City looking for support on homeless encampments
By Lethbridge Herald on April 8, 2023.
Lethbridge Police Service officers watch as people gather their belongings from a homeless encampment before a fence was installed last October at the Civic Centre field. Herald file photo by Al BeeberAl Beeber – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Mayor Blaine Hyggen on Tuesday hand-delivered on behalf of city council and the city a letter to Mike Ellis, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services, asking for the support of the Alberta Sheriffs to help deal with encampments here this year.
The mayor told media in a Zoom meeting Wednesday afternoon a lot of criminal activity happens in entrenched encampments and he is concerned about people in the social sector going to camps without security present.
“It’s not fair to those folks that are going to help these individuals without having somebody to support them in case something was to happen.”
Hyggen said he had a conversation with Ellis and the Minister was “very receptive” to the city proposal.
He said the Sheriffs are relieving some stress on police forces in Alberta’s two largest cities.
“It’s something that I thought that we should definitely look at as a way to keep our community safe.”
Bringing the Sheriffs in is just one part of a strategy to deal with homelessness in Lethbridge, a strategy which includes the construction of supportive housing and a 48-bed recovery facility slated to open later this spring as well as the expansion of shelter facilities.
Hyggen was inspired to seek Sheriff support after seeing them deployed in both Calgary and Edmonton recently.
“It would just help us with some of the concerns that we have throughout Lethbridge,” said the mayor, emphasizing the action isn’t to deal with the homeless.
“We say it’s for the encampments. I want to make sure that’s separated because those that are homeless, this is another strategy council is working on to find additional shelter space, housing, supportive housing – any of these types of services that are needed for these individuals. But this is nothing to do with just that law and order that some people are saying ‘you’re gonna come in and you’re gonna rip things down.’”
The mayor said safety is the motivation for bringing the Sheriffs here, including the safety of residents in the encampments. He pointed to a shooting at a camp last year as a example of the lack of safety in camps.
“In my opinion, there’s absolutely no higher priority in our community than to keeping our streets safe and our citizens of Lethbridge protected. Some of the issues that we were finding within the encampments, and I’ll be very honest, a lot of the issues aren’t shared with the public and they shouldn’t be to protect those involved,” said the mayor.
“There’s a lot of criminal activity that happens within these encampments, especially when they’re entrenched. So there’s other ways we need to work with getting the housing…additional shelter space, et cetera to deal with the homelessness because we do have to have a place for these folks to go,” added the mayor.
What happens in entrenched encampments need to be dealt with, said Hyggen, noting that crime is at an all-time high. He said when the Crime Severity Index comes out the city will see what’s happening.
“This is across Canada, this isn’t Lethbridge only,” said the mayor adding that’s why all the chiefs of police want to provincial leaders.
“This catch-and-release is something that has caused a lot of issues. And many of the crimes that are committed are those that were released back on the street from already serious crimes and have committed crimes up to and including murder. It’s something I don’t want anybody’s family to have to deal with and so it’s important to have the additional resources that are required,” noted the mayor.
The police aren’t as readily available as sometimes they would with to deal with camp issues because they’re busy, he said.
“They do a great work within our community but you can only do so much with the resources you have. There are new officers that have been hired and they’re going through the process and they’ll be on the streets here soon. So that will help somewhat but this is in addition to, it’s just additional resources,” added the mayor.
Sheriffs will work with and liaise with the LPS if they come here, the mayor said.
Crime happening in entrenched encampments includes drug trafficking, prostitution and other activities.
“We want to make sure these encampments as down as quick as they’re up, in my opinion, because it doesn’t allow for that activity to get imbedded in those areas,” said the mayor.
Lethbridge city council on Tuesday voted by a 6-2 motion to seek the help. Councillors Belinda Crowson and Jeff Carlson were opposed, both expressing their feelings the matter should first be addressed by the Lethbridge Police Commission. Crowson told the meeting the commission can hold special meetings and could deal with the matter promptly. She told council she had issues with the resolution put forward by deputy mayor John Middleton-Hope for reasons she could only discuss in camera.
24-23
Thank you Mayor for being more honest and stating some of the facts many are not aware of. I appreciate it!
But, we are not sure if we can even get any Sheriffs, and 1 or 2 will not make much difference, so I am hoping we can get 6-10 minimum, because when you split those members up into shifts and days off, that is only 2-3 on shift at any time.
