We were saddened but not surprised to hear this week about an elderly woman living in her car on the waterfront.
Doris Anthonysz may be getting a lot of ink lately but she’s not the only senior suffering without adequate housing on the Sunshine Coast.
When we did a story with homeless outreach worker Judith Goetz back in May we heard about several clients of the cold weather shelter who were forced to seek cover in their cars or in tents or under tarps after the shelter closed in March.
Goetz said many of the regular shelter users were seniors and were living on very limited incomes, unable to afford rents of more than $375 a month.
“With $375 you can’t even rent. There’s not even a room. They generally start at $400 or $450,” Goetz said at the time.
She noted some shelter users managed to scrape enough money together to purchase campers but said people couldn’t afford the monthly pad rentals needed to place them anywhere.
At the time Goetz pleaded for people in the community to come forward with available land for the homeless to camp out on, or for landlords to cut rents for needy people like Doris, to no avail.
People like Goetz and members of the Sunshine Coast Homelessness Advisory Council are doing what they can to secure funding and support for the Coast’s homeless, but it’s going to take a full-on community effort to get our needs noticed.
We all remember the heartbreaking story of shelter user Harry Paul passing away outside in the cold on a park bench in Gibsons last winter. The entire community cried foul and it only took two days for the province to take notice and kick in $40,000 through BC Housing to open the shelter.
With the announcement of funds, Housing Minister Rich Coleman promised action, saying, “We will continue to engage with the community over the coming months to explore long-term shelter and housing options for homeless individuals on the Sunshine Coast.”
We didn’t get any news of discussions and certainly no solutions from BC Housing after that announcement.
And the federal government also has a role to play here. MP Pam Goldsmith-Jones admitted last year that the federal government had “dropped the ball” in terms of providing stable funding for the shelter. We hope the government picks that ball back up soon.
We need a year round shelter. We need housing supports. We need money to make it all happen and both the provincial and federal governments need to hear that loud and clear.
