Solutions needed for the growing problems downtown
By Lethbridge Herald on February 22, 2023.
Editor:
Letter to Mayor Hyggen:
I sent you a email and photo of a fire set against our building back on December 1, 2022 regarding the ongoing vandalism and fire setting issues during the cold snap in December.
Have a look at the picture attached below – this was what our employees had to experience on a recent morning at the front door of the Herald.
(Editor’s note: Photo is of human excrement piled in a corner).
Would this be a welcomed occurrence at City Hall?
We acknowledge that the homeless/addiction/crime issues downtown are a challenge for the city to address but if the City and LPS are not capable of addressing these issues who is?
In your previous response to my earlier communication, you reference that housing is a provincial responsibility. While housing may be part of the issue, housing the homeless is not going to address the downtown crime, safety and drug issues.
As just one of many tax-paying downtown businesses – that also have the additional burden of the annual Downtown BRZ fee/levy – we are getting tired of absorbing the extra costs to secure our businesses so that our staff, customers and property are shielded from the nightly onslaught of vandals, needles, condoms, squatters in our doorway and human waste left at our doorsteps.
Mayor Hyggen, we ask city council to step up and find a solution or solutions that will address this growing concern now – not two or three years from now.
Ryan McAdams
Group publisher
Alberta Newspaper Group LP
14-13
The best advice given Dennis is to read your proposal on lethccc.com. You have hit the nail on the head. Best solution is that the City pass a resolution and a bylaw mandating a ground floor law office or two on every block downtown. Seemed to work over by Humpty’s.
Is housing a provincial issue? Technically I’d say yes, but the province doesn’t seem interested in acting. So the question is whether the Lethbridge councillors are going to cover their butts and point fingers, or are they going to buckle down and get the job done?
Homelessness and addiction have solutions – they aren’t always popular, and they aren’t always cheap, but neither is kicking the can down the road.
Even though my rant, I do not blame Mayor and/or councilors! Why? No matter the choice many people will be really really really miffed! So the proverbial rock and hard place!
What that has done however, is closeted them because they are afraid to ask for input for fear of what they will hear! A bit ridiculous but they still think they can work with nonprofits and its going to be okay (Kool-Aid) Why not consult? lots of racists around (some assume I am) but do so without allowing me to debate that contention. But, the path we are on, will lead to Lethbridge being far more racist then it is.
The province is offering money to kill out society whether we like their objectives or not. So ultimately the meeting between Lethbridge Officials and the Province comes down to “you will or we will”.
However, the City has not tried to get a position out of Taxpayers so that it can be the position of the city. They freely sit down with those that have a vested interest “not to commute” and then wonder why every meeting stuffs more crap into our downtown?
Mayor and Council allow city staff to decide who or which nonprofit to give the money from the province and feds to. Could they not decide to give it to organizations who only set up shop out of town? Streets Alive used to bus people back to the reserve. Why did they stop doing that? Could the CEO take a cut on their paycheques to continue to get people home? Why does the reserve not have to run a bus service for their people to come into town to shop etc. and then get a ride back home?
I worked at City Hall and patrolled the Yates, old Courthouse and back parking lot, finding human feces, spots where someone urinated, fires and evidence of fires were all common. I was assaulted, atttempts to hit me and threatened many times when I tried to move people along.
This is not new, but it is increasing and these punks they call the city’s most vulnerable are nothing more than a bunch of lawless criminals who stay out all night committing crimes and refuse sheltering because there are rules and they cannot do their thing criminally. They are getting worse because we allowed it, becoming more agressive and careless. We have to recognize this.
The problem is that gangs and organized crime have become embedded, so when you get the ones that who on the streets off, in jail or talked into going home or treatment, they are quickly replaced.
I have watched the same pimps/enforcers/drug dealers driving circuits downtown and somehow they never get charged. I know their plate numbers, their vehicles and what they look like, and so do police. The issue is they have to have good reasons to pull them over, thanks to weak laws or other poor legislation.
What you describe happens all over downtown and I am pretty sure that is what happened to the Bow On Tong. Someone will die from this sooner or later.
A strong message has to be sent to the leadership of this City and we are planning protests this spring demanding our streets, our neighbourhoods, our parks, our downtown and our City be taken back from this band of criminals that in reality are under 150 individuals! We will need your support and bodies at these demonstrations.
Some Canadian cities and US states are now bringing in legislation to make loitering and encampments illegal and put those with addiction or mental health issues into involuntary treatment.
Harm reduction is a failure, as we have seen in BC. We need firm policing, treatment and zero tolerance for loitering/fires/public defecation.
This Council passed a new Bylaw that would fine perps $300 for public urination/defecation, graffiti, threatening or uttering threats, loitering, but I wonder if anyone has used it.
I have seen some changes in the numbers of people hanging out all night after the Bow On Tong burned and police stepped up patrols downtown.
