Penticton Herald

Council must resolve homeless situation

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DEAR EDITOR:

The situation: Most of the Penticton homeless shelters have overnight beds for one night. In the early morning, most homeless people are evicted onto the streets with their belongings for the day like stray dogs.

They disperse and congregate throughout the city, mainly in alleyways, behind buildings, city streets and quite often create a safety problem outside commerces, banks and others because they have nowhere else to go inside in a dedicated day shelter without a basic coffee and bun.

This is a deplorable and immoral situation which city council has to remedy. Those homeless persons need a place for the day.

The solution: Two years ago, during the controvers­ial Victory Church squabble with then Minister David Eby, city council offered the use of the old Bus Barn as an alternate homeless shelter, but this option was summarily rejected by Minister Eby.

Why not resurrect this option of using the Bus Barn solely as a daycare centre for adult homeless shelter where the poor homeless people thrown helter-kelter like stray dogs on the streets could find at least solace with their peers for the day before returning to the night shelters?

The health centre previously used at the Victory Church could be returned to the Bus Barn to provide basic hygiene help.

The announceme­nt that B.C. uses budget surplus for $1 billion growth fund for communitie­s infrastruc­ture to be distribute­d by the end of March, based on population.

Mayor Julius Bloomfield’s statement that the bike lanes project might fit that program is a stretch to bypass scrutiny and logic (Herald, Feb. 14).

Is Mayor Bloomfield’s mind already made up despite strong opposition from residents whose voices have been ignored and emasculate­d much too long? I sincerely hope that city council as a whole will have an honest and open discussion and find in their heart to use some of these funds, not for pet projects again, but to take care of the basic daily needs of the homeless population.

This could prove a big winner for Penticton in the long run.

Major Claude Filiatraul­t

Penticton

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