Dear Editor,
About our current housing crisis, I wanted to discuss the failure of our politicians over the past decades to address this critical issue we’re now struggling with, i.e. housing.
I was on our city’s social committee raising this issue almost a decade ago. Pleading and stressing the need for action on this important file. And, of course the right-wingers at the time (BC Liberal’s crowd) wanted me muzzled and off the committee. I did resign from the committee, because I realized that it was not interested in really dealing with the issue at hand.
So, we continued in the political mindset of deferring the housing problem as if it could be dealt with at some later date.
This is a political tactic of deferring the issue as opposed to actually dealing with it. The politicians in Ottawa are great at this tactic. They’re always excellent at talking about these things it, but short on real action.
The end result is that we’re in a crisis situation in 2023. We have thousands of immigrants entering our country with no housing for them. It’s estimated that last year alone we had 700,000 immigrants come to Canada. But where is the housing for these immigrants, when we’ve got hundreds of thousands of Canadians already living on our streets due to the lack of affordable housing?
The sheer folly of our federal governments policy decisions with regards to housing and immigration is mind boggling. We need real leadership in Ottawa, and we need it now.
Wake up folks; because it’s only going to get worst without a change in our policy making in our country. And with climate change and global warming, (forest fires) reducing more of our housing stock, we’re in desperate straits.
It’s a crisis now and will take years to remedy the situation!
John E. McKenzie, Maple Ridge
.
• READ MORE: B.C. housing minister tells Maple Ridge summit ideas to add more units
• READ MORE: Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows on BC Housing ‘Naughty List’
.
Do you have an opinion you’d like to share? Please send us a letter to the editor, including your first and last name, street address, and phone number. Email: editor@mapleridgenews.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
