86 August3, 1988 Before you shop this week ‘onsider this: Wolo GUARANTEES you they will meet any local competitor’s advertised prices Wolo offers you DAY-TO-DAY LOW PRICES on hundreds of items Electric Typewriter a. Mode! S € Spellr t. Reg. Price 299.95. NOW 259° Ladies’ Fleece Pants SPECIAL BUY 200 Croquet Set Reg. Price 26.97. NOW O97 Area Rugs Reg. Price 99.00. NOW ) 400 Beach Towels Reg. Price 22.96. NOW 5 96 Woolwo Student Desk Reg. Price 89.00. NOW goo Quaker State Motor Oil Tether Ball Set Reg. Price 20.97. NOW 797 Polyester Pillows for 2° Photo Albums Reg. Price 14.97. NOW O97 Wonderland Wolo backs all of their merchandise with a HASSLE-FREE GUARANTEE Steel Filing Cabinet 79.97. NOW Easy Readers Ladies’ Bullit Jogger LGD Watches ss chool encil Boxes 20 % orF All Bain de Soleil -anning Products WANETA PLAZA Highway 3, Trail Prices effective until July 30, 1988 or while quantities last. ; STORE HOURS: Monday to Saturday 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday 9:30 a.m. HOMELESS Thousands roam New York City Editor's note: Thousands of people are homeless in New York City. They survive in welfare hotels, in railway, bus and subway stations and even on subway cars. By CALVIN WOODWARD Canadian Press NEW YORK — From the noble sweep of Grand Central Station to sweaty subway corridors, New York's teeming points of arrival and departure have also come to symbolize lives not on the move While hundreds of thousands rush to make their connections, others linger unconnected, homeless. “We are the end of the line,” says Stephen Berger, director of the Port Authority bus terminal. “We are the place where figuratively, all the communities have dumped their problems.” Ask experts why there are so many homeless people in such a wealthy city, where unemployment is at an 18-year low, and they point to the shortage of affordable apartments and a 75-per-cent cut in federal support for subsidized housing during the Reagan administration. They speak, too, of the release from mental institutions of thousands of patients over the last 20 years, an action taken in the belief that the community could provide better help for people who may be disturbed but are not a threat to others. Beyond that, there is mainly the unsatisfying answer that people “fall between the cracks.” Through cracks go single mothers and children living in welfare hotels, men and women cast aside by their families, evicted, burned out, or down on their luck for a myriad of reasons. The stereotypes exist too — drifters, drug addicts, drunks and people who plainly act crazy. Experts believe a quarter to a third of the city's- homeless population is mentally ill Most are unskilled in jobs and, some of their advocates contend, unskilled in life. “We have to teach these people how to buy groceries rather than to eat every day at McDonald's,” says one social worker who helps families at the welfare hotels. BUILD HOUSING In what experts say is the most significant housing initiative in the United States, even on a proportional basis, New York City is starting a $4.2-billion US, 10-year program to triple the annual production of government-assisted housing for poor and moderate- income families. The city, with a population of over seven milion, has 2.7 million apartments and houses, some 231,000 fewer than a study says are necessary. About 3,500 families live in welfare hotels, despised by everyone except the landlords| who collect an average of $1,800 a month from government to house a family of four in near squalor. On an average cold or wet night, 10,000 other people stay in barrack-like city shelters, many of which, an internal report found, are “unfit both for . residents and staff.” That's why many of the homeless end up at the sprawling Port Authority bus terminal on West 42nd Street, at Grand Central and Penn stations, and at subway stations through the city. August 3, 1968" cl D Kootenay Savings oYMPoeo i — i —} paren | UNSELLOR... Some constantly ride the subway trains, panhand. ling during the day and trying to sleep at night. Some of the panhandlers go from car to car announcing their plight, sometimes with brazeness common among New Yorkers from all walks of life. “This is an express train,” one homeless man r i 's in a crisp, b like tone.“So if you want to give, please have your change ready as I come through.” Another sings with a beautiful voice. Along a urine-drenched hallway between the Penn Station train terminal and the Seventh Avenue subway, a few men regularly lurk in the path of commuters, seeking to collect change through intimidation. Most common in public terminals, however, is the sight of dark figures huddled under ratty blankets or cardboard, lacking the will or the wish to threaten anyone. “The image to the whole world is horrendous,” says Berger, a former state welfare director who, as head of the Port Authority, still spends 10 per cent of his time on problems related to the homeless. CAN'T BE FORCED The subway police force has a homeless unit which offers people rides to shelters each night — but only half accept. Under a bewildering array of rules, people can't be forced to accept help and, in freezing temperatures, can't be ordered to leave any “heat source,” such as a station As well, the New York State Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the loitering laws that prohibited people from sleeping in public terminals. Mayor Ed Koch's campaign to round up mentally ill people living on the streets hit an immediate hitch in the celebrated case of Joyce Brown, who won the right in court not to be confined to hospital against her will. Because of the legal tangle, an unofficial truce has been declared at public places such as those run by the Port Authority. Editor's note: The most desperate of New York City’s homeless are those who survive in the tunnels of the subway system. Some are only seen when they die. By CALVIN WOODWARD Canadian Press NEW YORK — The tunnel dwellers of New York City live in a dank world of rats, shrieking metal and shadows. : It's a world illuminated, if at all, by dusty bare lightbulbs or the purple flash of sparks from a passing subway train. Many sleep only a few careless steps from a killing jolt of electricity or the crushing sweep of a train. Sometimes, in an act of carelessness or madness, they take those steps. “Rarely a day goes by that I don't see a terrible report from the police of a man standing in front of a train or something like that,” said Al O'Leary, spokesman for the Transit Authority police force. Most subway tunnels seen by commuters are just wide enough for the trains. But there are alcoves in the walls and triangular spaces in areas where two sets of tracks join at an angle. Those alcoves and spaces are havens for the tunnel dewellers, who are among the most desperate of the homeless people that call the New York transit system home. Others sleep on trains — their nights a constant journey between points A and B unless the police Tunnel dwellers most desperate kick them out — or in the stations. “Two weeks ago, we had a guy on the top of & train, hanging from pipes and swinging,” O'Leary said. On one of the coldest nights in January, transit police counted roughly 1,500 people huddled in the stations, trains, stairwells and nooks and crannies of the subway system. Their numbers decline, but not substantially, in warmer weather. That's because most trains have become air conditioned in recent years and stations are regarded as safer than many of the shelters financed by the city as part of its guarantee that all who seek a roof over their heads for the night will get it. But if there's a certain sad logic to camping out on cardboard on a subway station floor, officials don't comprehend the demons that drive many of the tunne] dwellers into the labyrinth. “They set up like squatters,” O'Leary said “They bring in all their worldly goods and maybe a mattress.” “We deal with them only when they choose to come out,” added John Turcott of the Partnership for the Homeless, a group that provides shelter for 1,000 or more people a night. Many of the tunnel dwellers are thought to be mentally ill and probably no longer taking the medication that enabled institutions to release them. For various reasons, Turcott said, “these people want to hide.” Police often don’t discover them because many of the enclaves are obscured. When tunnel dwellers are spotted, police make efforts to get them out. But police are reluctant to chase them for fear of driving them on to the 600-volt live rail, which is exposed on one side, or in front of a train. Even so, some die on the tracks, like deer transfixed by headlights. DEATHS LISTED Last year the subway recorded 157 deaths on a system that carries 3.7 million people each weekday on 500 kilometres of lines. There were 20 known suicides, 46 drug overdoses, 14 people hit by trains under unknown circumstances, seven murders and 70 deaths — mainly among commuters — from natural causes such as heart attacks. On one tunnel raid, transit police Lieut. John Carlo came across two double beds, army blankets and two freshly changed pet cages in which the owner kept a bird and a rabbit. Authorities frequently find out about an under. round colony or loner only when someone dies, or starts a fire that shuts down a subway line Belongings, but no people, were discovered during a recent tunnel raid near the Grand Street station in lower Manhattan, said Sgt. John Greco, an officer in the transit police force's “homeless unit.” Lower Manhattan’s catacombs are popular because they are near shelters where people can surface to get free food. But food is about all that will bring them back into contact with the rest of humanity, officials said. Once fortified, they return to the labyrinth Nemetz recalls days on bench Retiring justice tough on crimes of violence VANCOUVER (CP) — The suspected arsonist clasped his hands together and dropped to his knees in prayer. “Oh God,” he said. “If you'll only forgive me and let me go this time, I'll never do it again.” Unfortunately for the repentant firebug, his jail-cell plea was captured by a microphone and closed-circuit television camera. The man was convicted then later lost an appeal on the admissibility of the confession, despite the support of Chief Justice Nathan Nemetz of the B.C. Court of Appeal. Nemetz believed the prayer was a private ication and that a warrant was needed