While the usual anti-homeless, anti poor invective that fills the letters pages in Abbotsford on any given week continues unabated, Abbotsford’s municipal politicians would do well to pay attention to what is being said elsewhere before they vote on proposed Supportive Housing Project rezoning.
Abbotsford councillors and former managerial staff had a habit of spending tax dollars to tell taxpayers how they felt and paying attention only to the praise they were receiving in the chain newspapers when taking positions on major issues.
That’s how both the City and its politicians together with the Chamber of Commerce ended up on the opposite side of just about every local issue in the last decade.
While they were busy reading about themselves in the paper and agreeing wholeheartedly about how smart they were, it turned out very few people were either reading or believing what was in the paper.
The same threatens to happen with the proposed Supportive Housing Project if talk in the coffee shops and on the internet are any measure of how people in Abbotsford feel about the issue.
A Facebook page was started last week in support of the Abbotsford Community Services (ACS) proposed Supportive Housing Project and it already has 134 members.
Discussions on the page are lively, pro-housing project and clearly taken aback by the perceived ruthlessness of the campaign against the homeless and flawed logic being used to defend the profits of downtown businesses over the lives of human beings.
The page continues to gather momentum with new members joining every day and new topics emerging several times a day. We have reproduced below a sample of the discussion on the page in response to the publication, verbatim, of the Abbotsford Downtown Business Association’s tortured and at times indecipherable open letter to the community against the shelter and the men who would be housed there.
To visit the page simply go to: Abbotsfordians FOR a transition house downtown
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Letters to the Editor
Letters in the newspapers are running about half and half though leaning towards support of the project. A sampling of those (below) includes excerpts from two letters in the Abbotsford News (from Gertie Pool and Fred Driscoll) and one from the Abbotsford Times (from Gary Huntbach)
Gertie Pool
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Fred Driscoll
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Gary Huntbach
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What Do You Think?
Use the comments box below, the submissions box on the home page or send us an email at editor@abbotsfordtoday.ca.