To the Editor,
Last week an open meeting at Quarterway Elementary School concerned the proposed development of one of the City of Nanaimo’s “wet houses,” which is basically a roof over the heads and a bed to sleep in for drunks and druggies. The city wants to spend tax dollars at the cost of the neighbourhood’s safety, children’s safety and home safety, too.
If these wet houses were going up next door to your home, would you be welcoming it with open arms, or would you be thinking about the future – trying to sell your home and worrying what kind of value you are now faced with? I am one of those people. I have a mortgage to pay and worry about my investment in my property – along with the fact that there is a real risk to our children, our students and the seniors.
If you had children, you would be concerned with having drunks and druggies around while your children are making their way home from school and could potentially be assaulted or mugged or even worse. These untreated users have no care in the world except where the next bottle comes from.
The city is trying to quietly and efficiently clean house in the downtown district of street people and integrate and hide them in various locations of the city so that they can have a respectable looking city for the potential tourists that are expected to flow into the city off of the new cruise ship terminal.
The truly homeless should be given help because they want and seek help. But those active drug users and alcoholics, who choose to stay that way, should they have our trust and respect to live in our nice neighbourhoods? What have they physically done to improve themselves to be accepted?
As for the majority of untreated alcoholics and drug addicts, if they don’t ask or seek help then they don’t want help, so trying to keep them in a foreign environment, like a wet house, is useless. They prefer their street hangouts.
R. Bradford
Nanaimo