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FALL RIVER:<\/strong> HRM is dealing with the homeless situation the best they can given how out of their wheelhouse it is, said the councillor for Waverley-Fall River-Musquodoboit Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cathy Deagle Gammon answered questions on the contentious topic during a recent interview with The Laker News where we asked her about the housing and homeless situation, given what took place in August and what has transpired since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAugust was a terrible event and I feel very bad for everything that happened that day, for everybody involved,\u201d said Deagle Gammon. \u201cAs a councillor I thought that there was a plan and the plan fell apart. There were a lot of lessons learned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”31″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate group=”7″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said there have been a lot of upset people saying the ball is getting thrown back and forth between HRM and the province when it comes to dealing with the homeless situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHomelessness and support for housing are a provincial mandate, it is so far out of our wheelhouse,\u201d said Deagle Gammon. \u201cWe don’t have staff with that kind of expertise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI come from a non-profit background and the social services kind of atmosphere, and I know how complicated this all is. We\u2019re trying to do the best that we can in collaboration with the province, with the service providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said HRM wants people to be safe and dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don’t want people living in tents,\u201d said Deagle Gammon with concern in her voice. \u201cI don’t want to see somebody in a shelter that might get burnt down. That’s not dignified living either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need to produce a better plan. Everybody knows that the plan that we thought was in place for hotels and shelters wasn’t there? Awful, never to be repeated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”34″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”127″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deagle Gammon spoke of the modular units that were coming during the late November interview, saying some should have been ready by the end of December and go to a site in Dartmouth that is chosen, with the remainder going to a Halifax site. \u2018<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the late November rain storms, she said she was thinking of the unhoused in HRM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI didn’t sleep thinking there was a storm coming and what’s going to happen to those people who were unhoused,\u201d she said. \u201cHRM made an emergency plan there as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ultimately it is the individual\u2019s choice to accept or to not accept the offer that is made, and we have to always make sure that we respect people’s individual choices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”92″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate group=”9″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said she\u2019s continuously nervous that the wrap around services required to sustain people, because a roof over your head is not enough, might not all be in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen you are homeless, you’re homeless for a whole bunch of different reasons and the person on this side of the table and the person on the other side of the table, their reasons are different,\u201d said Deagle Gammon. \u201cThe solutions to support them are vastly different as well, and so the service providers have a huge job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “The three levels of government need to make sure that we are there to ensure they are resourced in the way that they can do their job. That’s what makes me nervous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSometimes we don’t want people to over commit and under deliver. That’s what happened before. We can’t let that happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is not our expertise, but I feel we\u2019re doing our best.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate group=”6″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”95″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [adrotate banner=”84″]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [adrotate banner=”93″] [adrotate banner=”126″] FALL RIVER: HRM is dealing with the homeless situation the best they can given how out of their wheelhouse it is, said the councillor for Waverley-Fall River-Musquodoboit Valley. Cathy Deagle Gammon answered questions on the contentious topic during a recent interview with The Laker News where we asked her about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,957],"tags":[1610,2124,2,50,2025,1637,121,1043,16],"class_list":["post-25614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","tag-cathy-deagle-gammon-2","tag-councillor-cathy-deagle-gammon","tag-fall-river","tag-halifax","tag-homeless","tag-housing","tag-hrm","tag-musquodoboit-valley","tag-waverley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}