Dear Editor,
Re: “No room for refugees,” News, Sept. 7.
Your front page story on Wednesday outlines the fact that the Immigrant Services Society cannot find affordable accommodations or offers of same for Syrian refugees, even though this city is filled with thousands of livable but unoccupied houses owned by off-shore investors.
It’s awfully hard to demonstrate the supposed humanitarian and compassionate characteristics of Canadian society when we no longer own many of the resources that would allow us to do so. The comparisons between the number of refugees who have been able to settle in Richmond as opposed to other cities is an indication of how truly disfunctional our community has become and there should be a point of embarrassment and shame for our mayor and city council.
Empathy and compassion seem to take a distant back seat in a community that so delineated by greed and the accumulation of wealth.
Ray Arnold
Richmond
