GuelphToday received the following letter to the editor from Mitch L. regarding the city's homelessness issue.
I was homeless for a winter in this city. And I can honestly say there is one big, glaring issue at the root of it.
Yes, one or two of us might actually be in a situation in our lives where things have truly gotten out of hand and we've lost our living situations, or there is history of mental health problems or racial abuse. The problem here is the heavy drug use. It's putting most people who may have been sane when they started out homeless into mumbling, bumbling husks of who they once were. It's only worse because people who have never lived rough a day let alone a whole season or year think that the public is the problem. It is most definitely, in this man's opinion, a systemic drug abuse issue.
One that is overlooked to not seem unkind towards people who have genuinely made choice to make downtown Guelph a place, I will no longer take my toddler son too. Number 1 because of vagrants, violence, drug paraphernalia and the disgusting a rude things I hear being yelled constant at people.
Feeling bad for homeless people doesn't make us a better society... helping the issue at the core is what's needed, because if they don't get help, don't know how and we don't really collectively care enough about solving the drug issues. It will grow and get much worse.
Sincerely,
Mitch L.
