Hi all. This is my inaugural post of my new blog. I hope that this will be an enlightening and helpful endeavor.
My fiance and I have been looking for a place for the past little while. We are having a really hard time. No one seems to want to rent to a couple of students, and there seem to be plenty of potential tenants to choose from.
So it's easy to feel sorry for ourselves. However, at the same time, we currently have roofs over our heads, when there are plenty of homeless people in the area. They must be freezing. It is snowing outside and there are so many people huddled on the street. On Saturday, when I participated in the Neighbourhood Homeless Outreach Ministry walk, we found eight people in a ritzy part of town. And these were just the people we found! We hardly ever run into any women, so I don't know where they are hiding.
Anyway, I thought I would take this moment of reflection to ask everyone to please volunteer, donate, interact with, and pray for the homeless this winter.
Peace, Erin
About Me
- Erin Derr
- I'm a happily married full-time artist interested in simplicity, self-sufficiency, and spirituality. Check out my company site at www.erinderr.weebly.com and my store at icraft.ca/mouse-and-bear
The number of people living on the street in the West End has become steadily worse over the past 6 or so years. The population does thin out in the winter as those who are seasonal workers move on to warmer climates and the gutter punks get together with friends to rent houses that are often no better than squats. The folks who are left on the street now are really the ones who are at the ends of their ropes: maybe addicted, maybe mentally ill, but certainly in dire straights.
ReplyDeleteI have also noticed my interactions with pan-handlers are getting more aggressive. I was standing in front of a downtown art gallery with friends (passing around a flask...it was cold!) and had a very angry pan-handler threaten to rob us if we didn't give him any money. My heart breaks for them, but what do you do in the face of anger like that?
At any rate, the housing situation in the Lower Mainland is unacceptable. My way of dealing with it has been to use my words but when spring rolls around it might be time to simply pick up a hammer every weekend and just start building stuff.