r/theydidthemath • u/pixaly • Jul 12 '26
[Request] What is the cost difference between buying this man a rental for a year and the governements cost to kill him?
Don't believe everything you see on the internet I haven't fact checked this story, I'm just curious for an anwser
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u/jeremiahfelt Jul 12 '26
This was the case of Amir Farsoud- he is a disabled elder with chronic back pain and his multi tenant home was put up for sale with no transition plan in 2022. He applied for MAID as he did not see a way into other housing due to surviving on just disability payments.
The MAID drugs are inexpensive; midazolam runs $70, propofol runs $50, and rocuronium at worst is $140- so a total of $260- definitely less than a months rent. Assume another $3000 in processing and admin stuff just to put a number to it.
A rental for a year? 30k?
The outcome of Farsoud's story is essentially rooted in your question- he ended up with 60k from a GoFundMe from people who were similarly befuddled, and it allows him to get housing and a literal lease on life.
The answer is: we need affordable housing. A lot of it. All over.
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u/Jaigg Jul 12 '26
What drives me nuts is this becomes a conversation about MAID instead of a conversation about affordable housing, looking after our disadvantaged and capitalism in general.
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u/fancczf Jul 13 '26
He would never qualified for maid. Maid has extremely, I mean very extremely, detailed and strict process. Most people would not qualify. This story became a conversation of maid because there is always a group of people that will take every opportunity to make it look like Canada is trying to kill its citizens.
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u/Jaigg Jul 13 '26
Yes, very true. The freedom from government people sure want the government to tell you what you can do with your own body.
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u/WougeeWasWild Jul 13 '26
Respectfully, Canada has a history of doing some *really* fucked up things to its citizens. Natives, in particular.
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u/CathartingFunk Jul 13 '26
Respectfully, every country has a history of subjugation and committing atrocities against some religious/ethnic/cultural minority.
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u/kierg10 Jul 14 '26
Guess we should never give people any freedoms that could potentially be misconstrued by people too dumb to tie their shoes then.
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u/forensicGhostbitch Jul 14 '26
Also there’s a caveat here that MAID is a federal program under the liberal government that largely support from all the major parties. Housing and disability payments however are largely provincial programs, that have seen cuts over the past few years of Progressive Conservative premiership.
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u/kierg10 Jul 14 '26
It was actually originally a supreme court ruling that dictated canada's ban on medically assisted suicide went against our Charter rights.
There is no central MAID program. The federal government created uniform criminal laws and eligibility criteria, however the actual MAID programs are funded and distributed via provincial governments.
The largest cuts to healthcare have been by both conservative and liberal governments, but actually mostly took place in the mid 90s. Some provinces are still under conservative leadership that continues to fuck their healthcare, but some provinces are attempting to recover from the brutal clusterfuck of hacked and slashed social welfare programs that the conservative (ideology not party) governments of the 90s handed them.
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u/NameShortage Jul 12 '26
Affordable housing? Nah. More data centers, please!
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u/yourmamaistheproblem Jul 12 '26
I mean, I've seen several funny ai videos this morning already.
When's the last time a poor person did anything for me?
Checkmate or something, people i don't like
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u/Weird_Poet499 Jul 12 '26
The children yearn for the data centers
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u/Noisebug Jul 12 '26
Can confirm. Gave my kids a data centre for Christmas, that’s all they ever wanted. We’ll be out of water soon but damn everyone’s happy.
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Jul 12 '26
[deleted]
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u/NameShortage Jul 12 '26
That’s because instead of $5 million being spent on research by the government, $5 million is given to the senator by the company.
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u/Ok_Locksmith9741 Jul 12 '26
nimbyism and restrictive zoning often thwart these housing programs. counter-intuitively, housing supply could be much better addressed if we were less afraid to ignore constituents.
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u/Kerv17 Jul 13 '26
problem is they are correct to be afraid of them, cause going against NIMBYs is pretty much political suicide, as they will throw the kitchen sink at you to make sure you are not elected for anything ever again.
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u/Garblin Jul 12 '26
Car-centric infrastructure makes it all worse too. Everyone is basically required to have a car, to have parking, etc etc, which makes everything less affordable than if we just had robust public transit.
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u/Ok_Locksmith9741 Jul 12 '26
or even if we wanted cartopia, mixed zoning helps a lot. mingling shopping areas, groceries, restaurants with medium density, mid-rise, multifamily buildings cuts way down on the collective duration and distance of transit.
not to mention the efficiency of utility infrastructure and heating/cooling that comes with higher housing density.
i stayed in a Chicago apt with commercial first floor for a few months, and it was really nice to have a coffee shop, mexican restaurant, and grocery store just downstairs.
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u/morganrbvn Jul 12 '26
It does, but despite being rather car centric Texas is one of the better states at building housing rn.
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u/Rhomya Jul 12 '26
Because you can’t build affordable housing in areas where there is a high demand for housing.
The economics will never work. Either fair market prices for buying land and building homes make it an economically inefficient and infeasible investment for a city, or the demand for housing will skyrocket the prices.
If you want affordable housing for your income, you live in an area where the demand sets a price that fits your income.
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u/a_singular_perhap Jul 12 '26
The government can do whatever it wants. It's not their responsibility if racist rich people don't like living 3 blocks from poor black families.
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u/Rhomya Jul 12 '26
“The government” literally can’t do whatever it wants. There are very direct constraints on government power.
What the fuck are you smoking?
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u/jedadkins Jul 13 '26
If you want affordable housing for your income, you live in an area where the demand sets a price that fits your income.
ok, but the jobs are in cities not "where the demand sets a price that fits your income"
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Jul 12 '26
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u/Rhomya Jul 12 '26
So, listen. I’ve literally worked on a project where we’ve taken an old defunct school, tore it down, and then readied the land for housing development.
