I'll Bury Those Cock-a-roaches

So an Edmonton Senior is terrorized by cockroaches:

A city senior says life in her downtown apartment has become unbearable after cockroaches infested her kitchen.

"They are all over the place," said a teary-eyed Kathy Szaniszlo, from her third-floor suite at 10408 92 St. yesterday.

In August, the 64-year-old widow submitted a written request to the building management to have her unit fumigated, but says no one has helped her.

Pests crawl over her dishes in the cupboard, kitchen counters and floors.

She has tried to combat the critters herself by placing sticky roach traps around her cluttered but clean one-bedroom suite.

"No one can help me fix the apartment," said Szaniszlo, a 10-year resident of the building who immigrated to Canada from Hungary in 1975.

The woman is unable to tend to the problem herself because she receives little funding from Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) for depression and has a broken finger.

Building management said fumigators were sent to the apartment twice, but didn't provide service because the renter didn't remove her belongings from the suite.

"She has to take her stuff out but she didn't do it," said building manager Hamid Elhag yesterday.

So where exactly did she turn "came to help, couldn't fumigate with her stuff there" morph into "no one has helped her"? So much of this story makes a person cringe. The fumigators and the landlord, cruelly yet sensibly, didn't do beyond their requirements to assist her. She seems to have no ability to solve the problem herself beyond putting up roach traps. The real killer? unable to tend to herself because she gets AISH funding for depression. You read that right, depression. Sort of puts all the political propganda pushed on us by the NDP in perspective, doesn't it? They always manage to pick out the spokespeople for this group by finding the most severely handicapped and injured sufferers they can find, and that's who stands next to Rachel Notley as they "shame" the government for not doing more to help those qualifying for AISH. But then a random sampling of the "Severely Handicapped" population receiving assured incomes is plucked in a news story and the house of cards comes crashing down.

Naturally, you know what comes next: a desperate plea for the uncaring provincial government to get off their keisters and do something for a woman who already receives free money because she feels bad.

Unfortunately, there is little help available for struggling seniors, said Ruth Adria, chairman of the Elder Advocates of Alberta Society.

"There is really no one to protect seniors. That's reality. We live in a society that hasn't compassion or morality."

Ruth Adria has apparently never heard of the Shriners, or United Way, or any of the gazillion other charities in place to help people like this. In fact, if Adria is herself an "elder" she may just remember a bygone era where people banded together to help each other in a very real sense. Why can't the Elder Advocates of Alberta Society just make a few phone calls, grab a bunch of committed able-bodied citizens to show up at Szaniszlo's door and help her evacuate her apartment so it can be fumigated? Oh, wait, that's right: the EAOAS is not a charity organization, they're a advocacy organization. In other words, lobbyists. Why would you help people yourself when you can demand that other people do it? It's way easier, and more fun, to just place (further) demands on the Alberta taxpayer. [nevermind that the current 'helping people from the public purse' demands on the Alberta taxpayer are the reason so many don't 'have any compassion'. We gave at the office (literally) -ed]

It's too bad that Kathy Szaniszlo has cockroaches. It may even turn out to be the landlord's problem. But its not my problem, and its not your problem, and its not Ruth Adria's problem. Two of the three of us may think we want to do something, but then the two in the equation should be the ones to do it. It's easy to say "why won't Ed Stelmach help out a senior in central Edmonton solve her cockroach problem?" It's not so easy to say "hey, rather than chastize citizens for not having morality, I'll use the power of my organization to solve problems for the group of people we claim to be helping". The big concern here is that one woman's problem will somehow morph into mine, all because of the bleating of a few people who would rather say than do.