, dump agent orange on us, send troops in on the ground to flush us out and bring us to internment camps?
It comes us no surprise really to many of us in Victoria. The mayor, council, police, business community and many others in Victoria are adamant that the city remain clean, dignified and welcoming to tourists and tax-paying residents. They fear the mild weather we enjoy year-round in Victoria attracts homeless people from all over Canada, and they DO NOT want to give the impression that life will be easy for those homeless looking to relocate.
Every city in Canada spends more on policing, social work and health care on homeless people than they would if they were just to provide housing and an income, and in Victoria this cost is probably higher when you factor in things like $400/hour helicopter rides, endless court costs persecuting people for things like dumpster diving, panhandling, sleeping in public, and whatever other charge the police can cook up. We seem to make national news every month with some ground-breaking action taken against homeless people. This no doubt sends a message not only to homeless people, but prospective property owners; Victoria is a 'safe' (read tough on homeless) community. Come live here if you can afford it.
We're kidding ourselves if we think that any of the various levels of government that are currently driving us into poverty are going to suddenly do the right thing and adopt housing first policies for the homeless. We can petition, send letters and emails, form committees and commissions, protest, and try to pressure the fascists in charge until the cows come home. We're still experiencing a growth in poverty and homeless that doesn't seem to be slowing down.
We need to start coming up with solutions that reflect the fact that we, as poor people, are not represented by the government. We are an enemy to them, something to be eradicated, or at least sent elsewhere. They're not going to help us. Forget about it. I hate to be pessimistic, but sometimes you need to face reality.
We need to take responsibility for our own community.
We need to start gathering and organizing and learning how to cope with our issues on our own.
What power do we have as a dispossessed people, and how do we use it to get ourselves out of these horrific situations.
I'm inspired by the tent city programs like Portland's Dignity Village and Olympia's Camp Quixote. In these places, homeless people have collaborated with churches to provide safe, temporary communities where people can set up 'abodes' and protect themselves from the elements as they go about getting their lives back together.
Look at the example of why we need these kinds of places provided in Andrew Mcleod's Tyee article on the Charter Challenge.
"Much has changed for Natalie Adams since the Victoria police dismantled a short-lived tent city a few blocks from the provincial legislature in 2005. She’s off drugs, she has a place to live and a job helping other people get off the streets.
She also has an 18-month-old son, whose very existence she attributes to the city shutting down the tent city that flourished briefly in a city park two and a half years ago.
“When they broke up tent city I was camping out [alone] in Beacon Hill Park,” said Adams, who was known as Karma when she lived on Victoria’s streets. “I ended up having a sexual assault and got pregnant. It wouldn’t have happened if they left the tent city alone.”"
I'm sure this woman's story is not an isolated case. There's safety in numbers on the street, and when society makes every effort to keep us apart, then these kinds of traumatic events are bound to happen.
The powers that be understand that, and perhaps you can take that as even more proof that the mandate is more genocidal than altruistic when it comes to treatment of homeless people.
That's why we've got to come together to solve these issues independently, as if we're all we've got, because in many cases, that's the sad truth.
What are some ideas that some people have to move forward? Let's share them here, including ways that we can network and plan; perhaps suggestions for getting together.