This is a super great news story Saint John.We are receiving federal and provincial dollars to build more bridge housing.Thank you provincial and federal governments.
Our City grabbed right a hold of the opportunity.The continuum or trajectory has been tents,shelters and now individual housing that is monitored with staff 24 hours a day. We are about to open our 4 th small community with more planned.
We at Marigolds and Murals have noticed we have cleaned up a lot fewer abandoned encampments and messy vacant lots in the last 5 months.People now have safety,heat,microwaves,washers and dryers!
The social and economic continuum to keep improving our citizens and community’s life has to be now to build much more affordable and warm housing, elevate the lives of people with more post secondary education which leads to jobs, higher wages/ benefits,pride and purpose.This is a great day!
Saint John has lower wages and higher levels of generational poverty then Moncton and Fredericton and other cities too but Moncton and Fredericton have to deal with the same province as we do.
Post secondary education is provincial responsibility but remember we give our industrial tax to the province and no other city in Canada gives up this percentage of industrial tax like we do.We are an industrial city and we need to diversify our economy, benefit from having the industry,create more post secondary and greatly improve our recreation.Affordability,lower taxes,safety and recreation add to quality of life and that attracts people .
Moncton / Dieppe have 14,000 university and community college students, Fredericton has 11,000 and Saint John has 5,000 ( 2,300 university and 3,000 NBCC students). When you create more post secondary opportunities you grow your economy and population and lower poverty rates . When you build more recreational facilities you improve your physical/ mental health and learning capabilities.
This is a great day Saint John but we can not stop here we have to make that commitment we are going to work hard and push for much more.
Love 
Saint John, NB .