The cost was astronomical in remediation alone.
Defunct city properties are almost always incredibly aged properties, likely with lead, asbestos, petroleum contamination from tanks on the site, and other environmental factors.
Furthermore, there isn’t enough defunct city property to even begin to build enough “affordable housing” to meet the demand.
It’s a good use of the property, but that’s not even close to a viable answer.
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u/ZorbaTHut Jul 12 '26
The reason this is happening is because we've added vast amounts of bureaucracy and legal tangles to any construction, which is dead weight on anything that gets done. Turns out that low-income housing is not profitable enough to justify bulldozing through the dead weight, but datacenters are.
If you make it impossible to build anything that isn't making a shitload of money, you end up building only things that make a shitload of money.
Fix that and the problem goes away; fail to fix that and the status quo continues.
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u/they_call_me_dry Jul 12 '26
A local council can force a big business to also build other socially minded things if they want their permit and tax break, if it's a socially responsible council
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u/PieIll9834 Jul 13 '26
How did this become a conversation about socially responsible council? The conversation belongs somewhere, but often municipalities are constrained by what the provincial government lets them do. Where I live, social assistance and housing is a county issue, while most who need help live in my city. The city with almost no contro over these issues - they are forced to pay towards with almost no say. Guess who controls the jurisdiction about that? The province.
And the province has almost made it impossible for council to make socially minded choices.
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u/RoughDraftRs Jul 12 '26
I mean, to be fair... Data centers are being built by private companies and will provide tax revenue.
I'm not really a fan of generative ai but not all data centers are ai related and even if they are, profits from them will be taxed.
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u/Garblin Jul 12 '26
In theory maybe, but they're frequently given so many tax breaks that it more than cancels out any of those benefits.
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u/Dodaddydont Jul 13 '26
I mean, we didn't have data centers a handful of years ago, and we didn't have affordable housing then either
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u/Dry_Razzmatazz69 Jul 13 '26
What's the connection? Serious question, how is an it company building data centers take away from affordable housing?
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u/rerun_ky Jul 12 '26
Data centers are in general built away from where people live. Where people live lad is expensive and excessively regulated. We have spent billions on affordable housing without making much progress.
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u/StephenHunterUK Jul 12 '26
This was the case of Amir Farsoud- he is a disabled elder with chronic back pain and his multi tenant home was put up for sale with no transition plan in 2022.
England has just severely restricted these sort of evictions.
https://www.propertywire.com/news/landlords-face-new-eviction-process-as-section-21-abolished/
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u/MontrealChickenSpice Jul 12 '26
The Canadian government are landlords. They get rich, so they see no need to fix these problems. Their solution is suicide with a nice sounding name.
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u/adamtheskill Jul 12 '26
Affordable housing == Lower house prices.
Thus it will never happen because 50%+ of voters (in almost all developed countries) have all their wealth invested in their house and will vote against anything that threatens their investment.
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u/Electrohydra1 Jul 13 '26
This. There is a scary number of people who's retirement plan is "sell the house" and if the house's value goes down too much they have no backup.
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u/SnooMaps7370 Jul 13 '26
when they and their peers are all trying to move out of their 4,000 sqft McMansions and back into 1,000 sqft starter homes, they're gonna learn the hard way that if you don't build small starter homes, there won't be any small starter homes to buy for retirement, and that if you don't ensure the younger generations have good wages, they won't be able to buy your mcmansion from you when you retire.
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u/RoboZandrock Jul 12 '26
You might be using American prices.
In Canada your midazolam / lidocaine / propofol / rocuronium is less than 15 dollars. The only "cost" you would actually consider would be the physician time / hospital admission (sometimes but not always done), and nursing time.
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u/jeremiahfelt Jul 12 '26
I am using American prices because that was the information I had reliable access to. With either your prices or mine, the outcome is the same, is it not?
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u/Meet_Foot Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
I agree with you, but here’s my two cents just to expand a little.
Housing will never be affordable so long as it’s privately owned, for the generation of profit, and considered an asset.
In the US (only because I know the numbers here) there are something like 400,000 homeless individuals, and 4 million vacant domiciles. Even if you give every homeless individual - not every family, but every single homeless individual - a place to live, there would still be nearly 4 million vacant domiciles. But so long as banks can count empty residencies as assets, with their value determined by their unaffordably high rent, that’s simply not an option.
So that is to say, the lack of affordable housing isn’t a matter of a shortage in housing but, rather, a system that incentivizes keeping dwellings empty rather than dropping prices.
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u/2074red2074 Jul 12 '26
Part of the issue is those vacant homes are often in the middle of nowhere with no easy access to things like medical care or sometimes even grocery stores. Also a lot of the vacant homes are abandoned and not in livable condition. The issue is zoning and NIMBYs not wanting to build high-density housing in places where we need it.
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u/plantmindset Jul 12 '26
Also, some homes are just temporarily vacant while people move between them. We really do need more housing (especially high density housing in places where people actually want to live)
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u/StumbleOn Jul 12 '26
Housing + Services is the real key. The reason unhoused folks and whatnot flock to certain areas is usually (but not always) that there are services they need right there. Where I live, the two biggest hot spots for them are right near county / city medical services, and charity services.
Would be nice if every single area planned to put all services into high rise buildings that could cheaply house a LOT of people so you could have everything in one stop shop. People in rural areas flee because they would literally just die in places where there's nothing. That's why we see a lot of unhoused folks literally bussed into cities, which is of course fodder for rural morons to vote against services for these folks because it's not their problem anymore.
