Homeless a challenge for bylaw enforcement
Ken Hunter can hardly wait for Kelowna’s new homeless shelter to open.
The operations officer for the City of Kelowna’s bylaw enforcement department not only has to enforce the 7 p.m.-9 a.m. camping hours at the homeless camp on the Okanagan Rail Trail, but also deals with exploding numbers there and time-consuming complaints.
“The numbers are three times what we normally are experiencing this time of year as compared to last year. It’s the sheer volume; we’re getting 80 residents there. It’s just managing the numbers currently, managing the numbers as best we can. We’re certainly hopeful that the opening of the shelter (858 Ellis St. at Bay Avenue) will take some of the pressure off and we’ll see less numbers accumulating at our site. That site was only designed for maybe 50 people max and we’re well above that now,” he said.
The homeless aren’t allowed to camp there 24-7 contrary to appearances, he emphasized.
“We do make our rounds every morning, and they do collapse their tents and clean up their sites. Predominantly what you see during the daytime is simply they’re just hanging in there for the day. Come nighttime again, they re-erect their tents and it starts all over again.”
The city has erected a circus-style tent on the rail trail closer to Gordon Drive for the homeless, he noted.
“That’s a designated daytime place for them to go to connect to services, maybe charge the cellphone, and maybe get something to eat and some hygiene. It’s not ideal and it’s certainly not the answer to homelessness but we’re very fortunate through our efforts that we do not have a full-time tent city that other cities in B.C. are experiencing. I think we are in very good shape that way but we have to be on it every day and it’s resource-intensive right now for sure.”
His 17 bylaw enforcement officers and a complement of casual officers deal with 50 to 70 service requests on a daily basis, he said. However, “about 20 per cent of everything we do now has a homeless component to it. But more importantly, that all takes a lot of time as compared to your standard general-duty bylaw call dealing with a parking complaint or dealing with some zoning non-compliance. It’s certainly a strain on our staff. Our staff are going full-out and have been for a while. It’s been a challenging year with the numbers,” he said.
“Just by the sheer numbers, symptoms of homelessness are around the city and people phone us for sure. A lot of times, it’s just a matter of them occupying public space and that’s certainly not illegal. Their very presence in a park or in a public space, although some people might take offence to it, it’s not illegal. They have the right to be there too and with their belongings. It’s a difficult thing to manage but we’re hopeful that out human service partners can help us out with this.”