This is a question we’ve been asking for 9 months, along with how many people are there to house? After all how can it take so long to house #? people. In January we were told by the city, who had appointed Sandra Singh, after 8 months, to be the point person. She advised it would take 2 weeks to get that number. Hmmm, really it takes 2 weeks to count people? We are not to question. Soooooo finally 2 weeks has come and the answer is (drumroll), wait for it… wait for it….
… (while waiting let’s review) Yes 9 months and the community has been asking some very simple questions that no one seems to be able to answer 1) How many people need to be housed 2) When can we please have the park back for ALL public to use (ie. the sleeping pooch)? and 3) Where is the Navigation Centre?
What is a Navigation Centre? It’s a permanent temporary place/space where people go and can wait to be processed for their needs and then placed in permanent housing. This place has services like toilets and showers/ water to clean up and food etc. Other countries have put Navigation Centre in place and helped reduce their homeless numbers drastically. Seems easy enough to set up right? So where is it? How did this get passed in the Provincial Budget LAST year and here we are a year later with Nada, Nothing….hmmm. Who is the person accountable for this? Who do we ask, “Hey how’s it going? Have you picked a place yet? Who’s running the show?” More of the same it appears.
… and while we wait
think there might be a message in those piece flags?…
and the Answer to the question in the first paragraph? Ya you guessed it we’re still waiting.
