The business community in the West Victoria St. corridor continues to deal with the impacts of a recent increase in the number of social housing units in the area and many are left feeling like nothing is being done to address their concerns.
There are complaints almost daily about vandalism and drug deals taking place. Theft can be a common occurrence and the recent addition of having one security guard assigned to the area 24 hours a day has done little to address the problems. Some business owners have complained about people coming onto their property and into their stores and being threatened. They ask the question: “What is being done to make me feel safe when all I am trying to do is make a living?”
One business owner has told NL News that he was advised when Emerald House was built it was going to be a shelter for women and children and since it went up it has mainly housed men who are experiencing an array of social issues. The Interior Health website lists the emergency shelter as providing short-term accommodation for women and their children who are homeless, but some observers believe it has been more geared towards men since it opened.
Kamloops City Councilor Bill Sarai says there wasn’t enough room in our social housing from the intake at our emergency shelters moving forward and that was something that caught his eye because he always thought that there was room there. “Looking back at it now maybe some of the arguments are that because there’s nobody accessing the wraparound services in my opinion, or been there for six to seven months to a year, are not moving on to a healthier lifestyle and getting their own place or sharing a place with someone. So they’re in that comfort zone where they’re getting the three meals a day they can still go out and use, they obviously have to do something in order to get money to buy the drugs, so the reason I’m thinking that there’s no room for the shelter people to move forward into housing is because the people in housing aren’t moving on.”
Speaking on NL Newsday, Mayor Ken Christian says this is not a problem that is unique to Kamloops. “Our situation is similar to other cities all over B.C. of our size and we may be doing better in some fronts than other communities. But there isn’t this sort of homeless tourism that people are always alleging and the rumour is that if you build it they will come and so because we are investing in street effected people in Kamloops we’re attracting them. I don’t think that’s the case.”
There was recent talk about a van coming from VisionQuest dropping people off in Kamloops into homelessness something that the Executive Director of the Logan Lake rehab facility Megan Worley has adamantly denied. “We don’t own a bus and the last two clients dropped off at the shelter were done four months ago. We do everything that we can, everything in our power to prevent taking clients to the shelter. It is a last resort.”
Christian doubled down that there aren’t homeless people that are choosing to come to Kamloops because it is more desirable for them. “Yes there was some concern with respect to some facilities and the discharge of their clients into the Kamloops area, but I am sure there is discharge into other areas like the lower mainland and Vancouver from that facility so I am not overly concerned by that.”
“I would really hate to see how many former Kamloops residents are living in the downtown east side of Vancouver. I think repatriation of people is really not the way to go. I think treatment for the comorbidities that they have is really what needs to happen. People with mental heath and addictions are not an easy fix” says Christian. “It’s a fix that starts with a roof over their head and a door to lock and a place to call home. From there it leads to controlling their health condition and eventually leads to employment and success.”
A recent presentation at council on the subject of social housing issues in Kamloops had Sarai asking for BC Housing to come to the council table to discuss their role in the community and in finding solutions for helping connect people to wraparound services. “I would like to ask them, and just like I asked Interior Health, what are you putting in place? Your housing first mandate is part of the four pillar approach that the government has promoted for the last five to ten years. Obviously there’s some cracks in it. What is the next process once you’ve housed them?”
Sarai understands that having a safe place to stay is critical. Keeping people alive is always step one, but he wants to know what is the next step in the process, and who is in charge? “Who is going to be directed to provide the next wraparound services? So if BC Housing is all you’re doing is the housing part, who are you giving the reigns to provide the wraparound services and what are the timelines? Because right now all your service providers are saying they can still here as long as they want and they can keep using as long as they want they can’t cause any disruption or trouble on site, but yet those same rules don’t follow them across the street or outside. So BC Housing should answer us like who should we be contacting? If you’re not going to do it than who should be doing it and we’ll be knocking on those doors.”
“What I think we can do as partners is get them the housing, which is a mandate now ‘Housing First’, and let them clear the fog that is their head from addiction, get them on their meds on a regular basis if they have mental health issues. And in time, and I am not saying a week or a month, everyone is on a different timeline, but after six or seven months if they haven’t reached out to ask for assistance and they’re still going out and doing the same type of activities that keep them entrenched in that lifestyle then I think we’re not doing that person a favour. We’re not helping them, we’re not helping our community.”
Sarai wants to see a more collaborative approach and says that right now there seems to be a lot of finger pointing going on and not enough working together. “We just can’t keep building housing just for the sake of housing. There’s got to be an end result an end goal for the people. It is not fair to them or to the community or to society to just house them and say that’s all we’re going to do now and let’s just find some more land and build some more housing.”
The Executive Director for Ask Wellness, Bob Hughes says he has a little bit of hope for the future. “The increasing talk about an investment from the province on recovery beds and really doubling down on providing, not only simply the emergency services that come with naloxone and overdose prevention services, but let’s find some real long term solutions for people with severe addictions.
Hughes says it may be challenging to see the operations of supervised consumption and overdose prevention services, but he notes that people are not dying when they use these services, but that is the starting point. “We’ve got I think a really strong component of supportive housing, low barrier housing and now what we need to see is investments into providing recovery orientated housing and programs so that people aren’t just simply being kept alive. And you do that whenever you have a crisis whether it’s a car accident or whether it’s another health crisis is you do the emergency work. the acute work, but the real long term solutions come with longer term care and investments into people’s overall well-being and health. And that in this case looks at how do we stabilize and treat people with severe addictions so we are not constantly trying to chase our tale with just trying to save their life.”
BC’s new Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Sheila Malcolmson spoke on NL Newsday, saying she recognizes that people can get stuck waiting for additional services to deal with their mental health and addictions issues and if that can’t come in a timely manner people may lose the will to get better. “I see that in my own community. The intention is there, absolutely supportive housing that we first of all give people a roof over their head and enough stability that they can contemplate entering treatment or taking some of the supports that are available, that is absolutely job one. But no matter how much we’ve set aside in our budget, $346 million that we’ve allocated into mental health and addictions and fighting the overdose crisis , but it takes time for that money to flow out, it takes time for those faculties to be built.”
She noted that the pandemic has created added stress on the system as well with faculties having to reduce their capacity in order to accommodate social distancing. “I do appreciate how many years supports were taken out of the provincial social safety net. That’s what got us to this place and certainly in my community and all over BC we have really tested the patience of business and neighbours.” Malcolmson says the Premier has given her a long to do list which includes supporting police and building up different forms of housing to help people where supportive housing is not appropriate.
The BC Liberal Party’s critic on the file Trevor Halford told NL Newsday, a lot of people he has talked to who are in a place to seek help have difficulty finding it. “I think if you compound that on people that are having housing and addictions issues it is a bigger struggle and the number one issue we need to take away from that is obviously bureaucracy. It would have to be a humanized approach. I think the biggest thing to that is making sure we resource our ministries properly.”
Halford wants to see a bigger budget be allocated to the Mental Health and Addictions Ministry, but when BC Premier John Horgan he appeared on the NL Morning News, he said that the current approach is working and working alongside other ministries is the way to go. “Having a minister that is able to go from Health, to Children and Family Development, to Education, to Post-Secondary and say what are the problems, where are the challenges and how to we address them. I think that’s the best way forward and I think it is a model that other jurisdictions are looking at as well.”
