‘Vulnerable’ should refer to people in city who don’t feel safe
By Lethbridge Herald on October 26, 2022.
Editor:
I have four concerns:
1) If 70 per cent of the homeless in Lethbridge are Indigenous, why is the Blackfoot Confederacy not helping them be re-housed in Indigenous communities where they could be supported by their cultures? Then Lethbridge would have enough services to help the other 30 per cent. If that isn’t going to happen, the Blackfoot Confederacy should be providing 70 per cent of the funding and programs at their cost to stay in Lethbridge.
2) The term “vulnerable” should be applied to the citizens of Lethbridge who are trying to live responsible lives, taking care of themselves and their properties and paying taxes but who are no longer safe in their homes, streets and parks.
The criminal element is allowed to run rampant with no consequences. Try waiting for a bus at the downtown transit hub, standing on its filthy, littered sidewalks while trying to avoid the groups of drug takers, drug dealers and begging.
3) If it is illegal to camp on boulevards, in alleys, in public parks and empty buildings, why are encampments even allowed to start?
Why is the first tent not taken down immediately? Just keep doing it until word spreads that Lethbridge is not open to illegal activity. Those who are homeless, through some sudden disaster such as financial or medical, can be helped by agencies already here.
4) Stop building shelters. More shelters equal more homeless showing up just as the safe injection site brought more drug dealers and addicts. There are many programs available to help people get jobs, get temporary housing upgrade education, et cetera. Supporting that will decrease homelessness.
Karen J. Collin
Lethbridge
11-10
Nice, as always, to see The Herald offer such enlightened opinions. We take a group of homeless Canadian citizens and racialize their problems. The Letter writer suggests that 70% be sent to their bantustans where they can be safely disappeared from ‘our’ society. That ‘they’ shouldn’t be allowed to loiter on the street. ‘They’ shouldn’t be able to enter public buildings or put up a shelter from the elements. ‘They’ should be denied opportunities for public shelter – as it is commonly known that shelters create homelessness just like life-saving injection sites cause drug addiction. And then, icing on the cake, we should deny their vulnerability. The most vulnerable thing in this Letter is the notion of compassion.
Sophie, you are the problem, not the solution. “Homeless” is a term applied too readily to vagrants, criminals, opportunists, deviants and those who are otherwise content to “live” a life of a minimalist nature if they can sustain it by theft and violence. There is a difference between “homeless” and not having a home because your family and community cannot tolerate your abusive conduct , drug use and refusal to follow the basic rules of coexistance. Helping the real “homeless: get back on track is laudible. Enabling the discards of one community to overrun another is far from compassionate to either party.
Replace Indigenous with ‘north siders’ in Karen’s diatribe, and maybe even those of you swimming in the shallow end might glimpse the gist of this hateful Letter. Your parsing of the word ‘homeless’ is better directed to her.
As suspected, when I read this letter this morning to my wife, I said, “Right away, there are going to be screams of racism.” SophieR, also attacks the Lethbridge Herald for publishing such a letter! Oh my! That is censorship at its finest. I applaud you, Karen, for having the guts to write this letter that states facts, not racist remarks. We need to help homeless addicts find their way back to a better life, but what we are doing now isn’t working, so let’s consider some different solutions. I don’t always agree with what some people write in their letters to the editor, but I support their right to their opinion being published, including yours, SophieR.
And what solutions did Karen offer our Indigenous Canadians, pray tell. Calling hate speech ‘free speech’ perpetuated bigotry. Time to grow up Doug.
It may not be well understood how, poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, poor health, and all of this begetting the crimes involved, is a symptom of an unequal society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Certainly, over many years the Canadian politics of the day has not remedied this.
It also brings to mind this: “One of Mother Theresa’s favourite texts in the Bible, which she often quoted to support her ministry to the poor, is: Truly, I tell you, whatever you did to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Matthew 25: 40. In other words. this situation could be treated as if it was Jesus, himself. This verse was also on the north waiting room wall of the old St. Michael’s General Hospital emergency waiting room in Lethbridge as per the nuns, the Sisters of St. Martha. This could, hopefully, resonate, with the community who calls themselves ‘christians.’
SA, ah yes, the dream of the socialist uptopia where all men/women/unspecified are equal and those who work bankroll those who sit and inject poison whilest ” Christians” bring them food, water, shelter and naloxone to bring them back from the death they so frequently seem to seek.
Your view of an ideal world is troubling. If you can look into the vacant eyes of the snot nosed junkie wobbling in front of you on a downtown street meancing you for spare change and want to treat him as “Jesus”, go for it. I won’t be attending your funeral.
The Bible also says:
2 Thessalonians 3:10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
Romans 13:13-14 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
Romans 1: 24-32
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
I could go on . . . you were the one who brought up scripture!
Do you really think Christ is okay with us supplying all the drug paraphernalia they need and as one says enabling them to destroy their bodies with drugs, stealing, prostituting their bodies, living as ‘Lord of the Flies’?
Give your head a bang, not just a shake!
We will stand before God and answer to him how we didn’t get treatment for these people, instead we helped them die!
no, the baby jesush surely wants to be able to at least smite some folk, otherwise he shall surely perish in boredom.
are you for real with this crap? which version of the bible does one quoteth hereth? how does one know that is the real version of the bible? how does one know that the bible is actually god’s word? could not god have done a better job of communicating other than “speaking” to certain folk and hoping they heard it right, and that the next folk that try and echo that info also get it right? believe what you will, but your take on god seems just perfect for halloween.
Wow, 6 negative votes! What kind of person votes against Mother Theresa?
you go get ’em, karen! have you considered the idea of high fenced encampment outside the city limits, where the rounded up herds of “criminal element is allowed to run rampant with no consequences”? every time a person of no address (homeless) and on the streets without just cause with a criminal record is discovered, they, too, could be rounded up and placed in the compound. we could even then help the severely mentally and emotionally struggling criminals, and especially the fasd among them, which would likely make up a large majority of the compound, with schooling and rehab. and then, we all live happily ever after.
Ah on to the extremes like clockwork Biff!
the constant refrain of taking brains and spirits so bashed by life circumstances that were well beyond their control – you know, like the most serious abuse and neglect one can fathom, and fasd resulting from heavy drinking by mom whilst pregnant – and redirecting them to “therapy”/12 steps programs lol, and training them with skills and education (get their high school? lol) so that they would be able to live productive lives is absolute ignorance to the reality. most of our addicted street people need supports, but in only a fraction of the cases will 12 steps and formal education help. running them all out of town and keeping them away will not help them, either.
not sure what is th solution, but we may find agreement in having the problems recognised as not only a provincial concern, but also federal. lethbridge simply does not have the resources to deal with growing magnitude of the roots of the causes, nor with providing for the solutions.
Spot on Biff. Calling the problem out for what it is, dropping the conversation killer ” racist” response, having ALL levels of government, social agencies and the community at the table to corordinate a focused resonse is the ideal. Unfortunately, too many holier than thou virtue signalers abound, usually willing to “help” if only the City throws a few thousand $ their way.