As mentioned before in this space, I don’t drive, which is why you will have to explain to me how offering people free parking downtown on evenings and weekends will alleviate issues of lack of parking Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.
The Wilson Street lot is dug up. The West Parkade at Old Quebec Street is closed. The lot on Fountain Street is half taken up by the police while their station is being renovated. You know, parking was never easy downtown, but the big stunt in the next Mission: Impossible film should be Tom Cruise trying to find somewhere to park downtown for five minutes while he goes to the post office at lunch time.
The point is it’s confusing. Why does the City thinks it’s a good idea to offer for free at one time, that which you can’t even pay to get when you want it? In other words, why should the Monday to Friday, 9-to-5 commuter care that they can park for free when they’re not at work, when they’ve got no where to park while they’re at work?
I know what you’re thinking, and yes, taking transit is a definite possible solution, and wholly viable if you live in town and work downtown, but Guelph Transit (sadly) can’t help everyone.
Specifically, I’m thinking of one poor Redditor from Hamilton who posted to the r/Guelph subreddit looking for parking tips. He has a new job at the Co-operators downtown, and he lives in Hamilton. An intercity bus like, say, GO Transit or Greyhound, would be handy. Of course, such a thing doesn’t exist.
Of course, this is short term pain for long term gain. The police HQ will get its parking back, the West Parkade will reopen repaired, and the new Wilson Parkade will increase capacity. The City assures that there is a plan, even if this one aspect of the plan is deeply illogical on the surface. But what about other downtown problems?
My eyes on the Guelph subreddit were actually drawn to another piece, a new entry in the semi-regular refrain on the site asking why there are so many scuzzy and threatening homeless people and drug addicts in the core?
“[T]hey should find some place to put them,” the user, lusterbluee, said. “Seeing them around all the time is intimidating, scary and disgusting. This used to be a nice city. Now we're bending over backwards for drug addicts and mentally ill losers.”
This is as much a meme on the Guelph Reddit page as answering every question with “Trappers,” and addressing homelessness by saying that this is a “nice city” that’s now “scary and disgusting” because of people without a home is almost as useful as answering every other question by making a joke about a local bar.
These Reddit comments are either ideally timed, or poorly timed depending on your point of view.
On Thursday, the Guelph and Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination released their Point-in-Time report, a kind of census of the local homeless population carried out by volunteers last week. Presently, 325 people are experiencing homelessness in Guelph-Wellington, 93 of them – or more than one-quarter – are youths.
Considering that 58 per cent of Reddit users are between 18 and 29, the fact that there are nearly 100 young people without a home in Guelph should hit lusterbluee where he or she lives.
Aside from individual thoughts though, the concerning part should be that this number has increased. The Vital Signs report published earlier this year reported that Guelph-Wellington had 295 homeless people, with 70 being youths. In other words, the number of people living on our streets has gone up.
And not just streets, mind you. Nearly half of all homeless people are “couch surfing”, and while that means they’ve got a roof over their heads, their housing situation is far from permanent. And that kind of impermanence is unlikely to help the stress of the 64 per cent of homeless people that suffer mental health issues.
Let’s not forget too that 11.1 per cent of people in Guelph, and 8.9 per cent of people in Wellington County live in poverty and are maybe one unexpected expense themselves away from being homeless themselves.
I doubt any of that is persuadable for lusterbluee who said later in the Reddit thread that, “Some people just don't want to work.” As if homelessness is as simple to solve as getting a job.
The point is, the City is very responsive to more people without a parking place then they are to more people without a home.
Meanwhile, council argues about who isn’t in favour of affordable housing, when there’s constant misunderstanding about the definition of “affordable.” The fact of the matter is that the City of Guelph’s definition of “affordable housing” is still way out of price range for those in desperate need of housing. It’s like asking which car is more affordable, the Porche or the Jaguar?
The fact of the matter is that finding a place to live in Guelph that’s cheap and clean is a more difficult that find a parking space downtown. We know what we’re doing about one, but what about the other?
