Dear Editor,
I read with interest Nathan Colquhoun's opinion piece on churches' duty to support housing initiatives. Thanks for keeping the conversation going around homelessness. However, I believe your proposal adds to the problem.
Homelessness -- along with related substance abuse, mental health, violence, unemployment, etc. -- is a complex social problem that can only be solved by collaboration and goodwill across sectors.
Faith communities, service clubs, business and industry, mental health and healthcare agencies, police services, and municipal, county, provincial and federal governments all have a role to play alongside the people experiencing homelessness.
When one sector points to another sector and claims they are the problem and proposes a punitive solution, the only thing being accomplished is moral scapegoating to assuage the guilt we all feel for being unable, separately, to solve homelessness.
Churches alone are not equipped to address homelessness and associated issues of substance abuse, mental health, violence, and unemployment. Similarly, social services, hospitals, businesses and local municipalities cannot solve homelessness separately.
By claiming the problem belongs to another sector to solve or pushing punitive proposals, we add to the problem: we end up not working together.
Unless the various sectors work together, we'll burn valuable mental energy arguing over schemes that mask our separate feelings of guilt and inadequacy, which ultimately only functions to create moral silos.
Brad Morrison
Strathroy, ON