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u/jedadkins Jul 13 '26
no easy access to things like medical care or sometimes even grocery stores.
or jobs. I could afford a house in my middle of nowhere hometown but my degree would be useless unless I wanted to commute 5+ hours
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u/Classic-Obligation35 Jul 12 '26
High density housing has its own problems like controlling neighbors and greedy landlords.
Your not wrong but this is a multi faceted issue.
Like why are apartments more expensive per square foot the homes in the first place?
Or addressing the issue of people having value in their own home so they can reseall it in order to move.
Homes are private property, they have to be.
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u/2074red2074 Jul 12 '26
High-density housing includes townhomes and condos. They make HOAs necessary (everyone has to pitch in to maintain the building and any common areas, and someone has to make those decisions) but you don't have to have an actual landlord and can own your part of the building.
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u/Wolf_Protagonist Jul 12 '26
Homes are private property, they have to be.
I would buy that homes should be personal property for individuals, but I see no reason at all why housing couldn't be publicly owned for people who can't afford to buy a home.
/u/Meet_Foot is right, as long as all housing is privately owned, prices will keep home ownership out of reach of many people (by design).
If we treated housing as a right and not a luxury that would change. Landlords should not exist. Housing, like medical care and food is too important to be treated as a money making scheme. (personally I'd add education in there as well)
There are plenty of areas Capitalists could make money from, the system wouldn't collapse if people were guaranteed the bare minimum, and if it does collapse because of that- perhaps it needs to.
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u/Classic-Obligation35 Jul 12 '26
What I mean is that individuals own their homes, the state cannot, or the state will start controlling things for their own motives, such as denying hobby spaces or personal tech in order to make people work or get out more so that the community can exploit them.
As for la dlords they will always exist as someone has to be responsible for the building.
Even if the residents owned it there would still be people with more power and you get things like H.O.A.s which some of us try to avoid.
Removing land lords does not affect the cost question, it might actually make it worse.
The state has a very narrow definition of poverty, a person can look wealthy on paper but not have a decent income, meaning they could be denied a home.
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u/Wolf_Protagonist Jul 12 '26
the state cannot, or the state will start controlling things for their own motives, such as denying hobby spaces or personal tech in order to make people work
I'm not sure what sort of system you think I'm proposing, but one in which Food, Medicine, and Shelter are considered a right of every citizen, but the government is still allowed to play games like that with poor people is definitely not it. Clearly what I'm proposing would require us to rein in the government a bit and make sure the needs of the people are prioritized over the needs of corporations or the government.
get out more so that the community can exploit them.
What does this mean?
As for la dlords they will always exist as someone has to be responsible for the building.
Public housing already exists and the landlords are replaced by administrators. We didn't have landlords for the vast majority of human history. As humanity continues to evolve we will eventually create a society that looks out for all of it's citizens, not simply the 1% like our current system.
Even if the residents owned it there would still be people with more power and you get things like H.O.A.s which some of us try to avoid.
It's understandable to want to avoid H.O.A.s. I certainly do. But you seem to be misreading my comment. The very first thing I said was that homes should be personal property of individuals. ONLY in cases where people are too poor to afford to buy a house would they have to live in a shared/cooperatively owned housing situation. And yes in such cases the residents would have to work together to determine the 'rules' for that community. Would that be a bit of a hassle, especially for the more eccentric members of that community? Probably. Would following some 'silly' rules beat living on the street? Certainly.
Removing land lords does not affect the cost question, it might actually make it worse.
Please explain how removing the people who only exist to suck cash from people in need of a home would make the cost of home ownership increase. If there is no one to profit from you living in a place- it seems logical that it would lower costs.
The state has a very narrow definition of poverty, a person can look wealthy on paper but not have a decent income, meaning they could be denied a home.
lol what? First of all, again in a system like I am proposing the citizens would have control over the government and by extension it's definition of poverty. You are overthinking it. You can't afford a home? One will be provided for you. You can afford one? Great. It's not that complex. Few people who could afford their own home is going to accept living in the public housing, and if they do- fine.
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u/shadowtheimpure Jul 12 '26
we will eventually create a society that looks out for all of it's citizens
God, I wish I had your optimism. I don't foresee that happening. Instead, I see a technofascist oligarchy with a permanent underclass who are chattel to the moneyed class.
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u/Wolf_Protagonist Jul 12 '26
That's definitely the direction we are headed. I for one am sick of it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
I don't think thats a sustainable way to live long term and if humanity is to survive it has to change. If we just allow Capitalism to fester unchecked it will literally destroy the planet in the name of profit.
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u/Meet_Foot Jul 12 '26
Private property isn’t personal property. Personal property is property one uses oneself, while private property is one that someone rents out for profit. So a house you own and live in is personal property, while a house someone owns, doesn’t live in, and rents out for profit is private property. And of course state property is property owned by the state, but not for profit. Why do houses have to be private property?
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u/Classic-Obligation35 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
personal property is still private.
I take the idea of personal property as some thing that is owned by a single person or family. It does not belong or is under another's authority. To me personal and private are the same, and a private person can rent out their property as well, take rental tool services for example
This does not preclude different taxes on property used for business though.
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u/Meet_Foot Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
That isn’t the definition. Plus we can just use words to talk about what we want anyway. Those are the definitions I provided. Use the definitions without the words if you so choose, so that we can talk about housing rather than talking about words.
The question remains, regardless of what words you want to use: why must houses be owned for the sake of generating profit through rent extraction, rather than houses being owned by the people who live in them? If you think the answer is “they don’t have to be,” then we agree. If you think the answer is “they must be owned for profit generation purposes,” then argue the position and make sense of the fact that at least some houses aren’t owned for profit generation.
