To the Editor:
There is a sore on the body of this community, but most of its residents don’t know it’s there.
Pastor Carl Sawler of the Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church knows. As secretary of the Creston Ministerial Association, he is one of the people who have to try to treat the sore when people feel the pain.
The sore is the lack of housing for low-income people, especially emergency housing. Sawler is the main go-to guy for people who find themselves without a roof over their heads. They go to him because they have been sent by other churches where they have sought help or by someone else who knows what he does. The clergy at other churches are also involved in this effort.
Sawler gets an average of four appeals a month for his help. That may not seem like a lot, but for a community of this size it’s a shocking number.
Indeed, if you’re one of those individuals or families seeking his help it is a tragic situation. Next to hunger, nothing is more devastating than homelessness, suddenly finding yourself without that roof over your head because you can’t afford the rent where you’ve been living.
That’s why I call the sore that Sawler tries to treat intolerable. He manages, usually, to assuage it at least temporarily by renting accommodation in a motel (there are some which charge a bit less than their regular rents) at the ministerial association’s expense.
But it shouldn’t have to be that way.
Creston, like most other urban centres in B.C., is woefully short of low-cost housing. Here, as in most other places, some organizations are already providing some accommodation — in Catalpa Lodge, Rebeka Manor and Erickson Golden Manor, for example. But there is not nearly enough.
That’s why efforts are being made by the Creston and District Community Housing Society and others to provide more. But to succeed they need funds to acquire suitable existing buildings or to erect new ones.
Our federal and provincial governments should offer the bulk of that funding — but they won’t unless heavy public pressure is put on them. So curing this sore is not just a government problem and responsibility, it’s everyone’s job.
We need, all of us, to let our politicians know that we’re unhappy with their failure to tackle the inadequacy of low-income housing and that we want them to take significant action to remedy it now. In addition, shouldn’t all of us consider what we can do directly by offering monetary help or actual accommodation for those in need?
Charity, as they say, begins at home. But let’s all strike while the iron is hot at both the senior government levels too.
Peter Hepher
Creston