Home for the advocates

Recently, I was invited to a meeting. If you know me, and some of you think you do, you know just how much I dislike going to meetings—mostly because I end up volunteering to do something I don’t have time to do, or don’t really want to do. Or it’s a meeting of people who want to reinvent the wheel.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we’ve come a long way since the original wheel hit a dirt path, but those were improvements. I’m okay with improvements. But you know how it goes? If you go to a meeting of a concerned group of people and voice an opinion or make a suggestion or observation, you’re usually expected to put your money where your mouth is. Nobody really appreciates the creative side of engineering.

So, at the appointed hour (by the way, 9:30 a.m. is too early for a meeting), I headed out. I figured on slipping into a seat in the back row, (hoping there would be rows of chairs and not a roundtable) give a little bit of a listen, maybe take a note or two, then sneak out early and be done with it. That, folks, is always my plan at a meeting of minds.

The person who invited me to the meeting is a wonderful, community-spirited person who always lends a hand in this community. For her, I’d do just about anything, and she asked to go to this meeting. She had given me the Readers’ Digest version of the mission of the group—community advocacy. In 25 words or less, she told me the advocacy was with regard to the County’s homeless and under-housed. It sounded like a compelling reason to meet.

In smaller communities like PEC, the homeless or the under-housed (my word for people who don’t really have a home, and survive by couch-surfing with friends or family) are almost invisible. If we’re out and about, we aren’t likely to see people sleeping on the sidewalk, in doorways or camping in the municipal parks. Because we can’t see homeless people doesn’t mean homelessness isn’t a problem here in beautiful PEC.

In Canada there are more than 200,000 people who would be described as being homeless. According to my friend, hundreds of people are homeless here in the County. I, like a lot of you, had the homeless stereotype in mind. Is it possible, a community like Prince Edward County had come this far without having advocacy resources available, somewhere?

It was a meeting with a generous handful of people who sat mostly quietly. Three gentlemen spoke eloquently about the need for housing. There was some talk of health care support for elderly people living in remote areas, and a splatter of talk regarding education. During approximately the 40 minutes I listened, several minutes were devoted to the suggestion of finding a home for this group of advocates, since their current location was a long distance from the downtown Picton area. A home for the homelessness advocacy group, I guess. My mind swirled with ideas and observations, but I kept my promise to myself. Listen, take notes and go home to think.

When I got home, I decided to do a bit of looking around to see what was already available in our community, where public support of socio-economic issues are concerned. And there it was, centrally located, accessible and open to the public: The Community Advocacy & Legal Centre. The Community Advocacy & Legal Centre website offers an impressive list of support services including health, education, legal services, tenants, landlords and much more. Additionally, they are accessible by telephone, Twitter, email and Facebook.

In a quick scan of their website, I didn’t see where homelessness is being addressed, directly, but there’s a group of people who want to do just that, the advocacy group, led by Brian Hart. They felt they had a network of support, skills and experience to offer and had decided their next step was to find a storefront in the community.

Well, don’t tell anyone but I think the store front is located in “The Health Unit” building on King Street. Perhaps another home/storefront isn’t necessary and might divert valuable resources away from the needs of the homeless and toward the maintenance of such a place.

Prince Edward County is a warm, generous community, but someone needs stand up and say, let’s not reinvent this wheel. Let’s improve upon what’s already available at The Community Advocacy & Legal Centre.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca