Dear editor,

As someone who lives and works in the downtown area, I am writing in support of the Cliffe Avenue site for the new homeless shelter.

There is a great deal of misinformation, misunderstanding and fear around this issue, which does not reflect well on our community.

First, there is a concern that the existence of a shelter will draw homeless people into the downtown area.

They are already here.

Many of them spend their days in the downtown area because that鈥檚 where the services, including food services such as the Soup Kitchen, are located. Because the existing Pidcock Avenue shelter is not open during the day, residents of that shelter have to leave at 8 in the morning and cannot return till 6 at night.

Sometimes those residents are ill, with the flu or other ailments, and must spend their days walking around the downtown area, waiting till the shelter opens in the evening.

Would it not be better for everyone鈥檚 health if they could stay indoors in the proposed shelter, which would be open 24 hours a day? Where is our compassion as a community?

A common misconception is that people who are homeless have come here from somewhere else. Two surveys of the homeless population have been carried out by local service providers.

Both times, it was found that a large majority of those who are homeless are from the Comox Valley, sometimes from families with deep roots here. They are our own people, fallen on hard times.

An interesting finding of both surveys was that some of them are working at part-time or full-time jobs, but cannot afford to pay rent because there is very little available here that is affordable. Another interesting finding was that we have an unusually high proportion of women among the homeless population here.

The statement has been made in several letters to the editor that homeless people are addicted to drugs and have mental illnesses. Some certainly are addicted, but not all are.

Some are struggling to recover from addiction and others have never been addicted. As for mental illness, certainly that has contributed to some of them being on the street.

However, if they didn鈥檛 have a mental illness before they ended up on the street, it is highly likely that they will after a short time there. Who among us could live in constant fear with no safe place to go and not end up with severe depression and anxiety, at the very least?

There are many successful models of shelters that have been built in other communities and have proven to be good neighbours to local businesses and homeowners. There are also shelters that have been poorly planned and managed and have had a negative impact. There is enough information out there, and enough knowledge and expertise among the service providers in our community, that we can learn from other communities and build a shelter that meets the needs both of our homeless population and of the businesses in the downtown area.

Part of the plan for the new shelter is the inclusion of office spaces where representatives of social service agencies can meet with residents and work with them to develop plans and networks of support that will help them get off the street.

For our community to seriously address homelessness, however, the good work that will occur in the new shelter has to be accompanied by a serious commitment to the development of affordable housing. It鈥檚 difficult to move out of homelessness if there are no homes to move into.

The whole debate around the location of the new shelter is an opportunity for our community to do the right thing and to do it well. As a community, we are capable of this and we owe it to our members who are currently living on the streets.

Anne Davis,

Courtenay