We have to unite and say we will not take this anymore . . . period! Come and stand with us when they begin. At some time prior there will be a final presentation to Council asking them what their plan is.
The worst part is that the NDP have a large group of non-profits who push for harm reduction and the NDP will probably open another SCS in our City and that will drive the final nails into the coffins of many downtown businesses who are trying to make gains after the last SCS and COVID.
I should add that just because the term is non-profit, the people make money from it in earnings and staff are not all volunteers. Most get funding from one or more levels of government as well . . . our tax dollars!
How can you fine someone $300 when they have no money to start with and what they did have was used to buy their drugs. Many homeless will not go into a shelter because they are anti social and hate a crowd. I have seen them wondering down our alley at 3 in the morning rain or snow and have security video of them crapping.
$300 fines given and not paid means they have to go to court and could face community service or jail if not paid. It is a deterrent for many if it they face it afew times. In some US cities, they are given a choice at this point, jail or treatment, but we have not reached this point of getting programs in place. It works!!
Some of these also have warrants, do not carry ID and give false names when asked.
They are anti-social and have become more aggessive because society has allowed them to become this way by conditioning them with no deterrents for their actions.
Most of them will no go to a shelter because there are rules and they cannot come and go with their stolen property and cannot do drugs or sell them.
i agree with jim in feeling that 300$ fines are likely going to be useless. there will not likely be any ability/desire/follow up to enforce any of that. there already are laws in place that are being broken with regularity – as you well note – that are not being enforced. many of the laws currently being broken seem more serious than nonpayment of fines.
if nothing else, a war on pimps and meth and “opiod” dealers is needed. in this case, they each prey on the weak, the vulnerable, and the desperate. those types border on or actually commit crimes against humanity. this would require follow through on the judicial level. and, the building of more incarceration space.
How about a public viewing of the video,”Vancouver is dying”? See on youtube. A documentary by Aaron Gunn.
there is far more with which to agree in your entry than not. thank you for the links; i read the downtown plan and the indigenous plan, and voted for the latter. it may not yet be perfect, but it seems at the least a viable starting point…and a much, much better approach than the downtown plan. i suppose one of the sticking points will be the downtown plan will line pockets galore, while the indigenous plan likely will not.
Thanks Biff. I have told the Co Chair of the Reconciliation Lethbridge that if make a cent on this idea, I will donate it to a charity of her choice. So far I am $1200 in the hole. When I proposed a property adjacent to the Blood, of course everyone presumed I am racist. It took me 6 months to meet with Elders of the Blood and after consulting, it was suggested to me that the facility be next to the Blood. At that point I mentioned that this may be an issue because of the non-indigenous that are part of the Addicted/homeless. Their response was that is why they were proposing “adjacent to the Blood” because they would take everyone! They would offer indigenous healing as well as whiteman healing programs. Parents of the indigenous would be either employed or volunteer to work the facility. The facility would be CEO’d by Elders and a rep from Lethbridge.
I believe that is the best physical position but if it cannot be done, then I still believe that we have to protect Downtown and the Blood, what that other place would look like I do not know.
If this were to occur, then suddenly Lethbridge Housing (non profit) loses many of their “candidates”. Soup Kitchens, and various city supports suddenly are in a financial bind etc etc. This is why the Social Services Integration Group 95% Nonprofits refused to table my suggestion and then forward it to the City as an alternative to the shaft they intend for downtown!
This can still work. I think if we proceeded with the Indigenous Plan then the city could use the Ex-Alpha House that is being run by Blood Tribe Health as a 7 day hospice stop only. So someone new to Lethbridge could stay there for 7 days then they get a bunk and Locker number in the facility. Then from that point forward that is their home until rehab begins. If they choose to remain addicted for 2 years, its still their home.
It has been forwarded to AFN and at one point a Winnipeg Tribe was going to implement it, then The Bay, gave them their building and that ended that. So it has merit, at least some believe it does. This city? lol
I had fully expected the suggestion would get debated and beaten to death to remove the sharp edges and refine the plan. What I got was not even the time of day! There is just too much money to be made in shafting the Downtown, downtown businesses, downtown residents and a society built over decades, to pass up!
i appreciate your passion and your best intentions on this – i feel this is coming from your heart just as it feels as it is coming from the heart of the concerned blood members. what the city is supporting feels like yet another series of processes that are long proven to not at all serve those in need – i mean, what are they not seeing, here in lethbridge and elsewhere where like-approaches are not working? thus, believing those “in charge” are not imbeciles, it leads one to consider that the downtown plan is about what the city seems to be most about: lining pockets. and never are there audits.
yes, one is aware that investigative and journalism are long mutually exclusive. journalism and news are about conditioning the masses to the official narrative, i think, but then again i am not sure i am allowed to think, unless what i am thinking matches the official narrative.