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Letter: Better solutions needed to solve homelessness

The current quick fix solutions are not the answer
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It is that time of year again when the ranks of the homeless are swelling and shelters are bulging with people, who through no fault of their own, are unable to find affordable accommodation in the Okanagan.

The local motels are emptying their rooms for the annual influx of tourists and the people ejected have no place to go but the streets.

What about all the old motels being purchased to provide housing for these people you say? They don’t begin to fulfill the need. You don’t build a stake in your community living in a room with a microwave and going to the Souperteria for daily meal; life remains a rootless existence in a small and narrow world.

The shelters are bursting at the seams: attempting to supply needs they are not designed to supply. Shelters are designed by their nature as temporary shelters for one to three nights, and then realistically other accommodation needs to be supplied. They are not set up to service the permanent needs of homeless people.

Many decent people that have worked all their lives are being placed in a position where they have to rely on transient shelters and cheap motel rooms that do not give them the hand up they need to bring order and self-respect back into their lives.

One option that I don’t see being used is co-operative housing: where you have a community that encompasses a variety of economic standards living under one roof. These apartments have been used successfully in Europe for many years where they have been found to be self-regulating as peer pressure enforces standardized behaviour and lifts up those in need.

As a community, we need to keep our minds open and look for answers to resolve the problems of homelessness. We cannot afford to let provincial and federal governments seek the easy way out by building tenements. That is a downward spiral that engenders crime and generational despair and hopelessness.

The federal and provincial governments have the resources needed to ensure better solutions are found than rundown motels or tenements that enrage the populace as they see their once peaceful communities disrupted. The current quick-fix solutions are not the answer and our civic governments have to make sure their counterparts at the provincial and federal level understand that.

Elvena Slump

Penticton