to intercept it. “My colleagues didn't agree with me,” the -judge says now, smiling broadly as he suddenly remembers an epilogue to the story. “But I did get a phone call from one southern Baptist radio station that heard about it and phoned me early in the morning to congratulate me 6n my decision.” Nathan (Sonny) Nemetz retires this year after 2b years as a trial and appeal court jurist. Known as a staunch defender of civil liberties, Nemetz meted out justice with a human, common-man's approach. “I think that I am a pragmatic liberal on most ” the soft-spoken jadge said while sipping tea and nibbling cookies during an afternoon interview in his office. He says his approach is a product of his Jewish heritage and the influence of his mother and of Bel, his wife of 54 years. “I think John Sopinka (the new Supreme Court of Canada justice) was right, that you can’t really in this day and age expect a judge to halve himself off from society. It's a lonely job in many respects .. . but I do think that finding out the views of various societies and institutions is very useful.” Nemetz will step down from the bench Sept. 8 when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75. He vigorously applauded the retirement rule when it was introduced in 1960 for judges across the country, but he now jokes “I've been having some doubts.” GOT TOUGHER While his commitment to fairness is well known, there is a tough-nut side to the diminutive judge with the horn-rimmed glasses and prominent nose. Under Nemetz's direction, the B.C. Court of Appeal began in the early 1980s to impose tougher sentences, stressing deterrence in dealing with the likes of rapists and armed robbers. “Yes, I'm tough on crimes of violence,” the judge says. Is the crackdown working? “One's never sure about those things. It’s not only punishment that changes society. And I'm not that sanguine a person to believe that that will necessarily (bring about change). “My only suggestion . . . is that the longer you can keep people who have committed serious crimes of violence away from the community, the community will be safer for that period of time.” Born in Winnipeg in 1913, Nemetz moved to Vancouver at age 10 and later graduated with honors with the University of British Columbia with a degree in history. CAMPUS REPORTER Nemetz talks fondly of his university days, especially those spent working on the campus newspaper. It is a background that has spilled over to his legal career, as demonstrated by his strong backing of the freedom of the press and his willingness to open his office to journalists to discuss judgments. Two of his best-known decisions involved journal ism. In 1977 he quashed search warrants obtained by combines investigators to search the newsrooms of Vancouver's two daily newspapers. Three years later, he overturned a $3,500 libel judgment that Bill Vander Zalm, then human resources minister, had won against a Victoria cartoonist. Nemetz enrolled in the old Vancouver Law School after finding few decent job prospects after university, and he was called to the bar in 1937. He quickly turned his attention to labor law, earning a reputation as a shrewd negotiator and brilliant mediator. In retirement he will continue to use these talents through his affiliation with a UBC-sponsored centre for alternate forms of dispute resolution. His first task will be to act as chairman of a three-member arbitration panel that will decide whether Japanese steel mills should get price cuts on coal bought from northeastern British Columbia. Nemetz's judicial career has been a progression of five-year jumps. He was appointed to the B.C. Supreme Court in 1963, moved to the Court of Appeal in 1968, back to the Supreme Court five years later as chief justice and on to his present position five years after that. A compulsive administrator as well as an avid reader of historical biographies, Nemetz found time to serve a three-year term (1972-75) as UBC chancellor, fulfilling “a great debt I owed to the university.” He counts among his judicial achievements the procedural reforms he brought to the Court of Appeal, changes that helped greatly to increase efficiency “We now dispose of more than 1,000 appeals a year. When I came here it was about 400.” He also worked tirelessly for judges’ rights, serving on several national judicial committees. KNOWS EVERYBODY In the 1986 book Judges, famed Toronto lawyer John Robinette is quoted as describing Nemetz as a man who “likes to keep things moving.” “He's speedy but very controlled . . . and he knows everybody a chairman should know and then a few more,” Robinette said. “That makes him such a good problem-solver.” The most enduring monument to the Nemetz era may be the modern Vancouver Law Courts building, a long, low structure of glass and concrete that opened in 1979 and covers nearly a full city block. Nemetz spent almost two decades as chairman of the committee set up to plan and oversee building of the new court house, and he had to use all his mediator skills to cajole skeptical judges and politicians. “It was 19 years on that committee,” says Nemetz, looking out to the small patio off his sixth-floor office. “It was a long time, but worth it.”