Homeless camp residents should be left alone by community

By Lethbridge Herald on July 16, 2022.

Editor:

As a new resident and a former mental health professional I’m not sure what the solution is for these encampments.

 I’m sure it distresses those neighbours who witness what can only be described as Third World living conditions.  

 Surely It time to state the obvious, which is: treating addictions and mental health problems cannot be the only solution and in fact might be the cause of undue stress.

These encampments are an eye sore, ugly and may I suggest racist. 

 They capture a group of mostly compromised aboriginals, the majority of which in a previous era would be jailed or institutionalized, and they exist on their own terms.

Are we in the majority unable to have these people as neighbours because they are our scapegoats?  

How dare they taint our lives with their chaos, poverty and otherness. We need them to be isolated from us, removed and sanitized.

I get it.  But our churches, temples, synagogues and mosques don’t.  They want converts, not aimless addicts.  

Let them be.

Bruce Paproski 

Lethbridge