Dear Matthew,
I am very pleased to offer you my thoughts on the homeless camps in our city and the region.
In 2016 as the president of the Gorge Tillicum Community Association I worked a fellow board director, Dr. Trevor Hancock, the coalition to end homelessness and the social planning council to develop a set of recommendations for Saanich Council to consider. Councillor Colin Plant put our recommendations on the council table where it had difficulty even getting a seconder. Our top two recommendations were for Saanich to hire as social planner and to create a table where the conversation could begin seriously for the first time in Saanich.
The GTCA came to this work because of the large numbers of campers in Cuthbert Holmes Park that were hidden away from the rest of us and who were suffering more and more as they were being ignored or swept under the leaves.
My position on this topic remains the same. The most import step is housing. As young person, 17 years old in Yellowknife, I ended homeless for over 18 months. I had a job and was not involved in any substance abuse. The only thing that save me from a downward path was finding a home in place called the Hardy House where I shared a room with a different stranger most nights. But I survived because I had a safe place to live.
We must find ways to find safe places for our homeless campers even if we simply build a well run camp.
Sorry to cut this short as I am picking up my 98 year old Dad from the hospital this morning and must move. Please contact me directly for more on this topic anytime.
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