A troubling situation

John Gormley’s Dec. 7 column, saying that “the new Saskatchewan is a compassionate place” where “public generosity and assistance, both through government programs and charity, are targeting homelessness”, is a vivid contrast to that day’s front-page story, “A vain search for place to stay”.

There, we read of the frustration experienced by the director of Carmichael Outreach in trying to obtain help for a homeless man through a tangle of organizations all passing the buck. Oh, how we need the old mental hospital at Weyburn!

Saskatchewan may still be a compassionate place, but it seems willing to spend a lot more on a stadium than on human beings. Maybe what is really needed here is foresight.

Kay Parley, Regina

John Gormley is singing a tired and repetitive tune (Dec. 7). While he proclaims that the “new Saskatchewan” is a compassionate place, on the front page is an article about a homeless man who is too sick to stay in a shelter, but the shelter director was unable to find a place for him after contacting six different health-care branches. So he continues to live on the street, in the winter, in Regina.

Talk about “no room at the inn”. Add to that the recent announcements of long waiting lists in the hospitals, the cancellation of nonlife-threatening surgeries, and the lack of truly affordable housing to rent or buy in Regina, and you wonder why our government, given the gift of a booming economy, is not able to cope with these issues.

G. F. White, Regina