To the editor:
Re: When NIMBYism and social housing collide,” Dec. 18
It’s interesting to see how some local residents/NIMBYs, have brainwashed themselves into believing that people with mental health disabilities and those who are homeless are so downright evil and any non-profit supported housing developments for marginalized mental health patients are automatically rejected with screaming protests of how the lives of everyone in the community will be in mortal danger. Yet many homeless people with varied mental health disabilities are often victims of violence and exploitation who are afraid to venture outside of their homes and any other safe places where they receive services.
Providing safe and clean housing with adequate supports for the most vulnerable and often neglected population of society is a humane obligation of our greater community.
While there are many laws to protect and uphold the rights of people with mental health disabilities, I often think about those dark periods in history when people with mental health and developmental disabilities were burned at the stake, tortured and murdered by frightened townsfolk and locked up in dungeons and eventually large institutions where they were completely forgotten about and subject to horrific abuse and medical experimentation.
As a society we need to ask ourselves, are we making the world a better place for everyone or are we making it worse for people who don’t have the ability to fight for themselves? As a person with a developmental disability known as Asperger syndrome, I fear what harm might come to me if those same NIMBYs targeted me with the same level of hatred as they have for people with mental health disabilities.
Leslie Benisz,
Vancouver
