I had to laugh at the letter in the March 23, 2006 Abbotsford News as last Sunday I was talking to people while waiting for the church group to arrive with lunch. Apparently several members of our luncheon group had recently been hassled by the local police. For the homeless being hassled by the police in neither funny nor is it something new, but in this case I had to laugh. They were being hassled because citizens in some residential areas have begun to suffer from a petty crime wave. Anyone who has been reading the articles on these pages is aware that I believed that such a crime wave would be a result of the City’s policies of driving the homeless out of the downtown area and away from their food sources. This also applies to the attempts to prevent church groups from being able to feed the homeless in the evenings.

The point is that people are not going to sit there quietly and starve. They are going to steal food or they will steal goods they can turn into food. That is human nature. Anyone who thought about ……. OK, I concede perhaps it was naïve of me to think that a) the City might give some thought to how to approach the homeless problem rather than just rely on the labels given to the homeless and knee-jerk reactions, and b) to expect someone in the City administration to be capable of and willing to think. Any normally intelligent human being able to put together two coherent thoughts had to be able to predict that chasing the homeless out of the downtown area into the residential was going to cause a new set of problems. Still, I for one have no expectation that the City will re-think its current actions and approach the homeless problems rationally.

I say problems because the reality is that there is not one homeless problem, there are linked groups of people and problems that get lumped into one big pile and labeled as one homeless problem. Then they try to solve ‘the problem’ and wonder why it does not work. There is no one, neat, easy solution. What is needed is a series of initiatives aimed at the specific groups of people and problems that make up ‘the problem’. This approach does not promise fast miracle cures – but it will begin to address and solve parts of the problem. We may not be able to totally solve homelessness, but we can address many of the issues and problems that have put so many homeless on our streets and help many of these people to get back on their feet. Or governments can continue their current thoughtless, wasteful course of action, accomplishing nothing but to add to the problem.

The police were hassling the homeless downtown, in part I suppose because that is where they are use to hassling them. But those homeless downtown have food and their territory and no reason to go wandering into the neighbourhoods that are suffering an increase in theft. Rather the police needed to be looking for those their harassment had caused to relocate to the residential areas of the city. But that is what happens when you use labels and stereotypes in setting your policies. You end up solving nothing and with an additional set of new problems.

As for those homeowners who are currently suffering, yes the homeless are part of the cause. But if you want to know who is responsible speak to your City politicians and administration for it was their actions that led to you current situation. And above all be sure to insist that in addressing the problems that arise from homelessness that they use common sense and thought. Or nothing will be accomplished but more wasted City resources and the creation of a whole new set of problems.