- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor

We have much to discuss about homelessness in Owen Sound. It will impact every single one of us, whether we personally know anyone who is homeless, or not.

You will all be encouraged to donate – money, socks, food, tents and time – to those who are on the front lines of working with the homeless. The food security crisis will continue as people spend 70, 80, 90% of their income on housing until even the soup kitchens and food banks can't save them from eviction.

The decision-makers, for whom you will vote this spring and fall, will increasingly be challenged by the costs of healthcare, policing, social services and deaths of those at ever-increasing risk of homelessness. They will try to point fingers at other levels of government, but every one of them will have a role in this – from local zoning and police budgets to mental health resources and national housing policy.

The mayor and deputy mayor you elect will be our representatives on Grey County council, on whose homelessness strategy Owen Sound council is relying. City Council will still face a budget with a significant amount of policing and private security services. They will try to increase revenue with housing builds where they have required, in their Official Plan, that nothing need be affordable.

If you once again elect a member of provincial parliament who is in a majority government, they will have responsibility for policy and investment in mental health and addiction, income supports, and housing – all with direct impact on homelessness. Our MP for the next three years will be supporting the Conservative platform on housing, whether or not it addresses our local homelessness reality.

I had the honour of meeting Bishop Tutu twice when I was young. He was a wonderful story-teller, and twice I heard him tell the one about the community on the bank of a river that built a rescue station, bought an ambulance, put up a hospital – all to deal with a growing number of bodies floating toward them down the river. One day a child asks “Why don't we go up the river to find out why all these people are in the river?

Now here I live, in a community on a river, and I am looking at sleeping mats and fences and tents. If we still don't know where this need is coming from, we have chosen not to see.