Dear Editor:
Re: Seven-year-old Girl Faces Rock Fight to Show True Strength of an Ally.
In this week’s column by Andy Prest, on how badly the Jerome family were treated when they moved to the North Shore from Winnipeg in 1951, he wondered how the reaction would be now compared to 1951.
It started me thinking that on the North Shore we have a new kind of discrimination. It is not the colour of your skin now, but your level of income.
During these difficult times of COVID, the community has depended 100 per cent on the front-line workers of the North Shore to keep our communities functioning. Yet we have not provided those same workers we are so dependent on and always will be, with the various types of housing they need.
I refer to the people in our grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants, those who keep the hospitals and clinics cleaned and sanitized, the caregivers in our seniors homes, paramedics ,the nurses, the trades people who fix our appliances, etc. In other words, a huge section of North Shore society.
Incomes range from average to minimum wage. Many North Shore residents will agree that all types of housing is needed, but not here, not in my backyard, is the mind set.
Land is at a premium and it is the year 2021. We have to look at things differently, allowing a certain amount of creative infill in our neighbourhoods, such as duplex, fourplex or a small block of terraced housing, low cost rentals, subsidized housing, designed to fit in with the streetscape.
At the moment, original entry-level housing is being replaced by huge homes that look like small hotels, popping up on every street.
It is time to open our minds and provide our people of the North Shore with the housing they need.
Maureen Bragg
Lynn Valley
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