BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in reference to 'COLUMN: Encampments shouldn't prevent others from enjoying parks,' published Nov. 13.
I value your opinion, Barry. Over decades in journalism (and politics), you've been consistently thoughtful and informed, and once again you're grappling with a complex issue highly resistant to easy resolution.
Not sure that encampments are a Charter Section 2 assembly issue. People are living in these circumstances, not merely assembling. And would anyone prefer this option if they had a choice?
Housing First initiatives — not shelters from which people are booted back out into the cold to wander the streets every morning, even crueller than the Victorian workhouses provided for the "deserving poor." Real housing, and not just doled out to those deemed "worthy" of a residence.
Finland and the U.K. have made impressive progress providing compassionate services to people without homes, including quick access to mental (and physical) health supports when needed and wanted.
The old pre-Charter "Ontario Hospitals," which kept people off the streets, did not acknowledge Section 7 liberty interests for the "inmates," but they did cost significant tax money.
Soup kitchens and Out of the Cold programs run by volunteers have permitted politicians to avert their eyes, but with post-pandemic pressures the internalized social costs are increasingly evident.
Kids — especially kids being raised in apartments and condos, but all kids — need to be able to play in parks.
Citizens also need to be able to enjoy public spaces.
These are liberty interest infringements, too — and right now disproportionately borne by women and children.
All of us require services paid for through tax dollars every day of our lives and take for granted they will be provided when we drive cars, drink clean water, attend a hockey rink.
Equally, any of us can become homeless. Supporting those among us who need housing and mental health help through our tax dollars is the price of living in a civil society. Let's acknowledge that and get on with it.
Ellen Anderson
Summerside, PEI
