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I feel as though the homelessness in Barrie, and everywhere else, is something that needs to be seen.
I grew up in a family where my mother went back to school a little bit after my youngest sister was born. With help from food banks, my mother was able to feed us two, but she didn’t work that much because she didn’t have a full-time, or even a really good part-time, job.
She did keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs, which I am very thankful for.
When my mother did find a good job, it was at a food bank, or as people called it a 'resource network.'
My mother’s boss saw how hard she worked and got the place to pay for my mother to go back to college. My mother worked as hard as she could in school, and soon passed her classes with straight A’s. My grandparents helped my mother and stepdad take care of me and my two little sisters by watching us before and after school, feeding us breakfast and dinner if our parents were working later than they thought they’d be.
I hate the idea of others sleeping in bushes or somewhere outside.
Two of the top things people become homeless are lack of affordable housing and unemployment.
No homeless people can get a job without having housing, and to pay for housing you need unemployment.
The payment for an apartment in Barrie is over $1,588 and that’s for one bed. No one is going to have enough money to pay for an apartment with a kitchen by themselves.
Housing should be lowered and not every job should need your address. That way it’s easier to get a job and pay for a home to live in. So then people aren’t going hungry, or becoming homeless.
A.J. Cameron
Barrie
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