I am writing to you today concerning the tribe of homeless people that have been wandering the municipalities of the Capital Regional District. It is neither their homelessness nor their wandering that I take offense to, but rather the enforcement of these conditions that, as a taxpayer in the Saanich, I find morally and fiscally irresponsible. Reportedly the police hours put into displacing the tent city from Regina Park, it’s replacement to the provincial land of the ravine, and the effort to keep them moving over to Goldstream park, has been recorded at 5 million dollars. As a social worker I know this is enough money to house around a 150 people in the private market for one, maybe two, years. This is a massive waste of money squandered on a pointless show of force that will not resolve any of the issues that these refugees of Canada are facing.
I also write to you as a father with 2 children under the age of 5 who live 3 blocks from the Regina park, and who were unscarred by their proximity to Camp Namegans. I write as a citizen who is considering who he shall vote for in the upcoming municipal election in Saanich, and most of all I write as a husband who, in the early days of his marriage, suffered a break-in where my wife was stabbed and nearly bled to death. All of which is to say I take the security of my home seriously, but that that seriousness does not mean that I shall live in fear of strangers who have done me no harm.
As a social worker in the city I am deeply aware of the struggles those on income assistance face when trying to enter the rental market, when the total income offered, if one is lucky enough to get on income assistant level II, is around $1200.00. The average bachelor apartment in the city is presently going for around $900, and when landlords have a viewing, 5 people turn up and two of them are web-page designers. It’s a humiliating market for those on income assistance, and the humiliation grows as we herd them around like cattle for the crime of not being able to afford the cost of living in one of the most expensive cities in North America. Vancouver is presently the third most expensive city on the globe, and as the woeful satellite of Vancouver, Victoria needs to exercise more discretion and valour.
I would like your response to this pressing issue of our community, and upon receiving your response I will post to a blog that will also feature the replies of all candidates in this election. If you do not offer a response, that too will be noted. It is my hope that our community will be able to have a tough conversation, a conversation that we presently seem unable to have given the level of fear and panic we are operating under. I have been in situations worthy of panic before, I know what an open artery looks like, we're not there yet. But we'll get there faster if we just invent a leper colony in the place where hospitality is needed.
Some might become outraged by the word "hospitality," as though we were to treat these people as guests, but the word comes from the Latin hospes, meaning both "stranger," and, incredibly, "enemy." To offer hospitality is welcome the stranger who could be enemy. Hospitality is the point where you decide whether you make enemies or offer compassion.
In the coming years, I hope that this exchange will be something that I could point to as something redeeming and that the events of the past week will stand out as a blip in the radar; a time when, out of fear and loathing, our government took wrongful steps to attack the poor, and then, in the face of moral outrage from a public who sought solutions from their politicians as opposed to punishment, correct their egregious actions.
Yours in the risen Christ,
Matthew Cook, RSW
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