To The Reader’s Forum:

I want to commend the City Council President Tony Dolce and our Mayor Eddie Sundquist for meeting with the community to discuss Safety and Homelessness issues in Jamestown on Sept. 14.

We heard that our homeless population has increased this past year from around 20-25 to over 70 mainly due to the lifting of the Covid-19 pandemic eviction moratorium. Eddie mentioned a meeting he had the night before with over 60 pastors to bring the faith community and non-profit organizations together to discuss ideas and solutions to a problem that will only get worse because “winter is coming.”

There was an overwhelming feeling that the city needs to do something to protect citizens from vagrant homeless people so that our properties will be protected. I agree that we need to do something, however, the reason should not be to protect our properties but to protect and help the homeless. That should be our goal because “winter is coming.”

Jesus said, “the poor you will have with you always.” So, we need to be realistic and recognize that we will never solve the problem of homelessness, but we can be faithful to those who are homeless because “winter is coming.”

We all don’t have counseling degrees, or substance abuse training but we do have homes, compassion, and empathy, at least I hope we do because “winter is coming.”

There are some 30,000 people who live in Jamestown. Surely 70-100 families or retired people with the help of church communities, and good training, could each house 1 homeless person. I know it is not easy and I speak from experience, it does not always turn out the way we like, but “winter is coming.”

I am pleading with our community to come together to learn and be trained to work with churches, and all the nonprofit organizations in Jamestown to step up our game and adopt a homeless person because “winter is coming.”

Does this mean we do it alone? By all means no. We should use the Police Dept, nonprofit agencies, and all the churches in town to help vet homeless people to learn how to serve their needs better, because “winter is coming.”

We are not called by God to fix everyone’s problems; we are called to be faithful. The challenge for us now is will we be faithful Samaritans to the homeless community in Jamestown or not? For “winter is coming” and it could be Jesus we are helping!

Jamestown