Getting maximum impact from funding
By Letter to the Editor on February 20, 2020.
A just society cares for the weak, including the homeless. Our city is now going to benefit from $11 million to assist in housing some of those homeless.
Given our economy, this may be a rare gift and so should be used for maximum impact. We have existing local organizations doing an excellent job in housing many people in transition at reasonable costs. Their expertise can be tapped to maximize the good we can do with these funds.
How do we justify spending $250,000 per person just for the physical facility? We must aspire to better than this. Have the planners consulted our local organizations for what they could provide for this kind of dollar? Have they sought proposals from them, or bid the services the facility will provide? Though other services may be provided at the facility, I hope we are not trading “beds” for “offices.”
For the sake of the homeless, I hope our politicians will treat this opportunity seriously to shelter as many as possible, for the money to be spent tapping into the expertise of those who are even now caring for the needy.
Mark Lencucha
Lethbridge
8-7
1) Most of our homeless are severely addicted aboriginal people from the Blood reserve that arrived since the SCS opened. Let’s keep in mind that they already had a home and WILLINGLY left it.
2) Despite them willingly leaving their home, the Lethbridge residents provide them with shelter, food, clothing, and as many “party pack” drug supplies as they want.
3) Everyone except extraordinarily naïve, virtue signaling people, knows that this housing facility will just manifest into another cesspool of drugs and crime.
It’s yet another idiotic non solution that causes more harm than good.
There is a distinct difference between the homeless who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own, versus the homeless addict who has been banned from the Reserve and the Lethbridge shelter due to drug abuse and violence. It would be a huge mistake to house these two demographics together.
But that said, much of the $11M will be eaten up in studies and conferences.