Mr. John Smith still has not answered the most important question concerning the recovery house policy.

Mr. Smith and council have failed to answer: “when you close a ‘bad’ recovery house, where are the people/residents going to go”?

I support closing bad recovery houses, probably not for the same reasons as Mr. Smith, but I do support closing them. But, and isn’t there always a but with a people problem? But I felt, and still feel, that Mr. Smith and council need to have a plan in place so the people in those recovery homes that will be closed have a place to go – rather than mindlessly adding 100 – 200 more homeless to the overcrowded, overrun streets of Abbotsford.

Since it appears the Mr. Smith and council have followed their usual policy with taxpayer questions, they did not listen and ignored the question, I want to pose something to think about for the citizens of Abbotsford who will be affected by the new recovery home policy.

Before celebrating the closing of a recovery house in your neighbourhood – where are the people who live in the house going to go?

Recovery houses were a market response to the demand for affordable housing. When you close a recovery house there is nowhere else the residents can afford to move to.

You may not have liked a recovery house in your neighbourhood but are you prepared for the ex-residents seeking shelter in you carports, crawl spaces, sheds or trees around your/their neighbourhood? With nowhere else to go the people are going to stay in the neighbourhood they know – your/their neighbourhood. That is their comfort zone and where they will want to stay.

Perhaps any newly displaced residents of recovery houses can find rides to Mr. Smith and other councilors homes and neighbourhoods?

After all they have been aware of the question of where displaced residents of recovery homes will go for over a year and … done nothing to address this question/aspect of the new recovery homes policy.