With Helpseeker’s advice homelessness should be history

By Lethbridge Herald on August 26, 2022.

Editor:

An article in the Aug. 18 edition of The Herald caught my attention. In it Alina Turner, co-founder of HelpSeeker Technologies, is trying to explain how to deal with homelessness and after reading it I was totally confused. 

Alina states “We need to be thinking from a broader ecosystem perspective, not just plan for what we deliver or will be funding directly.” 

She then explains that the idea of creating a housing continuum is difficult due to lack of consistency in terminology for certain factors that play key roles in the spectrum. She said that they do not actually have a good definition of a continuum.

Now I must admit that I had no idea what a continuum is. So I looked it up and here is what I found: “Continuum, a sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other although the extremes are quite distinct.” 

 Well if that does not explain it I don’t know what will but I still don’t have a clue.

The article concludes with Alina saying “the only way to be able to analyze the data and create a continuum is by using a concept called ontology, which refers to a shared understanding of a particular domain through conceptualizing, use of explicit definitions and relationships between concepts.” She lost me again.

So with advice like that the homeless situation should be a thing of the past in no time at all, although I did like the suggestion made in a recent letter to the editor or perhaps it was in the Roast and Toast in which it was suggested that the use of a bulldozer would be very effective. 

That I can understand and relate to.

Barney Feenstra

Lethbridge