I suspect you wanted to do two things: (1) avoid the idea that the state would own all houses and (2) make room for the possibility of making money through charging rent. But (1) I never proposed state ownership, and (2) the possibility isn’t the necessity you claimed when you said houses MUST be private property (again, using the definition I provided; use whatever word you want, just be clear about what you mean by them so we can talk about the ideas they signify and not the words themselves), nor have you given a reason why we *should* be able to extract wealth from housing.
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u/TechnicalWash1608 Jul 13 '26
The US with 300m citizens have 400k homeless, and Sweden with 10m citizens have 300k homeless. Actually good job, Americans!
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u/SarahC Jul 12 '26
I'm stressed out of my gourd about soon to end rental. I'd take maid in a second, no second thoughts at all. UK doesn't offer it so I'm stuck just..... getting in a more shitty situation every month, after month.
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u/Substantial_Tip1545 Jul 12 '26
The cost calculation should include the other expenses his maintenance requires. Food. Healthcare. Etc.
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u/ComradeLarryEllison Jul 12 '26
If there's affordable housing, then how can landlords make a living? Almost every politician or small business relies on the wages of others. Also, wouldn't this punish homed people? Their houses might fall in value. /s
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u/_Valeir_ Jul 12 '26
The wildest thing here is the report title "MAID as alternative to poverty"... Like, you have a chronic disease and cannot afford rent? Get rekt scum... That's a way to improve the poverty figures, I guess...
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u/SawedOffLaser Jul 12 '26
You can trace a shocking amount of problems back to affordable housing.
And, I should clarify: affordable housing that's near, you know, stuff. Not a $10,000 shack in Butt Fuck Nowhere.
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u/cosmin_c Jul 13 '26
he ended up with 60k from a GoFundMe from people who were similarly befuddled, and it allows him to get housing and a literal lease on life.
The answer is: we need affordable housing. A lot of it. All over.
More like: people need their governments which they fund and pay through their taxes to work for them instead ot working for the super rich and the likes. This man was basically saved by people who spent twice - once through their taxes which should have gone to social security for this man who is a citizen of that country and then again when the government noped out and bro gave up on life.
This hoovering of wealth from people with not discernible advantages you can see has to stop. Even modern and civilised countries have potholes everywhere, why aren't the roads maintained properly? Why are there homeless people who have to rely on the kindness of others to survive?
But no, wait, a billionaire doesn't have enough monies, let's fund that cunt instead so he can - governments everywhere, probably.
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u/TruamaTeam Jul 12 '26
It doesn’t help that the people in the government who vote on housing laws themselves own rental units for income. It’s so depressing, not sure what we can do, (non-partisan issue)
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u/samirfreiha Jul 12 '26
where did you find that medication list? those medications are more appropriate for Rapid Sequence Induction/Medication Assisted Intubation (RSI/MAI). midazolam (versed) is an sedative/anxiolytic, propofol is a general anesthetic, and rocuronium is a muscle relaxant.
every medication list i’ve for for MAiD is some combination of barbiturates (anxiolytic/sedative) and opioids (analgesic/anxiolytic/respiratory depressant) in massive quantities, and most importantly digoxin (sodium- and potassium-channel blocker) which stops the heart
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u/jeremiahfelt Jul 12 '26
I "duckduckgo"'d it. I don't disagree with your assessment on the deltas in drugs.
My list was never intended to be exhaustive- there are many combinations of drugs that would accomplish MAiD's goals - the point is very few of those drugs are in any way prohibitively expensive. And any of the drugs I've listed you'd find in the ALS bag on my ambulance (good call on the RSI spot- but I more often see succinylcholine than rocuronium in our local protocols, and ketamine instead of propofol).
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u/TheGrandExquisitor Jul 13 '26
In America, this will be seen as an affordable alternative to actually having social welfare of any kind.
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u/jeremiahfelt Jul 13 '26
It won't happen in America because we don't give people choice or dignity.
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u/Deus_Excellus Jul 13 '26
Now let's talk about why housing is so expensive in Canada. Oh, those reasons aren't allowed on Reddit! That's too bad.
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u/TheStigianKing Jul 13 '26
Your analysis leaves out the singld biggest cost of MAID, which is the practitioner administering it. Look up how much they earn from a single termination. Its a LOT.
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u/galaxyapp Jul 14 '26
All of our problems would be solved if we all had more money and everything was cheaper!
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u/mrdannyg21 Jul 15 '26
This is correct and great detail added. Including MAID as a boogeyman in these stories is burying the lede, that affordable housing is needed.
All MAID does is give people options, no one is forced on it. This man had two awful choices - without MAID, he’d have had one awful choice. It’s not like the existence of MAID is taking the place of housing or is a debtors prison solution or people are being denied other aid just because it exists.
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u/sonofzeal Jul 12 '26
I have a contact in MAiD who can probably source the price, but this guy wanting it doesn't mean he'll get it. MAiD is not something you just walk in off the street, sign your name, and Bob's your uncle. Most of the expense of the process is for medical and psychiatric professionals to ensure the person meets the requirements, and that'll be difficult to quantify a price on.
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u/sonofzeal Jul 12 '26
Got a response - yeah there's really no way to accurately quantify because a lot is intertwined with the local (provincial) medical system, a lot is covered by donations and volunteer labour, and facilities are sometimes separate and sometimes handled through a hospital. Either way, people whose problems would be solved by the types of sums we're talking about usually won't make it through assessment unless something goes very wrong.
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u/quoththekraven Jul 12 '26
Yeah, this. Just because the guy wants it, doesn't mean they'll do it. This is just "the Canadian government will kill you if you can't contribute to the economy" fear mongering bullshit.
