There is something new on the housing front. Coming to a park near you – ice fishing huts.
A recent news story described them as the most recent move in the quest to find adequate shelter for those euphemistically referred to as “the unhoused.” The huts euchred the previous step forward being taken in some communities – looking after the needs of the unhoused by providing certain services in encampments, such as portable toilets and garbage pickup.
Ice fishing huts – havens for those who prefer their beer and tall tales about the one that got away without risking frostbite. Just add a frozen lake, a lawn chair and a fishing rod, and the hut becomes the perfect place to spend a chilly winter day.
It seems someone noticed that the tents in encampments were clearly not designed to withstand worse than a summer breeze with a few droplets of rain and a couple of mosquitoes. Tents were collapsing under the weight of snow, and were totally inadequate for protecting people from the elements.
Ice fishing huts are another matter. The temporary structures are sturdy enough to stand up to Canadian winter conditions, and they sit on insulated pallets that keep anyone inside dry and fairly comfortable. The result was a “eureka!” moment.
One has to wonder when someone will come up with the next step forward in sheltering the unhoused – brick-and-concrete structures, preferably with heating and indoor plumbing. Novel idea.
If we can get over the notion that a house needs to have, as the song goes, “bathrooms big enough to play baseball in,” and appliances that do everything but walk and talk, the goal of everyone having decent accommodations gets closer to being attainable. A house needs to be able to protect the people who live in it from the weather. In Canada, that means a solid roof, floor and walls, plus a heat source. After that, we are speaking of wants, not needs.
The purpose of emergency housing is, first of all, to keep people from freezing to death, or incinerating themselves in an attempt to get warm. Ice fishing huts accomplish that.
The next step would be to provide an environment that is safe and reasonably comfortable, and promotes physical and mental health. That does not mean palatial accommodations, but it does call for better than a camp cot in a shelter or an ice fishing hut.
It is time our federal and provincial governments got their collective act together. We have too many people in survival mode, trying to keep body and soul together in temporary shelters and encampments. When someone is one bologna sandwich, one blanket, and maybe one decent night in a donated ice fishing hut, away from death, it is impossible to focus on anything else. Treating people’s mental health issues, addictions and physical illnesses takes decent housing.
What we are seeing now is the result of a few decades of senior levels of government opting out of public housing.
There are a lot of people, including in this community, who would like to opt out of their tents, motel rooms and friends’ basements, and opt into a place with a street address, doors that lock from the inside, and a waterproof roof.
Let this be a Christmas wish, that those who determine how our tax dollars get spent be granted the gift of being able to look into the future and see how their decisions stand the test of time.
History tends to judge decision makers not on how they cater to the wealthy, but on how they look after the poor.
No country as wealthy as Canada should have people living on the streets in the middle of winter.
Let this Christmas wish go a giant step further, that after the glance into the future, our decision makers strive to have everyone presently surviving in shelters and encampments celebrate their next Christmas in a warm home, preferably with a comfy chair or two, a bed with blankets, a table, and a functioning tea kettle.
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Pauline Kerr is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter currently working for Midwestern Newspapers. She can be reached at pkerr@midwesternnewspapers.com.
