Plans must include marginalized people
Trail Daily Times
October 28, 2008
Opinion By: André Carrel, Salmo, former municipal administrator, author and grassroots academic in politics and governance

… A neighbourhood is the outer skin of a person's property. People care about the feel and appearance of their neighbourhood….

Caring for neighbourhoods is not limited to caring for the physical appearance. Governments and their agencies also encourage residents to take active roles in maintaining security and social standards in neighbourhoods through endorsement and sponsorship of self-help initiatives such as neighbourhood watch and block parent programs.

All of these efforts, from zoning bylaws to parent programs, constitute official recognition that residents play a necessary role in the care of neighbourhoods and that theirs is a legitimate voice, essential to providing and maintaining esthetic values and quality of life standards in neighbourhoods….

Governments do have an obligation to support people with special needs, but they also have a duty to be open and transparent about the community's role in meeting this obligation. Official community plans and zoning bylaws use soft terms such as group home to describe what the City of Nelson defines as "a home for more than five unrelated, aged, handicapped or wayward persons."…

Social policies in official community plans rarely if ever include procedures to guide decisions on the location of facilities to house, care for, and rehabilitate people who need society's help. Official community plans do include policies for less controversial social issues such as affordable housing, child care and services for persons with physical disabilities. Few, if any, official community plans include policies on how to deal with problems associated with housing and caring for people suffering from mental disabilities or for people exhibiting socially unacceptable behaviours. Yet people in these categories are as much members of our communities as are fragile elderly people and toddlers….