LETTER: Housing, not extortion, is Surrey’s most important issue
Published 10:00 am Saturday, March 21, 2026
Editor,
The primary focus on news items coming out Surrey of late is extortion.
Public safety is certainly a critical issue, especially when the very neighbourhoods we call home do not feel safe. These are the same neighbuorhoods where our kids go to school. The same neighbourhoods where our friends and family live and the same neighbourhoods where we go to work.
However, all this focus on extortion is taking the conversation away from other, bigger issues facing the city.
Affordability, for example, is something that gets consistently dragged under despite people crumbling under the weight of finances. People have to cut down on basic necessities to stay afloat. Housing in the city has become a luxury rather than a right. This does not impact the city’s ultra rich; however, the working class is struggling for its survival every passing day.
This alone is the biggest issue facing the city right now. The vast inequality that exists in the city, and one that shows no signs of receding.
While we can and should find ways to address public safety in the city, we should not let that cloud other issues faced by Surrey’s residents.
We need a City Hall that fights for its working class and doesn’t just work for the benefit of the city’s ultra rich. As an independent candidate for the upcoming municipal elections in the city for later this year, this will be prime focus of my campaign : A city for its people. Not just for land developrs and the ultra rich.
Salman Zafar, Surrey