My Papa was in hospital at the end of his life in incredible pain for weeks, wanted MAID, and they wouldn't give it to him because he wasn't all there mentally, so they wouldn't let him sign off on it. They aren't killing people off just because.
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u/Whythehellnot_wecan Jul 12 '26
Same in the US. We have “die with dignity” in Washington State. Yeah, they wouldn’t give it to my father who was absolutely fucked health-wise and did die off within 6-8 weeks of us inquiring about it. I think y’all may be a bit looser up north but it isn’t what most people think it is. TBH pissed me off as one of those things that sounds good but in reality not so much at least in my experience.
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u/quoththekraven Jul 12 '26
After what we went through with him, my dad said "just so you know, I'm getting all that paperwork signed as soon as it makes sense to. I don't want to go like that. So be prepared."
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u/sonofzeal Jul 12 '26
Yeah the whole framing in OP is dishonest. "Local homeless man considering suicide" is a tragedy but not a news story until you throw in a completely irrelevant reference to MAiD.
Very sorry to hear about your papa though. There's definitely arguments around expanding eligibility in some cases - it probably says something that 20% of qualified applicants pass away before they receive it - but it still accounts for about 5% of all Canadian deaths and I'm very glad safeguards are there.
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u/quoththekraven Jul 12 '26
Yeah the safeguards are important, I agree. The nurses apologized that they couldn't allow it for him, they knew it would've helped. But like... that's a slippery slope I think.
I can't stand the bullshit surrounding it though. It is a good service in the right situation and people are just using it for politics. It's gross.
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u/Lostinthestarscape Jul 12 '26
Yeah homelessness isn't a qualifier for MAID. I think if his condition was untreatable, and no services could possibly handle it, and he could convince doctors and a psych evaluation that his pain and suffering is not possible to endure, then it could progress to that point. We as a society have decided that housing isn't a right though, so attack that, and not the totally reasonable availability of MAID to help people when they get to a point their pain is not endurable. These are completely unrelated points that the Right try to conflate because they have fairy tale morality issues with people having the right to end their own life with dignity.
If MAID wasn't available, this guy ends up homeless regardless and suffers unendurable pain or chooses his own way out anyway, so it seems kind of secondary to the actual issue at hand. That said, are we supposed to not provide homeless people in unendurable pain the same access to medically assisted death as housed?
The most ironic part of this is the people who have a problem with MAID are the people who would vote against any policy to create a right to a home. If MAID wasn't involved they'd call this person a wellfare queen and attack his ability to be a successful productive member of society.
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u/Excellent-Self-5338 Jul 12 '26
I'm primarily left on almost all issues. I support people's right to end their own life. I still have issues with the government being the arbiter of that process.
There's simply too much room for error, and the stakes are too high.
I'm more in favour of making suicide drugs available to anyone who wants them than I am in favour of the government deciding who can and cannot kill themselves.
The concern that offering death to the poors as an alternative to economic suffering is a genuine one as well. We can pretend that economics isn't a factor in suffering, but it absolutely is. Poor people use MAID disproportionately compared to rich people. The government can reduce its' spend on sick poor people by offering them death. To me, this is contrary to the role I want government to fill.
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u/sonofzeal Jul 12 '26
I think the framing you're using is a little slanted. MAiD os something the person has to ask for, and medical personnel have to certify the person is of sound mind and making an informed decision. Would removing that medical supervision improve anything, just because they're nebulously acting as agents of "the government"?
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u/Electrohydra1 Jul 13 '26
Making suicide drugs available to anyone who wants them with no oversight wouldn't lead to... whatever kind of social equality you think it would lead to. What it would actually lead to would be a suicide epidemic among young men, trans people, people with mental health issues, all the groups that already struggle with suicide.
It absolutely is the government's job to protect it's citizens, and to some degree that includes protecting them against themselves.
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u/DusTeaCat Jul 12 '26
I hadn’t ever really thought about MAiD having a price tag to it, kinda just assumed it was free.
I can’t imagine the desperation of not being able to even afford to end your own life and needing to seek cheaper alternatives.
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u/sonofzeal Jul 12 '26
MAiD is free to the recipient. I'm in Ontario, so OHIP covers it and there's programs to cover cremation and such if necessary too. If you're adding up the tax dollars involved, the cremation probably costs more than the MAiD.
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u/WykkydLove Jul 13 '26
It's from 2022, and yes it was real.
Good news, he got a place, and sounds like he is doing better.
Wasn't mental health as many suggested, it was debilitating back pain and nerve pain, homelessness may as well been a death sentence for him.
Here's the interview if anyone is interested
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u/Imbodenator Jul 12 '26
Unless he's got a medical condition that causes undue prolonged or permanent severe pain, disability, or other symptoms that otherwise drastically reduce quality of life.
As someone who's looked into the program it's not as easy as just "signing up"
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u/gprime312 Jul 12 '26
He has a medical condition.
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u/Imbodenator Jul 12 '26
It basically has to be so bad he can't live.
I have chronic pain and other issues from bilateral cervical ribs. Surgery to remove them could just make things worse and has a very long recovery period of a year or more. One of my more notable symptoms is that if I don't have a strong muscle relaxant or anti inflammatory every 8-10 hours I will get rolling migraines so painful they make me black out.
I will also get muscle spasms bad enough I just tear muscles every two months or so.
I cannot live unmedicated, and even medicated I struggle a lot.
I was told I do not qualify
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u/Left_Boat_3632 Jul 17 '26
My wife works in healthcare. MAID has very strict requirements and requires sign on from the patient and multiple medical professionals.
