Dear editor,
I am appalled by the recent letter from Maxwell Brown and others who confuse vagrants with homeless. That is like confusing Westboro Baptist Church with all Christians.
I have something to share publicly here to help put this issue of a shelter in Courtenay in perspective.
Not every homeless person urinates in public door ways. Not every person without shelter leaves his pile in alley ways. Homeless men and women are no more likely to be thieves than all Muslims are terrorists. Yet to hear the public outcry over this issue astounds me. Perhaps the similarities mentioned of Westboro aren't that far off.
I know about homelessness. It happened to me. I know what it is like to sleep in the bushes of a city park once it got dark, to hide from authorities who would tell me to "move along, you can't sit here". I know how cold November winters are when all you have is a quilt left from your failed life choices and your roof is a box labelled Maytag.
I didn't choose to be homeless, it just suddenly and unexpectedly happened. I know what a dumpster diver does and why many do it. For some, choosing to do what is not respectable is, to say the least, not very comfortable. But considering the alternative, you have to do what you have to do to be able to wake up the next day and start your march from one spot of earth to another until the sun goes down again.
While all of you complain about how we homeless are the dregs of society, consider this. How much do you spend on stuff you don't need from big box stores? How much money do you waste on several trips to town on errands? What did you have for dinner last night, or breakfast, or the stop at Tim Hortons. Or what about the "ladies who lunch" all the time?
You all have choices, you all have it made. Yet many of you do just as much cheating and stealing as the homeless population, the ones who don't have dinner, breakfast or a Tim Hortons...those same folk who don't have a gas fireplace, shake roof, or extra bedrooms they never use.
Yes, there are some smelly street people. Some by choice, some by lack of services. Yes, there is a lot of drug use and alcohol consumed. But what makes the non-homeless any more exempt from those vices (other than it takes place in nice homes or social lodges)?
There is an epidemic of shoplifting downtown, but who is mostly responsible for that? Those homeless vagrants? Gypsies? Grunge Fairies? Or your own families, friends and co-workers, the ones you already provide comfortable shelter for? Here is a reminder: they don't live downtown.
I was able to make the transition from wet snowy ground to a good career, wonderful partner, pleasant home. I was able to pick myself up by the boot straps, but it took the help and hands of people who gave me those boots in the first place. That first warm night on someone's couch, that first offer to help find work, those friendly talks in the park to help me find myself that was lost in my situation. Without them there to give me care and shelter, I don't know what or where I would have gone.
I resent hearing how all homeless people are the things of Dicken's stories. If not in your neighbourhood, then where do you want to shove us? The farther away from your feelings that you push these people, the farther away from your humanity you drift. And the greater your bigotry and animosity grows. That pride in your community is diminished by your actions to others.
I am not homeless now. I don't ever want to end up like that again. I have a fixed pension,two thriving businesses and I love my life in the Comox Valley. But if something happened and I fell on hard times, I would find a new twist on an old theme from long ago...I would suddenly feel unwelcome in my own community.
Lewis Bartholomew
Courtenay