GuelphToday received the following letter on housing from Kate Nixon, who is a social service worker graduate and a program facilitator for Helper Bees at the Church of the Apostles and runs an outreach program called Your Downtown Guelph Friends. She is also a harm reduction worker and is involved in awareness and education surrounding naloxone administration.
It is no secret we are in a terrible predicament for housing and often the metaphorical buck is passed on to someone else as to who is responsible to enact change, but when will someone step up?
Within the past few weeks, our outreach program in Guelph has come to know of three immediate housing emergencies affecting seriously marginalized community members of Guelph. They have varied in levels of housing: one being the eviction of those living in an apartment complex on Carden Street, housing and providing shelter and structure to some of Guelph’s most systematically failed individuals, the other being a house who faced a forceful and what some would argue an illegal eviction and the other being a tent eviction.
The response to all of these has been to force these people to relocate but one must ask given the sky-high rent prices in Guelph, where do these tenants go? Many of these folks are battling health complications and low income and to remove stability in whichever way that looks like for them is unethical and it is abhorrent.
I keep hearing that this is how it works and that it is up to X,Y and Z parties to delegate housing or that certain groups are following instructions, but what I am not hearing is any talk of a solution for people or simply ways to keep people sheltered. We are already at capacity for shelter space, supportive programming and more with very little funding and yet we see the situation being exacerbated by people being forcibly removed from their homes. I do not think it is necessary to expand on why it is detrimental to pull the rug from under people’s feet when it comes to their housing situation but yet here we are, the third immediate crisis within a span of weeks and months where people’s lives have been torn apart right here in Guelph.
It is all of our responsibility to show up in this: individuals, organizations, the city, the county, the province, the federal government etc …. The onus does not fall on the shoulders of one person or group. These evictions need to end and people need to be supported. The flame will only grow if we keep allocating funding into measures to remove people and not into the solutions. We cannot afford for this crisis to get any worse and we need to take a stand now. I am willing to stand with those in our community who need our advocacy, can they also count on you?
Kate Nixon
Guelph
(Editor's note: While certainly a possibility and a concern expressed by those living there, there has been no evidence evictions taking place at 90 Carden St. related to its sale at this time.)
