Solutions to homelessness
Homelessness. This is a global problem and many cities in different countries have started programs to deal with it.
Medicine Hat, Alta. started a program, more than two years ago, which has been successful and has 17 milestones to gauge how the program is performing. Google Medicine Hat homelessness. Calgary has a poverty reduction initiative. Iceland has many programs, including a mandatory, summer, paid, civic work month for youth.
(Penticton Western News, Aug.4), V. Short asked us to Google Quixote Village, set up in Olympia, Wash. All these programs deal with various situations that impact on everyone’s quality of life.
I am sending this, as an email, to each member of Penticton city council, in the hopes that they will contact Medicine Hat and other cities and ask to use their program format to deal with Penticton’s’ homelessness, the mental health issues and drug problems.
Having a minimum wage security guard, a “counsellor” and a group of folks with varying horrific problems waiting to explode, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, across from tourist fast food restaurants, is in my view, very unwise. Among the risks are public, client and workers safety. Super 8 motel made B.C. Housing, Interior Health and city hall look good, was cheap and fast.
This has nothing to do with not-in-my-back-yard. The Official Community Plan is ignored, we had one for a reason.
Do we need to deal with the generational poverty in Penticton? Can we afford to house and feed every person, with no job prospect, no money and no family safety net, that comes to Penticton for the summer? It also begs the question”Why come here?” Government agencies can not, as the middle-class shrinks, afford to ignore these ever increasing problems. This is a government social, health responsibility, just like hospitals and schools.
With funding limited in amount and term, limited programs and staff, Super 8 motel could become no more than a holding pen.
I understand the problem is now considered critical but do it right. Doing it right will cost a great deal of money. Doing it wrong will cost even more.There are ready made plans for the asking. Using a tested, successful, quantifiable program, in the right location, offers a better chance of obtaining a positive outcome for everybody.
Let’s see if the city listens or will we have to re route more than the Grand Parade?
Lynn Crassweller
Penticton