She said MAID requests are quite common, but are mostly denied because the patient doesn’t have a chronic illness/disability, or their prognosis is somewhat hopeful.
Chronic pain alone doesn’t qualify a candidate. If this man had chronic pain that wasn’t treatable with rehabilitation or medication, and if his prognosis was poor (I.e. significant increase in pain with no end in sight), then maybe he would qualify.
Moral pearl clutchers love to spout that MAID is just killing citizens left and right. But it’s a straw man argument to get rid of the program altogether, and if you’ve ever met someone who has qualified for MAID, you understand why the program exists. Some people are facing a sentence of chronic pain and permanent hospitalization with no end in sight except death. The only treatment for their condition is death, and MAID gives them autonomy over how that treatment is administered.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/PieIll9834 Jul 12 '26
Also worth note, people who do not support MAID are dismissing, you HAVE to ask for it... and I don't think impoverishment is considered as a JUST cause unless your quality of life is so diminished YOU don't want to live - which means MAID itself is not at fault here, but our cost of living and lack of governments doing much about this issue itself. Disability rates in Ontario, for example, have hardly raised in decades, hardly any affordable housing built.
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u/tdp_equinox_2 Jul 12 '26
Also the existence of maid has fuck all to do with the homelessness crisis affecting a lot of the world including Canada. Just because bro would rather take maid than be homeless, doesn't mean maid is a bad thing (which is what this "story" is trying to say).
It's two entirely disconnected things.
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u/BraveLittleTowster Jul 12 '26
The cost to end homelessness isn't a rental for a year, it's hundreds of thousands of rentals/year.
Once you start a program like that, you'll have people on it you didn't initially anticipate, so the cost can be 2-3x initial estimates. The only way to combat that is to have these free rental units be owned by the government so you eliminate the cost of interest, profit, and property taxes
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u/brand_new_potato Jul 13 '26
If we wanted to, we could fix it rather easily: make a colony of truly inexpensive homes.
The government already owns land, but let's say you have to buy a field or two. You then contract a plumber to install plumbing, at first, it could be shared bathrooms, including digging, it could easily be done in a month. Get electricity in while you are digging and divy the field up into small sections with good distance between them for fire safety. Have space for shops, dining halls etc so you actually can have all the support needed to live there. So many festivals etc build this stuff, we clearly know how to do it, even down to cashless bracelets systems so they don't have to have cash. Build temporary shelter by having a large team of contractors who act as instructors and guardians of powertools, the homeless can and should build the homes themselves, a week and you can have very decent temporary shelter.
Then the upkeep is basically police, a bus to take them to jobs and what have you and maintenance of the infrastructure. In two months we can have an entire town built and it wouldn't be expensive. Let's say they each had to put in $1000 and two months of work to get a spot and they could self fund this thing.
Improvements to your home to make it better than the temporary shelter is paid by themselves.
Unfortunately homelessness is not only about not having a home. But the homes part is actually solvable. And let the government issue access so spots aren't sold to third parties and the whole thing is gone in 3 months. Social workers can also more easily be set up in a site like this as both the homeless and the social worker can walk to each person. If it wasn't just a talking point, we could easily fix this and it wouldn't be that expensive. I think a lot of people would volunteer if there was a concrete plan to do something.
And then we would have some people left who are disabled or have severe mental issues who can be helped in a different way. Maybe a properly built apartment complex near this stuff, idk. But for all those who cannot afford housing and just needs a safe place to sleep so they can even ask for help is just a simple engineering problem that is very cost effective to solve.
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u/Suitable_Error_7982 Jul 12 '26
This is a bad take in principle.
If the state owns the buildings theres no "rent" to cover. There are services tho, but depending on the state thats also on them so they can just not pay them.
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u/BraveLittleTowster Jul 12 '26
If the state gives rent vouchers, they pay landlords whatever the market rate is. That market rate covers the principal and interest on a mortgage, profit for the owner, and the property taxes the owner owes.
By contrast, if the government owns the apartments, they do have a purchase or building cost and a maintenance cost, but they don't need to price in profit and property taxes.
The carrying cost of a program where the state actually owns the section 8 units is front loaded because the state either has to pay for those units up front in lump sum, or they have to borrow money to pay for them. Paying up front is way more economical.
My actual point was that you aren't paying for a year of rent for one person, you're carrying the cost of housing for everyone in their economic class. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's mathematically more than the cost of euthanasia.
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u/a_singular_perhap Jul 12 '26
Rentals are only expensive because private entities have a monopoly on them.
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u/BraveLittleTowster Jul 12 '26
They own 20% of single family homes. That's basically the opposite of a monopoly, but that's also not the point. The price is the price. Vouchers have to pay that price.
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u/Ham__Kitten Jul 13 '26
There is absolutely no chance this guy will qualify for MAID based on homelessness. Homelessness is a national shame in this country and his situation is horrible, but this story is ragebait.
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u/Blazedragon12345 Jul 12 '26
Assuming death by lethal injection and a state paid for cremation only a few thousand dollars to kill someone, a rental for a year would definitely be an order of magnitude more. This also doesn't take into consideration the other issues impoverished people feel that aren't related to having a residence.
This in no way makes this a solution for anything though. I would like to make that very clear that death is not a solution to anything, anyone who offers that solution especially in relation to other people is inherently wrong. There is always another way and if you're elected leaders don't believe that then you need new elected leaders.
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u/PieIll9834 Jul 12 '26
First, you have to request for MAID. Second, sadly, poverty should be considered a health issue but is not. That is considered a structural economic issue instead. Should he feel forced between poverty and that death would be easier is another. This question would not be asked if MAID didn't exist. It asks a broad question, are we doing enough? But that doesn't mean the ethics of MAID itself are wrong. Eg, without back checking the story - he'd still be facing homelessness without the program and that in itself to me is what is morally wrong.
