Council addressing homeless encampment issue Tuesday
By Lethbridge Herald on July 22, 2022.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
A tent camp is set up at Civic Centre field this week. Mayor Blaine Hyggen will be bringing forward a motion at city council on Tuesday that addresses homelessness and camps in Lethbridge.Al Beeber – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Lethbridge city council on Tuesday will consider a motion by Mayor Blaine Hyggen to address the homeless encampment situation here.
The motion calls for a task force to be struck to gather key partners for a community of what the motion calls “complex issues.”
It also asks city council to allocate as much as $230,000 in one-time funding from the corporate budget contingencies to assist in administrative and policing funding shortfalls “to expedite compassionate clean-up and establishment of encampments.”
Hyggen’s motion also asks council to allocate up to $470,000 in one-time funding from corporate budget contingencies to move forward with more suitable solutions for camp concerns “that go above just encampment clean-up.”
The mayor is also calling on council to write a letter to the province’s Seniors and Housing, Community and Social Services department and Mental Health and Addictions requesting the formation of a working group to allow for city and provincial collaboration on medium and long-term housing and homeless solutions “that will ultimately address encampments issues.”
In his motion, Hyggen says encampments continue to be on the rise here and pose a safety risk to the people living in them as well as the rest of the city. It says a safe and viable community and a compassionate approach to the homeless are city priorities.
Also on Tuesday’s agenda is a motion by deputy mayor Jenn Schmidt-Rempel proposing consideration of additional discussion of a motion passed on July 5 that called for free bus passes for refugees.
Her amendment would also include as eligible for those bus passes refugee Ukrainians who have come to Lethbridge under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel program this year.
A motion by acting mayor Belinda Crowson will ask administration to report to council through its Sept. 12 meeting with a report on how the city is positioned to help proponents in securing federal Rapid Housing Initiative funding for affordable and social housing projects here through land use and development processes and co-investment opportunities.
11-10
I do look forward to hearing more about this plan at the meeting. No one said it would be easy or would be immediate, since there are so many factors at play here and many layers to deal with.
We first need to get rid of the agitators who are using these people for their own agendas, whether it is the organized criminals, a few of the non-profits, the indigenous ‘radicals’ who do not represent the indigenous leadership and even at least one lawyer who is stirring the pot.
The problem will not be completely resolved this year, but measures can be taken to reduce the numbers. As one RCMP in BC stated to residents of the encampment as they moved them, “I am not the one who decides what is allowed . . . my job is to enforce the laws and let the courts decide!”
This is not going to be fixed overnight and for those of you that stated that now we have people in the coulees, as we move them . . . there have been encampments in various areas of the coulees since March that I was aware of. One by the Galt Museum, hidden in the bushes, others scattered north and south. These have increased, some have been moved and others left.
In conversation weeks ago with a few residents of the Civic Center encampment, one said they need treatment to get off the streets but none was available . . . I informed her I could give her a number to call to get help immediately . . . she changed the subject, so I again stated I could help her get set up for treatment . . . she was silent, then walked back to her tent, while another, an indigenous man said he was from Calgary, wasn’t allowed back in his indigenous community and wouldn’t be on the streets if he could work . . . I said I could get him a job if he was willing to work . . . he changed the subject, saying how he had been in jail, how he was banished from his land . . . I asked him if he wanted me to call the person who could put him to work . . . he said he was not sure, then he was going to wait until his ‘wife’ returned . . . There have been other conversations but that is a couple of examples.
We have to start to make the right decisions or we will be paying for the consequences and high costs of not getting this right for decades. By not getting it right, these people are adapting, being psychologically conditioned to live this type of life . . . which is dangerous for them, along with being a high cost to society, the taxpayer, for the rest of their lives.
The costs are high and one city pegged it at around $60,000 per year per person if they are not the chronic homeless committing the crimes and over $100,000 per person if they are the addicted criminals, with costs going as high as $400,000 for the ones constantly in and out of the system.
So . . . do we keep on burning up tax dollars and watch the issues increase? Or do we find a solution that will work, instead of the failed attempts of housing them and paying supports to them, which only attracts more people to live off the taxpayer and not work.
We need to get these people back in the workforce!
Right- they don’t want our help, and they dont want to work. Quit throwing taxpayer money at them.
I know . . . I am as frustrated as you. The problem is not easy, add to that a couple of lawyers who are advising the residents of the encampments that they don’t have to move, one of which has been using the services of the street prostitutes for a couple of years I am aware of and radical indigenous who have their own agenda and are only using the encampments as a method of wreaking havoc against us non-indigenous and you may have a little insight of just a couple of the many issues that make it difficult.
We need to shut this down now, coming up with ‘deterents’ for people thinking they can set up tents anywhere they want to sleep anywhere they want.
From the Canadian Bar Association:
https://www.cba.org/Publications-Resources/Practice-Tools/Tackling-Homelessness/Encampment-in-Municipal-Parks
“…ADEQUATE ALTERNATIVE HOUSING
There is no constitutional right to housing per se. Governments do not owe a positive duty to provide affordable, adequate or accessible housing to homeless and low-income persons and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms “does nothing to provide assurance that we all share in a right to a minimum standard of living”.
However, courts have held that the section 7 Charter liberty interest is engaged when a local government interferes with the “fundamentally important personal decision to shelter oneself in circumstances where there is no practical shelter alternative.”
These issues arise primarily in enforcement measures by local governments to remove or deter encampments of homeless people in municipal parks and other civic spaces. A municipality’s mandate to regulate its parks and civic spaces for the benefit of the public is tempered by the right of homeless individuals “to cover themselves with the most rudimentary form of shelter while sleeping overnight in a public place, when there are not enough shelter spaces available to accommodate all of the City’s homeless.”
Whether adequate alternative shelter is available is therefore a central issue in determining if a Charter right exists in a particular case. The question of adequacy pertains not only to the number of available shelters, but also whether the shelters are appropriate. Factors that may make alternative housing impractical include:
-limits on the length of stay, curfews and restrictions on leaving and returning.
-inadequate shelters designated for women.
-drug abstinence and sobriety requirements, or that the person be “treatment ready”.
-temporary bans for minor rule infractions (sometimes of indeterminate lengths).
-lack of permanent support services and resources
-charging rent.
-outbreaks of violence. …”
——————————————–
As you can see, Alpha House shelter has failed in some of these factors, but Lethbridge has attempted to provide adequate accomodate and met their due diligence legally. We need to replace this shelter with a locally operated shelter that respect the law, the citizens of the city, the residents of the shelter and the local businesses.
One of the most important factors is when do you draw the line . . . other communities ‘dump’ their problematic people on us, shipping them to us as far away as Saskatoon and Edmonton I am aware of.
When do you say enough? We shouldn’t have to take in their problematic people whether addicts of homeless and house and feed them! Yet . . . that is what is happening! I am sure if challenged in court and these factors brought up, we would be legally allowed to enforce all the bylaws necessary to rid our parks and neighbourhoods of the encampments. We have done more than enough in our community to help these people, but there is a limit and we are at that limit when other communities feel they can ‘dump’ their problems on us!
I do have faith in this Council that they will do all they can to deal with the issues, defintely more so than what happened with the SCS where we had to go to the Alberta Government to shut it down!
For those who do not know, yes, we still have the trailer operating at the shelter as a SCS, so there still is one.