There needs to be a plan ‘B’ and ‘C’ if needed to deal with this problem. It is not fair to the citizens, to the front line workers and the encampees to see what has happened in Vancouver DTES, by allowing them to build up in the first place . . . stress if created for all parties and high costs to the taxpayers.
I support our police and know they work very hard and I have watched them multiple times deal with situations to de-escalate incidents and prevent having to arrest an individual, taking sometimes 30 minutes of their valuable time. I am hoping that the body-cams will show this, but you must realize that the body-cam videos will not show what the offenders were doing prior to police arriving . . . there is always more to the story!
We have a chance to prevent encampments in our city by stopping them before they become embedded. If they didn’t need them in winter, they don’t need to set them up in summer, period! We have seen that the encampees that were in these tents were committing multiple criminal acts, but what is not told or seen is the domestic violence that never gets reported, where women are beaten or hit by their ‘husbands’ who are their pimps and some are been trafficked out of these encampments. Organized crime monitors these women in some cases and they are not allowed to wonder too far, or, they get beaten. How many are aware of this? How many see that other side the manioulators want hide from you?
Those who were in the encampments were not the truly homeless! They were offered shelter/alternative housing multiple times before police moved in and decamped.
Police need more than the 6 members they are now training . . . they are short 21 members to get it up to a national average per capita, but it would be at least that 21 members, because we have consistently had some of the highest crime rates in Canada on that Canada Crime Severity Index.
As I told you Mayor, I really get frustrated when I hear statements like “This is across Canada, this isn’t Lethbridge only,” . . . we have not seen the major encampment issues that we have seen in BC and that is why we are making sure leadership is aware we wil not accept it in our community and want our leaders to be pro-active in stopping it. The other centers made many mistakes that allowed the encampments and the cause of why the encampments grew to magnify.
Building the proposed Community Care Campus (CCC) Council is quietly pushing through will make the SCS issues look miniscule, to the issues this CCC will create and bring to our city, Remember when the SCS opened, crime in the area went up 6,000 percent . . . how much will this SCS on steroids you intend on building bring to city?
This project project will take up several blocks in the shelter area! It failed in Phoenix and it will destroy our city if you allow it! Kelowna opened a smaller version and read the article below to see the impacts:
Kelowna business survey on impact of outreach centre draws response from mayorhttps://globalnews.ca/news/9610352/kelowna-mayor-responds-business-survey-outreach-centre/
Your planned CCC is taken from the Phoenix plan in Arizona . . . watch this video and see how it destroyed that area:
Cost of Crisis: A look at conditions in ‘The Zone,’ Phoenix’s largest homeless encampment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryGyoTn_wz0&ab_channel=12News
What is even more concerning is that one of the executive members of the SCS in Lethbridge is a Co-Chair of the Social Service Integration Group (SSIG) committee at City Hall, Monica Loewen, who is behind this CCC concept that makes it a SCS on steroids, and this project has many local businesses in the area not just concerned bur fearful of their livelihoods being threatened.
Should not the public, the taxpayer have been aware of this major project from the SSIG, that has recently been sent from Council “..to Administation for consideration as part of the upcoming Land Use Byalw review…” (taken from the Council document), April 04th Council meeting. Motion 6.3.4 – SSIG-Administation Response.
We do not have the manpower to support such an operation that will further stress our police, fire and paramedics, who are all under-staffed, stressed for years of this crisis, while further taking away needed resources for the rest of the community.
We will be a bigger dumping ground for Western Canada to dump their problems into our city, which is already happening on a small scale.
Where is the transparency to the people who elected Council on this project?
Yes, Mr. Ewing it appears as though encampments are “areas of operations” for various criminal activities.These exploit the truly vulnerable. For some people their operations are greatly affected by a shelter/campus type environment, so they will never willingly go there.Pretty funny that some well meaning people and organizations think they can corral the campers into a care(?) campus area. When the old shelter downtown was moved FROM the DOWNTOWN proper to the newest location(9street and 1st avenue north)the managers were instructed to keep their clients out of DOWNTOWN. We know how that worked out.The same as a bigger shelter in the same location will probably work,as well.
Monica Loewen and company perhaps should offer their church and land for a shelter?
I hate being the bad cop Mr Mayor, but you already know where we are headed. We are headed in the DTES Vancouver Direction. It is time we regroup and change the plan. I quite realize everyone insists they have not made a decision but the decision has been made! It’s been made for more than a year now! You are going to be given one option and that is the option tabled at the last CSSPC meeting! I attended that meeting and demanded to know why my proposal was not being given the same access as the SSIGs, which I am sure you are aware, was composed of nothing but the same conflicted group that will provide the services. They controlled every vote and defeated anything and everything that deterred from their primary focus ” downtown”.
