The topic of the unhoused and the lack of a realistic warming room has just been reignited by a very good blog post which references a letter addressed to the County Council from Brighton Cllr Jeff Wheeldon. Mr. Wheeldon, obviously writing as a troubled private person and not in his Councillor capacity implies the lack of sleeping facilities or even the chance to sleep, in the newly established warming room is “Evil” and we at the BR agree. He mentions his MA thesis and leaves a quote from it that he says sums up the situation – “Evil is less about malevolent beings than it is about good systems gone bad.” We would go further than Mr. Wheeldon and say that the Councillors are guilty of torture.
Not only that we would go further and claim that anybody who supports the warming room – in its present configuration is – is also culpable and should rethink their attitudes.
Life is full of unintended consequences and one of them is that when Cobourg Council set up the ECE bylaw all the Members, with the probable exception of one or two, had good intentions and thought they were crafting a compromise between an answer to the unhoused and the claims that neighbourhoods were being destroyed by the very presence of shelters. This has been proven to be untrue in one respect – the unhoused are being tortured by the rules of the warming room. Citing zoning and Fire Regulation the County has prevented people who enter/use the room from sleeping. Sleep deprivation is well documented as being ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ akin to torture. Why is the County Council allowing this?
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