Editor, The News:
I just wanted to touch on the homelessness and modular housing issue.
First of all, if there is such a worry for these people and housing, my first suggestion would be to establish who are residents of Maple Ridge and who are not, because, in my experience, most are not from that tent city.
So why does it continue to be Maple Ridge that needs to house them? They should go back to their own community they come from and have them deal with it, not us.
The count has gotten big enough with just people from Maple Ridge.
Not only that, it is already off to a crappy start having Coast Mental Health running it. What are people thinking? Coast Mental Health runs Alouette Heights Supportive Housing. Staff makes choices for all of us, and yet they has not even bothered to see how it is where it already is supposed to be providing support.
The only support here is enabling people, not to be responsible, as the one thing Coast does is feed people. So that they don’t have to go and buy groceries and people can buy other things instead.
It is not fair because the responsible tenants feed themselves and pay regular bills and struggle all month long. I’m not too proud to take the food, I am just not willing to get in the habit of going backward and not trying to do better.
Staying stuck is wrong and just puts more people at risk and stunts growth, individually and as a small community never getting anywhere.
Nobody has even asked the tenants here if we are provided with the support we need.
To me that says no one really cares. The turn over of staff alone at Alouette Heights is terrible. I have had five different caseworkers since Coast took over here and I have gotten no help or guidance at all from any of them.
And I am now on No. 6 because No. 5 quit, too.
Jacqueline Kaszas
Maple Ridge