Re: “Homelessness goal in jeopardy,” March 6.
Not that I wish to add even more anguish to Penny Ballem’s woe about insufficient housing capacity for the homeless, but if she wants to bring substance to the issue, albeit at the expense of self-congratulatory high-fiving with the mayor, she can remove from her calculations of any shelter beds she deftly lumps in with housing numbers.
Housing/homes are places people come and go to at their leisure with a private entrance and a lock. It’s also, with a few sad exceptions, a place where one can cook, bathe, sleep and entertain friends. Try that in a shelter.
It’s frustrating indeed when people who should know better insist on manipulating definitions to satisfy the needs of bean-counters’ projections at the expense of the value of human needs. If you remove shelter beds from the equation of Vancouverites without homes you’ll come up with two things: Numbers that are enormous and depressing and an unsettling feeling that, for the foreseeable future, on the provincial government’s watch things won’t soon get a lot better.
Ian MacRae, Vancouver
