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Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and may not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com
Vancouver with Clark County is moving forward with a new no-barrier Bridge Shelter, and the public is being asked to trust that this new facility will help address homelessness in a better, more organized way. But before that happens, one difficult question needs to be asked: if the long-running problems at Share House were never truly solved, why should anyone believe they will not continue — or even multiply?
For years, residents have raised concerns about conditions around Share House: blocked sidewalks, sanitation problems, garbage, stormwater runoff, fires, disorder and ongoing questions about food-service oversight. Those problems did not come and go overnight. They became part of the community’s lived experience, and many of them remain unresolved.
Now a second shelter is being added with a no-barrier model and food service of its own. That may expand capacity, but it does not automatically create accountability. If government has never fully solved the problems at Share, the public must ask whether the new shelter will truly reduce those impacts — or whether Vancouver is about to operate two problem sites instead of one.
And what happens to Share House itself? Does it continue operating as it is? Does the new shelter reduce the pressure there? Or are residents simply being asked to assume that the no-barrier model will somehow fix what years of fragmented oversight have failed to fix?
These are not cynical questions. They are practical ones. A new shelter does not erase old patterns. If officials want public confidence, they should explain plainly how the problems seen at Share will not be repeated, how existing issues will finally be addressed, and whether the community is looking at one unresolved problem becoming two.
Vancouver does not just need a new shelter. It needs proof that it has learned from the shelter it already has.
If Share’s problems were never solved, the public deserves to know whether the Bridge Shelter is a solution — or the start of a second unresolved mess
Peter Bracchi
Vancouver
