Write to urge city councillors to focus on the real issue behind tent cities

Here is a model letter than you can adapt to write to your city councillor and the mayor or to all councillors. Adapt it and use your own words to make this letter your own. If possible, indicate why you care—you know someone struggling to pay rent, you worry about winter coming, your feeling that everyone deserves a safe, affordable place to live. Do not mention your affiliation with the church—council needs to hear from ordinary citizens, and not see this as a campaign that they might attribute to the “activists” several councillors have criticized for creating the encampments.

Dear Councillor _______:

It is unfortunate that councillors are fighting with medical professions over the encampments that have appeared during the pandemic. The encampments are the result of a crisis of unaffordable housing that existed well before COVID hit and that has become worse because of the pandemic. The focus should be on the getting everyone safely housed and given whatever supports they might need to stay housed and in the meantime, treating the homeless with respect and compassion and making it possible for them to get needed healthcare.

No one sees encampments as a solution, and they are a nuisance to nearby residents. But they have allowed medical professions to locate their patients so they can try to provide essential care while they wait for the permanent housing they need and want. Before the encampments, people still slept rough, in ravines or bush areas, and that wasn’t safe. Doctors often lost contact with them for months at a time.

The real solution is more affordable housing. The city needs much more money from the federal and provincial governments than has been committed to date. But it also needs to take advantage of a new federal program will allow the city to buy properties for affordable housing. And the city can hasten development by streamlining and fast-tracking approvals for new affordable units, not just for the homeless but for all those in the city, including almost half Hamilton’s tenants, who pay unaffordable rents.

I support council’s unanimous call for a provincial eviction moratorium and council’s support for the Hamilton is Home collaboration to build 3,000 affordable units in three years—a positive start toward a solution to the crisis that has spilled onto city streets during the pandemic.

Sincerely yours,

Councillors’ emails:

mayor@hamilton.ca

Ward 1 maureen.wilson@hamilton.ca

Ward 2 jason.farr@hamilton.ca

Ward 3 nrinder.nann@hamilton.ca

Ward 4 sam.merulla@hamilton.ca

Ward 5 chad.collins@hamilton.ca

Ward 6 tom.jackson@hamilton.ca

Ward 7 esther.pauls@hamilton.ca

Ward 8 john-paul.danko@hamilton.ca

Ward 9 brad.clark@hamilton.ca