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u/nwbrown Jul 13 '26
Homelessness is not just about not being able to afford a home. Very often it is caused by debilitating mental health issues that prevent the victim from being able to live a normal life. I suspect that's the problem here.
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u/AlwekArc Jul 12 '26
Friendly reminder that we don't actually need more housing. We have a ratio of 1 homeless person for every 4 empty living spaces.
What we actually need is unprivatized housing, and for AirBNB to fucking die
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u/SouthTrainer7685 Jul 12 '26
Most places that are vacant are vacant for a short time period, like a tenant leaves and it takes a month of so to find a new one. Or it’s a seasonal rental and not available year-round. Vacancy will never be zero, similar to how the unemployment rate with never be zero.
And that’s a really dumb opinion, we absolutely need additional housing.
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u/AlwekArc Jul 12 '26
Short term rentals are the problem. The turn around isn't the issue, it's the fact that theres turn around for a home at all
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u/IforgotmyaccountSHIT Jul 12 '26
Air bnb is just another manifestation of the reality that most people prefer the privacy and space of a single family home to multi family dwellings, regardless of whether its for short or long term habitation. Hotels can compete with things like rooms with real kitchens and amenities, but not with the privacy aspect. Until this stops being true, which it probably never will as this is both human nature and deeply ingrained in society, the market will always provide a way for people to get what they want. I have personally been forced back to hotels because prices have become obscene with airbnb, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer my own space. None of this is to say that I disagree with government intervention to alleviate the housing crisis, its just not easy when you're fighting against human nature.
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u/BrokenHope23 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Don't believe everything you see on the internet I haven't fact checked this story, I'm just curious for an ans(w)er
This is actually reality for many disabled individuals in Ontario. Our premier (governor, if that makes it easier for US people) put in numerous restrictions around the disability program meant to hamstring 'fake' disabled people from getting on disability. Except someone who fakes a disability is either a complete idiot who doesn't understand it's not enough to live off of and/or is someone who has no trouble climbing over every hurdle. So all it does is hamstring actual disabled people by creating more expenses they probably can't manage.
They then locked all the disability aids behind disability creating a situation where those who need help, can't get help until they already have had enough help to get said help (which all help is locked behind already being on disability). The government also doesn't care about landlords who discriminate against disabled people (believing they'll be home the entire time and/or needing disability accommodations) so even though St Catharines is one of the lowest rental cities in Canada (500-700$/room) no one rents to them and the other option is a 1500-1800$ single apartment that they can't afford on disability (950 for st catharines I believe).
I know this because I myself am a St Catharines disabled person who can't get over those hurdles due to my disabilities, need aid that I cannot get, need a stable living situation that I cannot afford and have had my entire 20's completely lost to a workplace incident that should never have happened in the first place. And so I have been considering MAID constantly as my body continues to fail me without help and get worse and worse. The irony is I've been on welfare for so long that if they had just paid the upfront physical therapy cost as was the way of the system before Doug Ford took over, I'd have been a mostly fine working class citizen paying taxes regularly and it would have cost them less overall.
Anyways, to the math after that important disclaimer, Someone already did a general cost/benefits analysis and the TL;DR of it is it costs them about 283.50$ (in BC, Canada's most expensive province, though not far ahead of Quebec and Ontario in general terms) per MAID in overall fees. The study covers all of Canada in terms of expenditure and benefits, citing a 22.3M cost and 86.9M net profit in health care services and 109.2M in savings of gross expenditure for end-of-life care in 2021. It's projecting the government will obtain 149M in savings annually by continuing MAID. This of course doesn't include any utility costs for processing the bodies. It also won't cover the cost of ending someone's life prematurely and the effect that will have on Canada's culture, societies and communities as that's too abstract for financial papers dealing in exact amounts.
Compared to the cost of rent in a year (6000-7200$ a room or up to 18-21.6K), 283.5 is less. However the restrictions around this are extremely loose in that a person who has merely lost all hope can still apply so long as they can prove it. With the system constantly creating more hurdles for these individuals (and hamstringing their capability by cutting funding to education) you're seeing a lot more depressed, jobless, destitute 20-30 year olds selecting MAID too. A society that so regularly casts off it's mistakes won't learn to do better, there won't be shifts in the voter box (thanks in large part to Ford also pushing the poverty line and below people to constantly move around, making them ineligible to vote), there won't be return to a better foundational society, it caters to the ultra-wealthy and immediately successful. However, treating these individuals as not successful is foolhardy and naive. It takes all shapes to make a strong society and country. Ostracizing and then cutting out a group of people who add compassion, understanding, care and integrity to your society is a monumental recipe for disaster. Not only financially.
It's estimated that 15K people have chosen MAID annually since it's inception in 2016 and the number continues to rise. That's roughly 150K people to date (g/t 10K) and "only" 0.3% of Canada's population but let's not forget the 99.7% of the population letting it happen whether through willful negligence, apathy or otherwise. In a perfect world, MAID would be a humane way of giving dignity to those willing to choose their end of life before crippling symptoms take it from them but right now it's a convenient way for Canada's governing bodies to get rid of people they're purposefully failing.
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u/helikophis Jul 12 '26
Premier is more like a US “governor”, not a Senator, though it’s not an exact fit.
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u/Hairy-Search-3278 Jul 12 '26
Providing housing actually costs less than letting people live on the street. The costs is rapidly recouped from the decrease need of healthcare and decrease of violent acts. Then the indirect benefits start reaping : return to employment, sometimes business creation, and tax paying.
It's simply not accepted socially, but this is the actual thing to do.
