MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). This letter is in response to a letter regarding homelessness in Simcoe County, published September 4.
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There is a lot of information about finding housing for people who are homeless. It’s called rapid rehousing and there’s much information now about how it is actually cheaper in the long run as well as being far more helpful to people.
It saves money on policing and saves money on shelters and saves money on other social services. It saves money at emergency departments. All the piecemeal help that we are giving doesn’t actually change the situation for people. It just gives them temporary reprieve from a cold night. Studies I’ve read show that the average homeless person spends about eight hours a day getting the things they need to survive like meals and a place to sleep, or medicine.
How difficult is it to take medicine like diabetes medication if you don’t have a place to put it every day? I find if I travel I forget to take it quite often. If you don’t have stable housing, it is far harder. If you don’t have a stable housing situation, can you really think clearly about the future?
I know people say that you have to show you want to change before you’ll get help and that’s the way it should be. Many are in the situation and can’t think of changing until they get help. Think of a time when you have been totally overwhelmed in a situation and couldn’t think clearly on how to get out of it and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like for a person who is homeless. But they are in that situation daily.
When people find housing and know where they are going to sleep and know they won’t be kicked out because they’ve already been in the shelter for two weeks, they can then start to think through things. Of course, they will need help to learn how to think in a constructive way again. But these are people. They are sons and daughters and parents and friends. I’ve known a woman who was homeless with several children who, when she received ongoing help for a year or two, and then only occasional help, completely changed her and her children’s lives and now owns her own home and all her children have gone on to post-secondary education.
It can happen. It can change generations. It can make our world better.
Wilma Van Schelven
Orillia
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