It is an understatement to say the new Turning Point Recovery house, slated for Fourth Avenue, which will serve up to 10 Sea to Sky Corridor adults facing complex challenges, is beyond needed in our community.
Despite our area’s immense beauty and happy-go-lucky adventure-seeking outer layer, many are suffering in the corridor with a trifecta of obstacles—mental illness, substance abuse, and a lack of affordable housing.
In fact, we likely need more than 10 Turning Point spots.
(It is for short term stays of up to three months while people get their lives sorted and can move on to the next steps of regaining healthy lives.)
The same could be said about communities throughout B.C.
It can be confusing and overwhelming to see the ocean of need and levels of near drowning in our communities right now.
Asked by The Squamish Chief if she was surprised by the depth of the need provincewide, Jennifer Whiteside, B.C.’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, said that given what we have all been through, she was not.
“It’s not an unsurprising outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic ... which is just one of the intersecting crises our communities are experiencing,” she said. “We have the impact of the pandemic; we have housing insecurity, we have affordability challenges, we have a globally unstable situation, which has compounded some of the supply chain issues that we had as a result of COVID,” she said.
dd to that trouble soup inflation and dramatic population growth—not just in Squamish but in British Columbia," she said, noting that 200,000 people moved to British Columbia over the last two years. She called that growth "unprecedented.
There are a lot of reasons for people to be suffering these days, in other words.
“These are difficult times for people; they’re difficult times for our communities and times when we really need to pull together,” Whiteside said.
Indeed.
This means all levels of government need to be laser-focused on collaboration with an urgency to make positive changes for as many as possible, like with the Turning Point house.
And it is a time for locals who can help in even small ways to do so—like supporting The Market food bank, or Community Christmas Care initiatives such as Cram the Cruiser this Saturday or Battle of the Businesses, or just by shopping local for your holiday gifts to support your neighbour’s shops.
We are a quickly growing community, it is true, but we are still small enough that everything each of us does, good or bad, can make a difference.