I have stated numerous times, they did a disservice to this city and yet its the only option forwarded and promoted by CSD (city department).
So as much as I hate to say this, you are digging your own grave by allowing this to progress as it is. The Koolaid drinkers will assure you this is the best we can do. It isn’t. It is the worst we can do!
By allowing this to progress to a point where the only option offered is to allow the addicted to live in our downtown 24/7/365 we are guaranteeing things will get as bad as DTES! Why?
DTES is not bad because of the people that will rehab and move on, DTES is bad because there are so many that choose not to rehab, period!
So the Koolaid drinkers will tell you that they will arrange housing (LHA) and rehab services will put pressure on and promote rehab. What the Koolaid drinkers are not telling you is only 5% of the “Active Crowd” will choose to rehab per year. Out of that 5%, 2% will actually stay clean after 1 year.
So, as I have said numerous times before, we are promoting a Downtown Community Care Campus disaster for 5% of (at the moment) 410 addicts. That means you are signing up to destroy the downtown for 20 people per year.
That should sour your Kool-aid drinkers!
Now, for those that come piling out of the pews to insist everyone is homeless and needs a home, I say this, you aren’t offering homes, you are offering homes with a song a prayer and a promise of homes in 2-3-4 years.
Now, whom among you wants to have the methhead living next door?
If you insist that the addicted will remain in shelters until you rehab them, then you are doing exactly as I suggested for the last 3 years, creating a “home base for criminality in our downtown”!
I have asked for a response from CSSPC as to why my plan has not been given the time of day and why it would seem we are “pretending no decision has been made but movement to change Bylaws are afoot!
If this is the best we can do, then we have not learned a thing from every city before us!
https://lethccc.com
Yes ” so many that choose not to rehab,period”,this is the data no one,least of all politicians want to acknowledge. The data from say the YWCA’s harm reduction housing experiment a councilor could maybe access. Maybe. But maybe they don’t want to know? Better for them and this CSSPC group to quietly let the shadow group of Opportunity Lethbridge operate under the table and make these decisions. This elite group are pretty predictable in their chosen locations- well away from their personal locals. While handing this hot potato to a shadow group and the SSIG , city council can pretend or try to “beat the heat”. Many in Lethbridge are not buying it.
The YWCA ‘experiment’ where several people died from fatal overdoses in the YWCA, which had an illegal safe consumption site on the lower floor and drug dealers outside the front doors with open drug use along the fenceline as well at a place where they were supposed to be protecting women from abuse? That was insane!
Promoting, enabling and support drug use for addicts will continue to kill them slowly while destroying their families, our city and our business community!
once again, i get behind db on this issue and suggest that one has a good look at the https://lethccc.com/ link.
The Mayor’s letter asking the province to send us outreach workers to meet with the homeless in our City and help them overcome their problems seems to have gotten lost. Instead, the Mayor is militarizing the City’s approach to the homeless.
It’s all part of Lethbridge’s ‘get rid of the homeless’ strategy, with a big dose of ‘fight them if they resist’. Helping the homeless is out. Unless they suddenly choose abstinence and helping themselves, there will be no supports for them, and we all know the folks capable of doing that are few and far between. Getting them to that point will never happen under the crime and punishment system, where even being homeless in a group is a crime.
Helping themselves, such a novel idea. Clarifies Montreals point, How many are there that don’t want your help. No one has that answer. Either that, or someone/group in the homeless industry has it but won’t reveal it.
Where do these people stay in the winter, I ask this because you didn’t read some of the comments? Why do people travel to this city and camp out here?
Even better: Who gave them the rights to occupy parks and alleys, where they can camp out to commit crimes? Many people have been misled into thinking that we must accept this! We won’t and won’t do that! Enough is enough!
In this city, the adjacent reservations banish and expel their addicts and criminals to our city, where we now have to deal with it. This costs us millions of dollars, while the reservations still get their federal dollars that are supposed to pay for services, supports and policing of those. We get nothing and end up paying double to support the same individuals!
These problems began on the reservations and now we have to deal with them!
You have no wisdom considering these issues from your comment!
