Since our council doesn’t seem to have the intestinal fortitude to resolve the downtown garbage dump homeless problem, couldn’t we hold some kind of referendum and let the people of Abbotsford decide the issue?
Let’s separate and help the truly needy from the rest and go from there. Building a shelter in the downtown core at public expense for people who have demonstrated that they don’t want to be helped, doesn’t make too much sense and isn’t fair to the local merchants who are going to be directly affected.
A shelter, if it is going to do any good at all, should be located where the people involved don’t have easy access to what for them is creating their problem. There are many locations far from downtown that would be ideal. Let’s be realistic and look at what these sorts of solutions have done to other towns.
All you soft-hearted people who think this shelter is a good idea, ask yourself, would you like them as neighbours? Is it fair to ask others to do it?
Ted Driscoll, Abbotsford
