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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Marketplace leaves people behind

Abandonment of community responsibility is one of the causes of homelessness, says letter writer
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Letter writers continue to weigh in on Discontent City homeless camp. NEWS BULLETIN file photo

To the editor,

Re: Enough is enough at Discontent City, Letters, July 12.

It seems we are no longer a society of people with shared interests, but simply a rapacious marketplace where those who have no marketable skills, products or services – beyond prostitution and illicit drugs – are deemed to have no value at all. You can be homeless, but you cannot stay here, or there, or in essence anywhere. Just move on.

As Ebenezer opined, “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

In the ’80s, huge, impersonal mental hospitals were shut down – for good reasons too – and local governments were supposed to provide smaller, community-based facilities for these needy souls. Since then, a consistent source of homelessness has been the abandonment of such community responsibility. Just not worth the cost? A waste of taxes?

Plenty of landlords could live comfortable with far less rent than they are currently charging. However, the marketplace supports rapacious self-interest over any societal consciousness or responsibility.

Food stores throw out perfectly good food rather than provide the much-needed sustenance to our needy citizens. The marketplace abhors such generosity.

So, the marketplace rules and everything and everybody becomes a commodity, the value of which is to be determined by that marketplace and is not to be considered any sort of societal concern.

Yet one has to wonder why there has not been a Section 7 charter challenge over being psychologically harassed and forced to move from one camp to another, welcome nowhere. It seems the sort of thing any citizen should have access to. More political indifference? Or plain old bigotry?

Wm. D. Clegg, Gabriola Island

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The views and opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the writer and do not reflect the views of Black Press or the Nanaimo News Bulletin. If you have a different view, we encourage you to write to us or contribute to the discussion below.