It is good to see that the Mayor chose to meet with those camping in the woods across the road from the News. He and council have decided that the policy of forcing them to move, when they have no place to move to, does not make sense. So they are talking to the homeless who are camped there, to city staff, each other and members of the community to come up with a better solution. In the meantime they plan to leave people camped there in peace. My understanding is that the City will be evaluating what would be the best location to designate for the homeless to set up shelter on. Should the current location be judged to be unacceptable and the people camped there asked to move that is fine, as long as a location has been chosen for them to move to.

The good thing is that, as a place to start addressing the social problems of homelessness and poverty, this is a relatively neat and tidy issue to resolve. It always builds confidence when you can start off with a ‘doable’ situation. My hopes and goals are to take advantage of the current dialogue to get the City to see, think about and address some of the pressing other needs the homeless and poor have. As strange as it may sound at this time of the year to be thinking of this, winter is coming and we need to start planning and preparing now for the coming wet and cold. While the City is seeking to give the homeless who are camping a place so they can get some stability into their lives, it is also the time to think about what we need to put in place to help them transition out a camp and into society. These same facilities and services will help in addressing the needs of all the other homeless (do not forget that those at the camp are only a small part of the homeless population of Abbotsford). If thought out, planned and implemented properly these services and the facilities that deliver them should hopefully also be able to address some of the needs of the working poor and those living in poverty in our community.

As I said it is good they started with a relatively easy task because these pressing needs are more complex and addressing them is going to be tricky. Not impossible, but tricky. Requiring flexibility, a willingness to experiment, a willingness to fail, superb people skills, mediation among all the varied interests and parties involved … and many others as well. But I feel the three biggest things needed to successfully begin to tackle this situation is stubbornness, Ideas and lots of help and support form the community. This is not a nice easy situation to address, with nice easy solutions. It is going to be complex and messy. At times it is only by putting your head down and plodding on, by bulling your way through the obstacles that you can continue to move forward. Complex, messy, no easy solutions – these types of problems and situations demand interesting and new ideas, if people actually knew what to do … but we don’t and need Ideas. This need for new approaches and ideas is one of the things needed from the community. We need the community to get behind and support the work to be done to begin to reduce homelessness in Our Community.

I see signs that now is the time for taking action. The Mayor and Council are starting to look at addressing the homeless camp issue. As they learn more about the situation and what it means to be homeless, they will become aware of all the other needs that require attention to help not just those at the camp but all the homeless. Through the council we can reach out to the community, the churches, the businesses and community organizations and groups. The most heartening sign that now is a time for DOING not talking is the reaction of the citizens of Abbotsford to the picture in the Saturday April 8, 2006 Abby News of the Bylaw (law unto themselves) officers taking down the signs. I have heard many reports of people stopping by to drop of food, clothing and bedding. It seems that the community awareness of the homeless as people in need of their help is growing. With the overwhelming need of the community’s help and support in working on reducing the homeless on the streets of Abbotsford, this generosity is a sign of the community willing to come on board. For we need the community to provide political pressure on the politicians (municipal, provincial and federal) to act. We need new and innovative ideas from the community about how we tackle the many and varied needs. We need the people to get their churches, organizations, clubs, friends, family, family pets and companies behind this push. Yes, we will need financial support. But just as or even more important is the community involvement through volunteering their time, ideas, food, clothing, bedding even a location to work out of. As I said this is a complex problem with many ways for the members of the community to contribute to address, bit by bit and piece by piece, the problem labelled homelessness – and hopefully have a positive effect on some of the needs of the working poor and l those living in poverty.

So let us come together and start. Besides I badly need to do some laundry and am quite willing to drag people, kicking and screaming, into getting a facility that would provide me the ability to do laundry. But what that facility should also include is for another (the next) time.