“Why is there affordable housing being built in Chilliwack and Mission but not in Abbotsford?” was the question posed to me by someone who had recently moved from working on a mental health team in Chilliwack to a mental health team in Abbotsford.

The answer to the question is simple and straightforward – Abbotsford City Council.

While Abbotsford City Council has been paying lip service to the lamentable lack of affordable housing, hiring social planners and forming advisory committees – City Councils in Chilliwack and Mission have been supporting and standing behind supportive affordable housing projects in their cities.

As a result Abbotsford has ended up with growing homelessness and affordable housing problem building into a crisis; Chilliwack and Mission meanwhile have been plugging away at actions that result in affordable housing projects getting built in their cities.

‘No money!’ cries city council. ‘Here is $11 million for construction and $650,000 per year for staffing and support services, heck double that and make it two projects’ says the province.

No poverty excuse? No problem equivocate – look for a more suitable location for the Emerson project.

After the recent exercise of spinelessness by Abbotsford City Council on abandoning the densification called for by their own Official City Plan, what do you think the odds are they will find the backbone to vote for the rezoning needed for the Clearbrook Road to be built?

No doubt a suitable location for these provincially funded housing projects will be found. Unfortunately, based on recent history, the locations will most likely be in Chilliwack or Mission.

It is looking more and more as if the best chance to see affordable housing in Abbotsford will be after the 2010 Olympics when citizens can stand along Highway 1 and watch as some of the units that had housed athletes at the winter games past through Abbotsford on their way to Chilliwack. Where, once reassembled, they will add to Chilliwack’s growing stock of affordable housing.

Increasing numbers of people, fallout from the economic meltdown, are falling through our inadequate social safety net, landing on the streets and accelerating the increase in the numbers of people without housing and homeless.

Abbotsford city council has, with its careless disregard for the consequences of its failure to act and provide leadership, allowed this problem to continue to grow to the point of crises.

Council must stop making excuses, find some backbone, provide leadership and actually take an action (action as in something other than words or paper shuffling) that results in actual shovels in the ground on affordable housing projects.

It was good to read Mr. Herar’s column and see that his impending move to the Times had been accomplished. Lamentably less judgement and more understanding are greatly needed commodities in Abbotsford.

Speaking of less judgement, Mr. Herar’s assumption that “you guys” equates to “Indo-Canadians” and that his friend’s remarks were racist in nature was judgemental and not necessarily true.

Given the Christian bent of Abbotsford “you guys” could have been referring to Non-Christians since, as anyone who has ears to hear knows, it is these Non-Christian hell bound sinners that are responsible for the moral failings in our community.

Alternatively “you guys” could have been broadly referring to any peoples with different cultural behaviours and language. Fear of the “different” or of change is not unusual in members of the dominant culture and is often expressed in intolerance. It is not necessarily race related – just ask French Canadians.

Mr. Hear’s friend may simply be a xenophobe and not necessarily a racist or guilty of racist remarks.

The point I endeavour to make is that, whether it is Mr. Herar or his friend doing the judging, making judgements based on ignorance and assumptions (you know what they say about assume – it makes an as out of u and me) is the foundation upon which prejudice in all it’s virulent forms is built.

An open mind and spirit of being non-judgmental is what allows for understanding and leads to a community being enriched in a manner that only Diversity can enrich a community.

Ironically prejudice does not discriminate, being glad to take root in any closed mind.

When I was moving from homelessness into my current home-space I was inundated with horror stories on Indo-Canadians, especially as landlords. This flood of prejudice was a result of the fact I was moving into a predominantly Indo-Canadian neighbourhood and my landlords were Indo-Canadian.

What appalled me was not so much the prejudice as the ignorance shown by the stories and statements. One of the lessons that life has taught me is that people are people. In any group (language, religion, culture, subculture etc) you will fine the good, the bad and the ugly.

Eighteen months latter I am living in the same place, my landlords are good people (hopefully they think I am a good tenant), it is a nice neighbourhood with good neighbours. My biggest regret … well beside the fact that my landlords and neighbours are not aliens from Vulcan, Bajor, Betazed, Gallifrey etc … is that I do not speak Punjabi which limits my understanding and ability to understand and explore the richness of the Indo-Canadian culture.

Incongruously, prejudice is as happy to take root in the minds of those who are at the bottom of the pecking order, treated with contempt and victims of prejudice and stereotyping themselves; evidenced by the fact that many of the horror stories I was told about Indo-Canadians as landlords were by that disdained group – the homeless.

Recent letters in the local papers about the affordable housing project on Clearbrook Road have dredged up memories of attending the community witch hunts late last year on the proposed Clearbrook and Emerson sites.

As one of “Them” it was made clear that I was unfit to associate with the people of those neighbourhoods. That being one of “Them” I was a slobbering, mindless beast, a threat to man, woman and child. Worse, I (we) posed a threat to their Things, their possessions.

In a virtuoso demonstration of ignorance, closed minds, unreasonable fear, ego-centrism, prejudice and intolerance the mob made it very clear that as far as they were concerned every one of “Them” should be sent off, preferably to a leper colony in a remote and distant location.

Why, the very presence of “Them” would bring about the destruction of their neighbourhoods. Although I do concede that the presence of “Them” in the neighbourhood could indeed have posed a threat to their dogmatism.

The ignominy of it all left me with a bad taste in my mouth and highly insulted.

Mr. Herar should count his blessings. As one of “those guys” he is still acknowledged to be a human being. It could be worse. He could be one of “Them”, one of the inhuman beasts to be shunned.

Fortunately for me, the recommendation of someone who actually knew me was good enough for my Indo-Canadian landlords to rent to me, even though I was of a different culture and – gasp – one of “Them”.