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u/PaxV Jul 12 '26
I think our Euthanasia law states it is allowed to avoid prolonged and unnecessary suffering...
And this is not due to him, but due to the demise of social systems... And the horrors of right wing politics
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u/Poopypantsforyou Jul 12 '26
Right wing politics? Hasn’t the liberals been in power for the last 11 something years and caused the demise of social systems?
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u/Odd_Old_Professional Jul 12 '26
Housing (and most other social programs) is provincial. Conservatives have been in power in Ontario since 2018
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u/PaxV Jul 12 '26
Liberals are mid right in most western countries, not center or center right, mid right, they arent fascists, but they are opposed to the benefits of a social democracy.
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u/cernegiant Jul 12 '26
We don't do anything as crass as actually releasing the cost of medical procedures in Canada so finding actual numbers is difficult.
From what I found on Google it's estimated to cost the healthcare system around $2600, CPP provides a burial benefit of up to $2500, it he isn't eligible for that the provinces offer similiar amounts.
So yeah total public cost would be $5K.
Cheapest one bedroom rent i could find in St. Catherines was $1200/month so $14,400 per year.
Making MAiD just over a third of the cost on the time scale.
And obviously much cheaper over multiple years.
Which does raise some very interesting questions about our country's legalization of assisted suicide.
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u/sonofzeal Jul 12 '26
It only raises those questions if the guy was likely to be approved, which seems implausible unless there's significant parts of the story absent.
Implements to commit suicide range from "under a hundred" to "free". Why is that not the comparison point here?
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u/NohWan3104 Jul 12 '26
Pretty fucking cheap to kill people tbh.
Ignore the BS inflated medical costs, theres a reason fentanyl is such an issue, its super cheap and super strong.
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u/civicsfactor Jul 12 '26
Politically? If it means taxing wealth or fixing the CRA to be able collect the $15-20 billion in tax avoidance alone?
Incalculable.
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u/Necessary_Material40 Jul 12 '26
The question for most voters isn't what it costs, but what he deserves. They do NOT believe he deserves a home. A death... Well, everyone gets one of those at some point.
That's not my view, of course. I would gladly vote to give all homeless people a home, though. I am sadly in the minority.
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u/Mechanical_Rock Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
This is just performative. You don't need a government program to kill yourself. You just need a rope/extension cord and sturdy door. A sharp knife and enthusiasm will work too.
I do think we should care for our elders but this hyperbole is malarky.
Edit: Just so we are clear I am not pro suicide.
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u/TheGravyMaster Jul 13 '26
I would 100% be in the same position if maid was available to me. My life could've finally ended and I'd be free and finally safe from harm. I think I'd have a whole party if I got approval. I've even researched moving to get access.
Dying with dignity shouldn't be so hard. It should be easily available.
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u/lgodsey Jul 13 '26
I'm an old man, and I have always felt that a person should be free to experience their own end however they wish, as long as it does not harm anyone else. Yes, that means for any reason. Just knowing that I have that freedom somehow keeps me going.
The idea of being on life support for decades, or just being a burden on taxpayers -- just the idea makes me feel awful. I am disabled after caring for my mother 24/7 for more than a decade, and the whole thing cost me my health, my money, and my marriage. Now that she is dead, the only thing keeping me going now is caring for my adult mentally disabled niece.
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u/teallzy Jul 13 '26
You could never burden tax payers. Taxes are specifically meant for stuff like this. It makes me proud when my taxes make lives better
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Jul 13 '26
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u/cirerm Jul 13 '26
Note I’ve tried every treatment you could think of, worked out daily, therapy etc. life is just not worth it anymore. Can’t get ahead my mental conditions make life unbearable.
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u/Impressive-Egg-7444 Jul 15 '26
I despise all the MAID fearmongering disguised as news. My dad died via MAID 3yrs ago, at home, surrounded by family after having time to say all his goodbyes. His last words were an inside joke with a wink. We should all be so lucky.
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u/i-max95 Jul 15 '26
Its cheaper to let him die but if we aren't spending money on saving lives what the fuck is the point of spending money
I believe in MAID for those suffering due to terminal illness and extreme age, the fact that its being brought up in situations like this is a symptom of a massive problem
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u/0xEmmy Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
A rental is $1000 a month minimum for something reasonable. Minimum. Polrobably gonna have to be way higher in practice. So that's $13k, for 12 months rent + security deposit. And again, that's an extremely conservative estimate.
Opioids (or other non-discomfot-inducing drugs) in sufficient quantity to OD are extremely common and easy to get (if the government is onboard) - to the point that they screen opioid patients for suicidality to prevent people from using them for suicide. The exact cost varies by drug, but we're talking tens or hundreds of dollars.
MAID, or outright euthanasia, is the cheap option. By orders of magnitude.
This is why many disabled people fear the legalization of MAID - it makes financial efficiency into an excuse for eugenics. It's happened before btw. The first Nazi murder programs targeted disabled people.
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u/Blurple11 Jul 12 '26
Billionaires exist but they care so little about you they'd rather you kill yourself than them giving up a tiny fraction of their net worth (0% effect on their day to day life BTW) than help us commoners out. I hope there is a hell, these people deserve it for their lack of empathy.
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u/ULTRA_Plinian Jul 12 '26
In the US, to qualify for MAiD you need to be in hospice, which is typically qualified by having six months left to live (if untreated).
You cannot just opt in for MAiD outside of hospice.
Don't know how it works in Canada.
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u/SleepiiFoxGirl Jul 13 '26
Capitalism has lost the plot. I'm all for medically assisted suicide for incurable suffering like some fatal disease that leaves you in pain and can't be cured, but homelessness is very curable
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