At a time when many are having a hard time themselves, turning to food banks for the first time and having to make serious decisions about food vs other necessities being paid from the monies they earn through hard work, the good feelings from handing out free clothes, free food, free water and free housing and now free outreach services to people who seem to be disinclined to do thing one not directed t getting more drugs into their viens is wearing very thin.
Clearing out these tarp slums and the criminal elemnt that feeds off and within them is not “militarizing” anything. When you see a tank rolling over a tent or a flame thrower incinerating an entire camp you can try to espouse your defund the police mentaility. Until then realize that people live in the vicinity of these camps, run business there and have to pass by them to get to jobs where they actually WORK to make the money they use to pay for the things others want for free.
If you want to turn your backyard into an encampment, or invite the ” homeless” to crash in your spare rooms, have at it. When it comes to what is done on public lands , supported by working tax payers dollars, don’t get all holier than thou.
Lethson, you really need to do some research into this before you comment! You are wrong on so many levels! You are unaware of all the supports that cost this city over $14 million last year of tax dollars from the Lethbridge citizens alone for property taxes and other revenues, not to mention the tens of millions poured into this community to support these people from the federal and provincial taxpayer dollars.
This is not free money! This comes from the people who work and pay taxes and they have a right and a say where they want their money spent!
Money doesn’t just fall from the sky and we cannot just print more, or our country will die economically and the monies spent are from the taxpayers who had to work for their living and sacrifice other services that would benefit them to support the addicts and homeless
You are also wrong when you say you cannot force someone into treatment and it be successful.
One of the most successful programs that has an 83% success rate does just that! Addicts are arrested and given the choice, jail or treatment. If they choose treatment, they must complete the full program and will not have a record after. It works and you are wrong!
BC has tried your ideas and failed after 20 years trying! Thousands are dead because it failed and you want more to die from your failed ideas!
Across North America city leadership and police now realize they need law enforcement and effective treatment programs to end this senseless loss of life and destruction of cities.
Let me be clear that the homeless and addicts in encampment here are 2 different groups and the ones in the encampments are the criminals who use their camps as a base of operations to commit their crimes.
In support to what I was saying:
We have lost vacant homes, garages, sheds, the Bow On Tong, the Lethbridge Hotel and over $1 million damage to the Holiday Inn due to the addicts and this morning I called police and fire because there were 4 addicts laying up against a private citizens garage, surrounded by leaves, old trees, old wood fencing and other flammable materials, burning wood with flames 2-3 feet high and they were passed out or barely awake.
This is how fires start and how many of those structures were lost! Who pays? Not the addicts! It is the public that has to absorb the costs!
If you think for one minute that supplementing our understaffed police force with Sheriffs is militarizing the city, you are out of touch! You need to go visit countries that have brutal police. Our police are more like social workers than those police forces and our police work hard not to arrest someone if they can, listening to their concerns and trying to resolve the issues right there on the spot.
I am guessing you are one of the addicts or one of the non-profits who make money from the addicts because you are out of touch with the reality of what happens on our streets or have selective sight!
yup, bring on the sheriffs and some folksy, limpy deputies named festus, too.
however as much as i agree that we should not have encampments in our city, the use of sheriffs does not sit well with me. seems a process of overreach has been creeping along with regard to the role of sheriffs. their increasing use as a means of handling more complex and dangerous policing does not seem acceptable. were they not intended to be traffic control enforcers of our highways? now, i see maybe using them if we were running highways through our green spaces…
once again, i get behind the db entry on this issue and suggest that one has a good look at the https://lethccc.com/ link. it seems a slam dunk that the option, supported most by our nearest reserve, is the wisest way forward right now. it may not prove perfect – time will tell as we gain through trial and error – but it is far superior to the bureaucratic heavy and ridiculously expensive approach that the city is backing. hmm, the city backed plan sure seems geared to line a lot of pockets with our money for quite some time to come.
Dennis’ plan will not get the people who are up all night committing crimes from encamping! Those people will not stay in any place the restricts their criminal activities and the encampment and/or the Co-ordinated Care Campus, that failed miserably in Phoenix and magnified the issues, will not address that problem.
You mention expensive approach, but you fail to take into account this addiction/homeless problem is costing local taxpayers over $14 million per year and tens of millions more of their tax dollars from federal and provincial funding. You comment also reflects the lack of understanding of the various roles Sheriffs play in this province.
We are far from heavy handed and I would suggest you move to Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York or Detroit if you want to see policing there and then you will appreciate our law enforcement.
If you owned your home, worked and paid taxes, owned a vehicle, then you might appreciate police more for helping protect your property!