View Letter as attached to Social Planning Centre Waterloo Region Website Page via link below:
EssentialServicesforHomelessCOVID19wrMarch20.PNG -  (52.57KB Attachment)

As Written and Relayed
​by Heather Majaury

March 20, 2020

Dear Mr. Berry Vrbanovic, Mayor & Ms. Redmond, Waterloo Regional Chair

I am writing you to find out when you will be opening local community centres in our region as an essential service. This service will be to support homeless people in our city to find shelter where they can self-isolate in a somewhat humane environment. It will include services such as access to appropriate sanitation and showers as well as oversight by public health supports in efficient ways such as testing and care for conditions that may place them at high risk for complications if they contract this virus. 

These facilities are set up to be cleaned efficiently and essential workers can be suited up appropriately to do such tasks. Also, care needs to be taken to support those who are already emotionally traumatized to be welcomed compassionately and carefully with appropriate precautions being taken and taught.
 
Food from services that already provide some relief from starvation experienced by the most vulnerable people in our society can then be supported to deliver to these locations and care can be provided on site for safe injection when required and needed by those who are struggling with addiction. I see this as the only way that our municipality can ensure that everyone's health is protected in the best way possible while we try to curb the peak of this pandemic. In a manner that gives our hospitals and other essential services a fighting chance at serving those most in need including the homeless in this region. While ensuring those most at risk of contraction and complications due to poverty are supported to neither contract or spread the virus at an accelerated rate.  To do anything less is, in my opinion, to act negligently in the face of a first-time health crisis of this magnitude with an ever-growing homeless population in a city exacerbated by an ongoing housing crisis, that (compared to many municipalities) is quite prosperous.
 
I require a response immediately as a property owner and tax payer living in the Kitchener downtown. 

Sincerely,

​Concerned Citizen of Canada
And resident of Kitchener ON. 
*edited to remove authors contact information and signature for privacy - also removed address and contact info of addressees for ease of reading