PLEASE HELP - WE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM BUT THE SOLUTION

 By Raymond Bond
Co-founder of Durham Dignity for the Homeless.
At CAMP we were feeding many in need.  We had two servings.  All food was free and donation based.  This has now come to conclusion due to complaints by cowards.   Political entities working to get rid of the poor and homeless from the core.   This is not about good citizens helping less fortunate.
This is about political greed.  About pleasing complainers that because they think they have it good that they can never be the ones at the end of need.   Sad.
Oshawa and Durham Region spends millions per year pushing the homeless from the downtown and into other adjacent communities.
For instance, if you're homeless or undesirable and you set up shop in Memorial Park, you won't last long before private security pushes you to the next phase of your journey.
Perhaps you head west, cross Centre Street and stop to rest at the Robert MacLaughlin Gallery, the library or City Hall. Nope, pan tilt zoom cameras will have you identified and accosted by private security from those properties in no time. A fence is even being constructed at the Gallery to keep the public out.
Will the journey west across the walking bridge and onto the path leading from the beer store to Brick by Brick Park bare any fruit? It depends if you walk south of the John Street bridge, where G4S seems to have the contract to patrol the park from the bridge south.
The natural instinct for someone being herded in this manner would be to find an available plot of land where no one is forcing them to leave. In this case, that would be the path that borders Midtown Mall, where heaps of people congregate to drink beer in eye shot of a Beer Store with no apparent social responsibility for its neighbors.
I get the feeling that our city is more interested in damaging the reputation of our meal program than they are about getting people drug and alcohol free. Using this type of selective enforcement, they can keep the downtown cleaner, build a case for revoking our permit, and ultimately, swoop in like the hero and clean it up after the problem has been allowed to exacerbate.
Midtown Mall has written letters to the Chief of police and the mayor to no avail. All that's happened so far is an increased presence of complacent police and bylaw, at least one of whom have offered suggestions for the crowd to at least put the beer in a Timmies cup and be more discrete. Idle threats include charges for stolen shopping carts and fines that would be used as toilet paper.   
One person I talked to at this location would love a place where they could go to dry out and get off of even Methadone (among the other things). It seems the synthetic heroin is interfering with their ability to be hired for the type of employment that interests them.   
Of course, sending scores of agencies to use private Midtown Mall property to hand out needles and crack pipes didn't work out well along this strip of the path defined as a park. It only led to the mall writing letters instructing municipal and regional services to NOT provide goods and services on their private property.
This does remind me of 101 Quebec street 2 years ago, when the homeless set up on undeveloped, vacant private property and the city used threats of zoning law infractions and fines for the property owner to coerce them to file trespass orders enforceable by police or municipal by-law.
I guess I'm wondering if we'll be doing the right thing this year or if merely pushing the homeless and undesirable out of the downtown and select parks and trails will be the ritual we stick to this term.    
we just cancelled our dinner program to mitigate the complaints that are coming. First Light Foundation will be attacked in the next council meeting as well from what I understand. More complaints for them I hear.
For everyone reading this.  I want you to know that no matter what the politicians may tell  you.  We are not the problem.  We are the solution to the homeless and those in need.   The fact that some have chosen out of not choice to set camp near our set up and subsequently cause us to shut down.  Should be a policing and or bylaw.   Instead they sit idled as if to protect an agenda that will bring public opinion into the formula of making it look as a good deed is the causation for all of downtown problem.  WE ARE NOT.